sevenTeenTh-CenTury environmenTs: farmland^45In addition, smaller groups of strips were often turned over to pasture by
neighbours, and ‘ends’ of furlongs frequently laid down for grazing and the
production of hay. All this ensured that, certainly by the early eighteenth
century, the landscape of a county like Northamptonshire – a quintessential
‘champion’ district – was in fact considerably more diverse than we usually
assume (Figure 9).^33
Enclosure, and the expansion of pasture, in the Midlands were in turn part
of a much wider development, providing a second important context within
which we need to examine wildlife and habitats. This was the emergence in
the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the manner described
in the previous chapter, of increasingly specialized farming regions. Regional
farming economies were not static, of course. The particular emphasis of
agricultural production tended to change in response to market conditions,
influenced above all by population pressure. The later fifteenth, sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries had been periods of demographic expansion
and rising food prices. But between c.1650, and c.1750 population
growth was sluggish, or even reversed, and arable farming in particular
was in a depressed state, encouraging a greater concentration on livestock
production, and thus enclosure and the expansion of pasture. Variations in
figure 9 Typical Midland landscape in the early eighteenth century: the area
around Desborough and Braybrooke in north-central Northamptonshire. Note the
complex mixture of open fields and enclosed land (for sources, see Williamson et al.
2013).