Wildlife in depression, C.1870–1940^143times, were more sensitive than they had formerly been to complaints on this
subject. Where landowners fell into financial difficulties, moreover, large-
scale timber sales were one obvious way of realizing assets. Rider Haggard
noted large-scale felling of hedgerow oaks in 1902, commenting: ‘I think
that ‘ere long this timber will be scarce in England’.^23 Thirty years later Lilias
Rider Haggard described how ‘the wholesale cutting of timber all over the
country is a sad sight, but often the owner’s last desperate bid to enable him
to cling to the family acres.. .’.^24 And where estates were finally broken up
and portions sold to former tenants, the latter were usually keen to thin the
‘landlord’s timber’ not only to enhance yields but also to recoup some of the
money expended on purchase.
dereliction and abandonment
While dereliction of agricultural land did occur, its scale and character are
often exaggerated. The complete abandonment of arable to weeds and scrub
was particularly unusual, mainly concentrated in the 1880s and ‘90s and
mostly in areas of former heathland, although some districts of poor clays
were also affected. The weeds which developed on such land, including
groundsel and ragwort, had considerable value for seed-eating birds like
goldfinches.^25 But in most cases abandonment was shortlived: untilled land
was brought back into cultivation or converted to pasture. Only in a few
districts did extensive tracts of ploughland become permanently derelict,
cultivation being no longer viable given the inputs of fertilizer, lime and
the rest which were required. The East Anglian Breckland, in particular,
became a byword for abandonment. Clare Sewell Read described in 1905
how ‘Thousands of acres... are now derelict’ in the area.^26 There was
some reversal of this state of affairs during World War I. But Mosby in 1938
emphasized how ‘many acres have gone out of cultivation following the
phenomenal decline in prices’ between 1919 and the early 1930s.^27
More significant than the abandonment of arable was the gradual decline
in the quality of many enclosed pastures, particularly in upland areas, or
(once again) in places previously reclaimed from heathland. In part this was
caused by the gradual neglect of liming and drainage. But it also reflected
a marked decline in the numbers of sheep being kept, a consequence of
the scale of foreign imports. While cattle numbers remained buoyant in
England and Wales during the depression years, actually showing an increase
between 1880 and 1939 of around 40 per cent, the numbers of sheep fell
from 19.5 million to 13.4 million in 1920, a decline of over 30 per cent,
albeit recovering to around 18 million by the 1930s.^28 Much land was thus
grazed less intensively, the area recorded in government statistics as ‘rough
grazing’ – moorland, heathland and the like – doubling from around 2.8 to
5.6 million acres (1.1–2.2 million hectares) between 1891 (the first year for