In the first half of the century these changes were limited to tenanted farms in East Lothian and the estates of a few enthusiasts, such as John Cockburn and Archibald Grant. The Society of Improvers was founded in 1723, including in its 300 members dukes, earls, lairds and landlords. 18th century Īfter the union with England in 1707, there was a conscious attempt among the gentry and nobility to improve agriculture in Scotland. Three acts of parliament passed in 1695 allowed the consolidation of runrigs and the division of common land. Farms also might have grassmen, who had rights only to grazing. ![]() Below them were the cottars, who often shared rights to common pasture, occupied small portions of land and participated in joint farming as hired labour. Those with property rights included husbandmen, lesser landholders and free tenants. Most ploughing was done with a heavy wooden plough with an iron coulter, pulled by oxen, which were more effective in the heavy Scottish soil, and cheaper to feed than horses. Most farming was based on the lowland fermtoun or highland baile, settlements of a handful of families that jointly farmed an area notionally suitable for two or three plough teams, allocated in run rigs, of "runs" (furrows) and "rigs" (ridges), to tenant farmers. 1690īefore the 17th century, with difficult terrain, poor roads and methods of transport there was little trade between different areas of the country and most settlements depended on what was produced locally, often with little in reserve in bad years. History 17th century Runrig farming outside the town of Haddington, East Lothian c. The expansion of the period covered has led some to question the concept of a revolution. More recently historians have become aware of a longer processes, with change beginning in the late 17th century and continuing into the mid-19th century. The term Scottish Agricultural Revolution was used in the early 20th century primarily to refer to the period of most dramatic change in the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century. Whilst run rig varied in its detail from place to place, the common defining detail was the sharing out by lot on a regular (probably annual) basis of individual parts ("rigs") of the arable land so that families had intermixed plots in different parts of the field. In each, a small number of families worked open-field arable and shared grazing. The basic pre-improvement farming unit was the baile (in the Highlands) and the fermetoun (in the Lowlands). ![]() The traditional system of agriculture in Scotland generally used the runrig system of management, which had possibly originated in the Late Middle Ages. They began with the improvement of Scottish Lowlands farmland and the beginning of a transformation of Scottish agriculture from one of the least modernised systems to what was to become the most modern and productive system in Europe. The Agricultural Revolution in Scotland was a series of changes in agricultural practice that began in the 17th century and continued in the 19th century. Frontispiece from Transactions of the Society of Improvers (1743)
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