January ended with James waiting anxiously for a cargo of wheat from Hamburg which he bought for £1,300 (several tons of wheat). On Thursday 31st of January James writes in his diary:
I hope the ship will come but no tidings of her yet. Frost stopped her just as beginning to land 14 December – done the best I know now – why be solicitous – a kind Providence has watched over me in many instance before and I hope will in this concern.
Whilst waiting for this precious cargo, James continued to visit the Cambridge corn market to try and find more grain to mill. There was no indoor corn exchange at the time. William Custance’s map of Cambridge dated 1798 shows the corn market occupying part of the current market place (on the side of Rose Crescent) whilst the garden market (for selling surplus produce) was in front of the current Guildhall. The beast market (live stock) was at the modern intersection of Corn Exchange street and Downing Street. This is the location that was chosen later, around 1842, to build the first covered corn exchange which was later replaced in 1875 by a much bigger building, the current Corn Exchange on Wheeler street. Carving stones above the entrance of this building show, on one side, a man and a horse drawn plough, and on the other side, a family group harvesting and bundling sheaves of wheat.
It is quite remarkable that whilst other towns, especially in the North, were busy building large factories and manufacturing goods, Cambridge’s main activity remained grounded in agriculture with the town continuing to function as a “clearing house for the agricultural produce of the surrounding countryside” (M. Murphy p.11). Of course, even at the height of the so-called “industrial revolution”, people still needed feeding, especially the people of Cambridge as, in the first forty years of the nineteenth century, the population grew from about 10,000 to 24,500 (M. Murphy p.10). London had also expanded considerably and needed the produce of the Fens. Cambridge was very well placed for this as a distribution centre. Whilst wheat was more plentiful in the second half of the nineteenth century, the year 1805, the year of James’ diary, was a difficult one.
In 1805 the harvest had been very poor and prices were high, leading to a standstill in trading activities. After a visit to the Corn Market on Wednesday 13th February 1805, James writes:
To Corn Market – there till 1/2 past 2 – did nothing – buy nor sell- unusual – Mr Stammers the same – everything high in price but exceedingly dull in sale – dined at Green Dragon – & went to ‘Change – no oil can be sold – just same as Corn Market – everybody out of oil but price high & trade touchy.
The standstill in the trade of corn was most certainly the result of high inflation. Buyers were holding back, perhaps in the hope of a drop in price. This was disastrous for the population as this could create shortages along the line, resulting in hunger. The same happened in the rapeseed oil market. This oil was important to fill the lamps that provided light in the darkness of winter. In the 1790s a program of improvement in the town had included the provision of oil lamps fixed to the walls of colleges and houses to make the town safer at night. The crisis of 1804-1805 not only affected the provision of food but also that of lighting.
In these circumstances it is not surprising that an intensification of the enclosure movement can be observed in the year 1805 in the villages around Cambridge. James Nutter’s diary provides an exceptional account of the work of the Sawston enclosure commissioners. On Friday 8th February 1805 James writes in his diary:
Bursar of Keys College [Caius] Mr Lucas called today showed me plan of a tunnel under our mill head water at Shelford requested by commissioners Sawston inclosure to drain their fen land about Arms Pool – I convinced him he said of its danger & damage & he promised me the College would not suffer it to be done.
The work of the commissioners had started in 1803 when they published an announcement in the Cambridge Chronicle communicating their intention to “execute an Act of Parliament lately passed” (Cambridge Chronicle Saturday 6 April 1803) and divide, allot and enclose open fields, common lands and waste grounds within the Parish of Sawston. James’ diary entry shows that some of the waste grounds were under water and needed to be drained to be reclaimed. The solution found by the commissioners was to send the excess water through a tunnel into the mill pond at Great Shelford. There were no canals, such as existed in the Fens, to absorb the excess water. Water around Sawston was usually directed into existing or man-made ponds. James is rightly concerned that this would damage the wheel of the mill as all the water passing through the mill is usually strictly controlled by weirs and flood-gates.
James’ diary demonstrates that the task of the commissioners was not easy as it involved the drainage as well as the redistribution of village land. Commissioners also had to assert who might have had legal claims in the common fields, meadows and waste lands (D. Barnes, p. 105) and try to sell parts of these lands in order to cover the cost of their work. In the case of Sawston, the announcement made in the Cambridge Chronicle indicates that the commissioners invited the villagers to meet at Stapleford Turnpike Gate on the 5th of May 1803 to discuss the matter and register claims and interests. Two years later the work was continuing with the reclamation of land.
James’ diary bears important witness to the work of enclosure that was to change the way of life in the villages around Cambridge. Pastures were no longer held in common and enjoyed by all equally, as this old system was deemed no longer fit to produce enough food to feed an ever growing population.
References:
The unpublished diary of James Nutter, Miller of Cambridge, 1804-1806 (Nutter Family Archives)
Michael Murphy, Cambridge Newspapers and Opinion 1780-1850, Oleander Press of Cambridge, 1977
Stephen Lloyd, “Cambridge Corn Exchange – The Past and the Future” in Cambridgeshire Life Magazine, January 1987, pp. 16-17
Donald Barnes, A History of English Corn Laws, Routledge, 2006 (first published in 1930)
Cambridge Chronicle, Saturday 6 April 1803