It was during the reign of George III that England underwent an agricultural revolution. Men like Berkshire born Jethro Tull, who died this day in 1741, invented new farming methods that would improve the lives of those working on the land.
Jethro Tull's plans for a career in law and politics were derailed due to ill health. Following his marriage, he moved to one of his father's farms in Oxfordshire. It was not long after this move into farming that he discovered that the old way of planting seeds was not very efficient. In the latter part of 1699 Tull worked on his ideas for a seed drill which he had perfected by 1701, before then furrows were dug by hand and the seeds were planted too close together. Tull's drill had a rotating grooved cylinder, not only did it prove to be cost-effective but it made the crop easier to weed.
Jethro Tull's other invention with the aid to improving farming methods was a new plough. This plough had special blades that cut deeply into the soil and resulted in the grass and roots being pulled up and left on the surface to dry, these newly ploughed fields can be seen up and down the country and especially on the land that surrounds my village as you can see in the last of the images below.
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Thanks to Jethro Tull and other innovative and forward-thinking landowners farming output almost doubled. The increase in the use of crops grown as food for animals allowed farmers to keep more livestock and this meant more meat was produced and sold in the markets to feed the growing population, this revolution saw the introduction of not only the new systems of cropping and but also of selective breeding.
Interestingly, it has been argued that the agricultural revolution did not happen at all, that the increase in farm production was a slow progression of events beginning in the mid-sixteenth century and ending in the eighteenth.
Interestingly, it has been argued that the agricultural revolution did not happen at all, that the increase in farm production was a slow progression of events beginning in the mid-sixteenth century and ending in the eighteenth.
Jethro Tull died in the village of Hungerford in Berkshire and is buried at St Bartholomew's Church in Lower Basildon where his gravestone can be found today.
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