The 20th Century
20th-century monarchs
with the dates they reigned:
(Victoria 1837 - 1901) Edward VII 1901 - 1910
George V 1910 - 1936 Edward VIII 1936
George VI 1936 - 1952 Elizabeth II 1952 -
See also The First World War and The Second World War and Businesses in Langar.
Langar and Barnstone - two villages set in the farmland of the Vale of Belvoir
People have lived and worked at Langar and Barnstone for 10,000 years farming the fertile lands of the Vale of Belvoir, keeping animals and growing crops to feed the nation. It's a landscape of farmers' fields and small villages.
Click the map to explore the farmlands of the Vale of Belvoir.
This takes you out of this website to Google maps.
Mixed farms
Until the 1960s most farms in this area were mixed farms - they grew a variety of crops and kept a variety of animals.
Farm animals (livestock)
On mixed farms there were often herds of dairy cows (milk, cheese and butter) and cattle kept for fattening up (beef); some farms kept flocks of sheep (wool and meat); most farmers had one or two pigs for their own use (pork, bacon, ham), and hens (eggs and meat). But there were also larger herds of pigs, flocks of hens laying eggs and a farm near Bingham which kept 300 turkeys ready for Christmas.
Crops
On mixed farms wheat was the main crop, but many other crops were grown: barley, oats, rye, potatoes, peas, sugar beet, kale, mangolds, swedes, beans and grass (for animal feed).
Changing times - an example
Starnhill Farm is 2 miles north of Barnstone towards Bingham. It shows how farmers have to change what they produce as times change.
When Arthur Lamin came to Starnhill Farm in 1930, it measured 337 acres in area and was run as a typical mixed farm.
Arthur's son Peter Lamin, joined him in 1954 and began growing cabbages, cauliflowers, lettuce, celery, runner beans and carrots for the wholesale market. As the number of supermarkets grew using different methods of contract and supply, this became uneconomical, so Peter stopped.
The farm used to buy cattle to fatten up to sell at market. This ended in 1963.
Peter Lamin and six local farmers began to grow tulips. Some were sold as cut flowers, but most bulbs were sold to be grown on in heated greenhouses for winter flowering. There were 18 acres of tulips on Starnhill Farm. But in 1973 the price of heating oil increased so much that the business was closed down.
By now, there were fewer types of crop grown on the farm.
Potatoes had been grown here since 1930 but in the 1960s the acreage was increased. Irrigation was introduced in 1958. The potatoes at the end of the 20th century were used to make frozen French fries but competition from Holland and Belgium made this uneconomical and potato growing stopped in 2002.
Spring-sown and winter-sown onions were grown from 1970. Changes in supermarket suppliers made spring-sown onions uneconomical but the farm still grows winter onions, which are used in processed food. In 1999 Starnhill Farm was growing wheat, barley, oil-seed rape, sugar beet, potatoes and onions.
Starnhill Farm now grows mainly wheat, barley, sugar beet and oilseed rape. The farm covers an area of nearly 4000 acres (1500 hectares), more than ten times bigger than the farm in 1930 and works with two other local farms farming an area of 6000 acres with only four full-time staff.
Information and photos from the Bingham Heritage Trails website
Mechanisation - using machines
Horse power Steam power Petrol power
Throughout most of history, farming, especially growing crops, was a matter of human muscle and animal labour. Oxen, horses and mules pulled ploughs to prepare the soil for seed and they hauled wagons filled with the harvest (20% of the harvest had to be used to feed the working animals). (See the Middle Ages.)
Jobs were back-breaking: planting seeds, hoeing the weeds and then reaping the harvest, with the tasks of cutting, collecting, bundling, threshing, and loading.
Farm machinery was invented in Georgian times (18th century) driven by humans or horses or oxen. Farm work began to be a little easier and more efficient.
Steam-power was used to drive farm machinery from Victorian times (19th century). The first steam engines were developed in the 1830s and by the 1850s steam-powered ploughs and threshing machines were in use across the country. Horses and human labour were still important, but productivity and efficiency continued to increase.
But it was the petrol-powered internal combustion engine in the 20th century that brought about a revolution in farm mechanisation and led to an amazing period of change.
The world's most famous tractor
In 1911 engineer Harry Ferguson was asked by the Irish Board of Agriculture to improve the efficiency of the country's tractors. Tractors pulling ploughs were heavy, difficult to use and dangerous.
In 1928, after years of work, Harry patented his three-point linkage Ferguson System. It revolutionised world farming. It was easy to use, improved productivity and saved countless lives as it prevented tractors tipping up and killing farmers.
In 1946 his new light-weight tractor went into production and went on to sell over half a million units in its ten years of production. The Little Grey Fergie is probably the world’s most famous tractor and the 3-point linkage system is still used on tractors today.
Tractors pulled ploughs, but not only that!
They hauled loads and livestock, they towed and powered planters, cultivators, reapers, pickers, threshers, combine harvesters, mowers, and balers, so one driver could do jobs that had taken many people many hours to do.
The First World War and mechanisation
The First World War 1914 - 1918
Before 1914 farming was labour-intensive. Much work was still done by human hands or animal power.
But the war took workers away from the farms to fight in Europe against the Germans - 170,000 male farm labourers went to the front line of the war.
Some of the labour shortage was solved by the formation of the Women’s Land Army in 1917 which provided 98,000 new workers.
And half a million working horses were taken to the war by the British Army. During the first year of the First World War the British countryside was almost emptied of horses. The horses were taken by train to the seaports where they were hoisted onto ships to cross the English Channel. Arriving in France, they would soon face the horrors of the front line, either as cavalry horses or beasts of burden.
In England farmers had to look for new power sources.
In 1917 the British government bought 400 British tractors and spent 3 million dollars buying American tractors. However, tractors at this time were heavy, clunky, unreliable and slow. They were useful for ploughing heavy land but they could not be used on boggy land or slopes. They were so slow that sometimes farmers left them in the fields at the end of a day’s work because it was quicker to walk back to the farm and start from where they left off the next day!
- At the beginning of the 20th century it took 16 hours planting and harvesting to produce one tonne of wheat.
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By the end of the 20th century it took only 1 hour to do the same job.
And farmers can ride in comfort, with air conditioning and listen to music while they work.
Bigger and bigger fields
During the 1950s and 1960s reorganisation of the farms took place. Individual farmers had fields scattered about all over the parish. Now there were larger farms with their fields all together in one place and fewer farmers.
The trend away from mixed farming began in the 1960s. Farmers stopped keeping cows for milk, and with no cattle and horses to feed, more land was available for arable farming. Hedges were taken up to make larger fields that were better for large farm machinery and fewer varieties of crops. The main crops grown in our area are now mainly wheat, barley, sugar beet and oilseed rape.
Although there are more people living in Langar and Barnstone than there were in the past, very few people work on farms here.
A bit of maths! - graphs
Workforce on British farms
Productivity of British farms
The graph of the left: The number of workers on British farms
The graph shows that the number of workers on British farms has steadily gone down from 900,000 in 1925 to 200,000 in 2019. (The number of workers rose during World War 2 [1939-1945] when farm work was done by the Women’s Land Army and prisoners of war.)
Looking back further (not on the graph):
- in 1851 there were 1,700,000 farm workers;
- in 1921 there were less than 1,000,000.
The graph on the
right:
Productivity - how much food is grown on British farms 1953 - 2019
Farmers have been producing more and more food with fewer and fewer workers.
Bigger fields in Langar - compare 1899 with 2019 . . .
Sugar beet
Sugar beet grown around Langar is sent to the British Sugar factory at Newark where 130 workers turn the beet into 250,000 tonnes of sugar every year. The beet is harvested in autumn and taken to the factory where it is washed, sliced and boiled. As the sticky syrup cools, it forms crystals of sugar.
Oilseed rape/rapeseed
You can't miss the bright yellow sweet-smelling flowers of oilseed rape (rapeseed) in spring. The seeds are harvested and sent to Hull to be crushed to extract the oil which is used for cooking and making margarine spreads for bread. What is left after milling is made into food for farm animals.
Livestock
Livestock in the fields is not so common as it once was. But you can still see animals in the fields - and many local people keep some hens to lay eggs for their own use.
Weblinks
These videos take you through the 20th century from horse power to the latest technology.
All the links take you out of this website.
Horse Power
Horses played a vital role in farming until after the Second World War. This video from DiscoverARCountryside on YouTube shows the part horses played in the countryside, on farms, in war and still help the environment today.
The Vale of Belvoir Machinery Group
15 years ago a group of farm machinery enthusiasts in our area started to collect old tractors, threshers and other farm machines to keep them working.
Click here to see them in action
at Belvoir Castle Steam Festival.
The farming year at Honey Top Farm
This Norfolk farm grows cereals and sugar beet - very similar to the farms in Langar and Barnstone.
Looking at farming from the air
A video of tractors in action filmed using a drone - by 'Farming Photography' on YouTube. You'll need a spare hour to watch the whole thing! Click.
Where we lived
Langar changed little during the Victorian era. One or two new houses were built and some were rebuilt, but the village remained a scatter of small cottages along three streets - Cropwell Road, Main Road and Barnstone Road.
Musters Road was built. This meant that traffic from Harby to Bingham no longer had to pass through the village and opened up an area for housing development. In the 1960s Belvoir Crescent was built on a field known as the Brewery Field which had been used for many years by travelling fairs.
In the 1970s The Poplars was built on Main Road in the rear garden of The Hawthorns and Rosedene and Sunset Lodge were built on Barnstone Road. Langar Primary School was built on the Glebe Field with the old Post Office Cottage being demolished to make way for the school playing field. Gradually, by the end of the 20th century, all the spaces were filled with houses. Willow Lane and Earl Howe Crescent were built and, in the last development (so far), Hill Farm was demolished and the road called Butler’s Field was laid out.
Left: Belvoir Crescent Right: Butler's Field