Cylchgronau Cymru

THE GOGERDDAN DEMESNE FARM 1818-22 THE ancient Gogerddan estate embraced some thirty thousand acres by the late seventeen nineties. At this time the estate was in the owner- ship of Pryse Loved en, who, after adopting the family name of Pryse in 1798 sat as Member of Parliament for Cardiganshire for some thirty years. The overall management of the estate in the early post-Waterloo years Pryse Pryse entrusted to Richard Claridge of Gloucester Hall, Penrhyncoch, while the daily running of the demesne farm was the responsibility of a steward.1 The identity of this steward is not clear from the estate papers. However, the accounts which he kept between 1818 and 1822 are notable for their clarity and meticulousness, and reveal a man both literate and numerate. 2 Although records of financial transactions on the demesne farm are complete for the five year period 1818-22, detailed notes of husbandry activities are only available for 1814-15 when the farm steward recorded daily farm tasks in a bold and self-assured hand. It is possible that the apparent waning in his zeal and enthusiasm after 1815 reflects the general gloom among estate stewards, bailiffs and farmers engendered by the adverse economic conditions which followed Waterloo. By the mid eighteen-twenties the farm comprised some 336 acres of arable and pasture, together with 171 acres of woodland (Map 1). The latter, apart from providing game shelter and timber for building renovation and drainage purposes, appears to have contributed little to the total output of the farm. It might reasonably be expected that on the demesne farm of a great estate husbandry standards would be relatively high. On many nineteenth century estates throughout England and Wales the demesne or home farm served the dual function of catering for the needs of the House, and also of providing a model situation where advanced husbandry practices would be observed, and perhaps emulated, by the estate tenants. That the Gogerddan farm belonged to this category is revealed by the accounts, which tend to give the very opposite impression of Cardiganshire farming to that gleaned from early and mid-nineteenth century literary sources. Thus, the culture of the turnip, a crop closely associated with nineteenth century rotational husbandry practice, was well established on the demesne farm by the early 19th century. However, according to a correspondent to the Farmer's Magazine in 1816, the growing of turnips in Cardiganshire was confined to the large landed proprietors and a few intelligent Scotch settlers', while some twenty years later turnips were still, not generally grown by the working class of people' ',6 Field beans also formed an integral part of the rotation on the demesne farm, although in Cardiganshire as a