Colonising the Hill Country

A slow-motion version of disruptive technology changed the historic character of the light-soiled uplands of southern England. A classic area flanked the drovers’ track called the Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) Ridgeway. It exemplified the shift in regional land use that occurred from the late seventeenth century, when fodder crops were adopted on which sheep could feed and hence manure the soil, permitting cereals to be grown. The wheat-lands of the clay vales were dearer to plough and so turned over to grass for producing beef and cheese. On the downs whole farmsteads moved to the centre of new arable farms. High prices for grain ensured that a peak of change came during the Napoleonic wars. Later peaks were interspersed with depressions and in the most recent, between the wars, the higher ground turned back to ‘prairie’. The post-war reconversion to arable, like earlier peaks, has had marked effects on wildlife.