The Past Harvests Project
The Past Harvests Project
Posted by es970
15 April 2026Nothing symbolises the difference between historic and modern forms of land use like the European Gorse (Ilex europaeus). Known variously as whin, furze or ling, it thrives on poor, sandy or stony marginal soils, particularly upland heaths and moors. As enclosure and reclamation took hold from the early nineteenth century, it was eradicated from many such areas. Before then, however, gorse and heathland were integrated into extensive, alternating, cultivating regimes, which today we are rediscovering as ‘land-sharing’.
The ‘Past Harvests’ project is revealing how, on the Powderham estate of the Earls of Devon, gorse was integrated into a landscape-scale growing cycle. Here, before c. 1800, farmers accessed three different types of land: marshes by the river Exe, which provided summer grazing for livestock, particularly sheep; a complex patchwork of strip fields around the villages of Powderham, Kenton and Exminster, where soils were good enough (and rainfall low enough) to grow significant wheat crops; and sandy, heathy hills, and the western slopes up to the Haldon hills. The latter were left as commons, but they weren’t left out of cultivation, and gorse was the most important crop.
At any point, these commons were usually divided into three zones. One zone provided areas of rough grazing for sheep and cattle. Another was planted with European gorse, which could grow 2-3 metres tall, rather than the local varieties (such as Ulex gallii or Ulex minor) which generally reached less than half a metre. The third area was divided into strips (known locally as ‘landscores’), and ploughed up, with several successive crops of barley, rye or oats being grown on it. As the historian Harold Fox demonstrated half a century ago, these furze-breaks were integrated into an ‘infield-outfield’ farming regime. In years when part of the arable strips near the village were fallowed, the outfield ‘landscores’ would be cultivated, to replace their output. However, the gorse was critical to their productivity. It was the universal crop. Mature gorse stands provided effective shelter for livestock, which manured these thin soils. Gorse acted as a nitrogen fixer (and, of course, a carbon sequestrator). Young gorse shoots gave good grazing for sheep, while older stems were pounded for high-protein cattle fodder. Gorse provided fast-growing fuel reserves, and its quick-burning properties were suited to bread baking, and scalding raw milk to extract more cream. Gorse roots were ploughed up, burned, and the potash spread on these hungry soils. Farmers planted, harvested, burned and ploughed gorse on these lands over a 7-14 year cycle. In doing so, they also offered a sustainable habitat for heathland birds such as stonechats, whinchats and Dartford warblers, among many others.
So, if gorse offered all these advantages, why did local agriculture turn against it? Specialisation and intensification. Historians estimate that English agricultural output doubled between 1600 and 1800, primarily by the adoption of text-book forms of rotation (such as the famous Norfolk four-course), in which fallows were replaced by fodder crops, such as turnips, and natural grasslands by clover and rye grass. This meant more livestock could be kept on farms, which were reorganised through enclosure to be ring-fenced units, rather than scattered strips in open fields. Marginal lands might be ‘improved’ by liming, marling and manuring, and incorporated into these intensive regimes, or they might be turned over to woodland and sporting landscapes. Each spelt the end of gorse, and ‘extensive’ agricultural practice, marking the emergence of the modern agricultural landscape, but also of many of its current dilemmas.
This blog was provided by Professor Henry French, Lecturer in Social and Early Modern History, at the University of Exeter and co-lead on the Past Harvests project.
