Ag lab websites – Also look out for...

One of the most fruitful online sources of information on agricultural labourers is academic articles – either posted in full or as downloadable PDFs. Here are five of the best you can read for free, but be warned – they can be rather hard going!

http://melbecon.unimelb.edu.au/het/hammond/village.html
The full text of celebrated work The Village Labourer, by J L and Barbara Hammond, originally published in 1911.

www.bahs.org.uk/43n1a5.pdf
Farm Servant vs Agricultural Labourer, 1870-1914, by Richard Anthony, examines the socio-economic structure of rural society.

http://www.northants1841.fsnet.co.uk/ag%20lab.html
An extract from The Victorian Peasant by Richard Heath, who toured rural Britain on foot between 1870 and 1874.

www.victorianweb.org/history/work/labourers.html
Article on agricultural labourers taken from an 1874 edition of The Cornhill Magazine.

http://pilgrim.ceredigion.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2277
Article about agricultural labour in Ceredigion, Wales.

A more accessible overview of agricultural change in England from 1500 to 1850, by Professor Mark Overton, can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/ empire_seapower/agricultural_revolution_01.shtml.

Those who wish to take their research to the next level should visit www.bahs.org.uk, the website of the British Agricultural History Society, founded in 1952 to promote the study of the history of agriculture and of rural economy and society.

The Family and Community Historical Research Society (FACHRS) recently conducted a project aiming to determine the true extent of the Swing Riots, a spate of agricultural uprisings that occurred in parts of England between early 1830 and spring 1832. Find out more about the project at www.fchrs.com/swing/swing_project.htm. You may also wish to buy a £10 copy of the Swing Unmasked CD-Rom, which includes the names of 3,521 people documented as taking part in the protests.

Forums are a great place to share information and ask questions. Rootschat.com has a lively forum on agricultural labourers – find it by typing “rootschat + agricultural labourer” into Google. Based in rural Britain, but not strictly speaking agricultural labourers, millers, millwrights and their kind are well-served by The Mills Archive www.millarchive.com. The site has records and history relating to traditional mills and milling and contains thousands of digital images, documents and other databases.