Agriculture has always been more than a job: it is a way of life. Around 20% of the British workforce – men, women and children – once worked in agriculture, with many more working indirectly as blacksmiths, wheelwrights and carpenters. Those who worked on the land had a deep understanding of the countryside which many people can only yearn for today.

But the rural idyll was not always to be envied. Many communities had no running water or mains electricity until the mid 20th century. People groped their way through the garden to use the privy and trudged several miles to work or to fetch groceries. An agricultural labourer’s wage often barely covered a meagre meal for his family.

The agricultural labourer (‘ag lab’ in census returns) has often been dismissed as an unskilled and rather unintelligent drudge. In fact he had to be adept at horsemanship, thatching, livestock management, equipment maintenance and hurdle-making. Reaping corn with a scythe without knocking it flat or shedding the grain was a hallmark of skill, as was shearing a struggling sheep without any injury from the blades to animal or handler. The ability to see any deterioration in an animal’s health, determine the problem and treat it accordingly, without the aid of veterinary textbooks or medicines, came from a vast repertoire of experience.

Following the Norman Conquest, labourers – known as serfs, villeins or peasants – had an obligation to cultivate the land owned by their lord of the manor, in return for living there with some land and livestock of their own. The labour shortage in the 14th century caused by the Black Death gave the chance to seek better terms, and monetary leases of land became commonplace.

With hard work and good fortune, men could lease or purchase larger holdings, and employ men to work for them. A social divide began to appear between those who held land and those who did not, although as holdings were often small – tilled for subsistence rather than profit – the distinction between yeomen (freehold farmers), husbandmen (tenant farmers) and landless labourers was blurred before the 18th century. Commoners’ rights allowed labourers to keep livestock on the common grazing land along with the farmers, gather firewood and, in coastal areas, hunt wildfowl, which boosted their standard of living considerably.

Many of the younger, unmarried labourers were employed as servants in husbandry. They were hired on an annual basis and lived on the farm in return for a lower wage. Their living conditions were little different to the farmer and his family.

Servants in husbandry were employed at annual hiring fairs, also called mop fairs or statute fairs. Many originated in the medieval period and still survive as funfairs today, particularly in the Midlands of England. They were held in October, after harvest, in arable areas; in early summer in pastoral areas, after the lambing and calving season. Prospective shepherds carried a crook, carters a whipcord, housemaids a mop – hence ‘mop fair’ – to identify their trade. Many rural parishes had a surge in weddings during October: one or both parties was engaged as a servant in husbandry and free to marry only when their present employment ended.

The number of servants in husbandry declined by the late 18th century. The population was rising and the surge in available labour caused a drop in wages and a rise in the cost of living. It was now more economical to hire labourers on a day rate without the expense of board. The standard of living for the agricultural labourer began to fall.

A drive to improve efficiency triggered the enclosures of the ancient open fields and their common grazing into privately-held allotments by various Acts of Parliament in the 18th and 19th centuries. Around 20% of British farmland, the majority in arable areas such as the Midlands, was affected. The Enclosure Acts created the individual farm holdings we are familiar with today and deprived the commoners of all their rights. It was a huge benefit to those who owned land, and caused untold hardship to those who did not. Labourers were no longer able to keep livestock or gather firewood. And at the same time came the collapse of cottage industries such as spinning, once a valuable source of income for women, as the factories and mills of industrial Britain multiplied. A wave of rural poverty spread, and life for the labourer and his family became very bleak.

Conditions reached an all-time low in the 19th century. High grain prices boosted the prosperity of farmers and landowners to the detriment to the working classes, and the gulf between farmers and poverty-stricken labourers widened.

Mechanisation of agriculture was another issue. Steam threshing engines deprived labourers of much-needed winter work. The horse-drawn reaper-binder could cut four acres of corn in an hour; once a day’s work for 12 men. Many labourers were forced to leave their rural communities for the industrial towns which had ironically cost them their jobs. In the second half of the 19th century, the number of agricultural labourers fell by half.

Those who remained could afford only the most basic standard of living. Many labourers in the 1870s were often earning 13 shillings a week [£40 today] for a 14-hour working day, sometimes with a walk of several miles each way on top. Many families lived in dilapidated dwellings, often with only two rooms despite housing eight or more adults and children. They had no sanitation or drainage, broken roofs and ill-fitting doors and windows. A report in The Times in 1850 described the Northumberland village of Wark as:

“&hellipthe very picture of slovenliness and neglect. Wretched houses piled here and there without order; filth of every kind scattered about; horses, cows and pigs lodged under the same roof with their owners and entering by the same door; in many cases a pigsty beneath the only window in the house.”

The appalling conditions along with malnutrition – meat, bread and potatoes were often unaffordable – caused high incidences of cholera, typhus and other diseases. Mortality rates, especially in children, were high. Education wasn’t an option for many children. The school fees were unaffordable and the families desperately needed the extra pennies their children could earn.

Boys began work in early childhood, scaring birds from the newly-planted corn. They would then work as plough boys, trudging up and down the fields, guiding the horse to plough a perfectly straight furrow – their first taste of a skilled task – before moving on to harder work. Those who did attend school usually worked in the fields at harvest time when no available pair of hands could be spared; this is the reason for the six-week school summer holiday we still observe today.

The more impoverished women and widows often laboured in the fields alongside the men. They often had several small children and little other option to feed and clothe them. The Victorian Warwickshire social campaigner Joseph Ashby believed it should be a crime for women to work in the fields. He wrote:

“If a woman were out at work all day, what muddle must the house be left in, with no comfort for the labourer or his wife when they returned home? Children would play truant and older girls, who need careful training for service and home-making duties, would instead be learning the worst vices.”

Things began to improve in the latter 19th century. Warwickshire farm labourer Joseph Arch formed the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union in the 1870s, its aim a fair living wage. A series of strikes and protests – the Union was careful to condone only lawful action – led to a reluctant rise in wages.

The Allotment Act of 1882 decreed that landlords provide an allotment for anyone who wished. The income from the sale of fruit and vegetables would offer labourers a way out of poverty. The more philanthropic landowners and employers replaced dilapidated dwellings with modern cottages with gardens and pigsties, which offered a previously unknown standard of living for labouring families.

The enfranchisement of the working class was another step forward. The vote, once the exclusive right of landowners, was extended to the urban male working class in 1867. In 1884 it was also granted to rural men who owned or rented property worth £10/annum and had lived in it for a year. This now included many labourers, who typically supported the recently-formed Liberal party, which campaigned for social change and political reform and supported the Agricultural Labourers’ Union. The labourer’s voice began to be heard.

As farms expanded and specialised, jobs became more specific. The 1911 census lists occupations of cowman, shepherd, carter and waggoner rather than simply ‘ag lab’. Within a decade, the occupation of tractor-driver began to appear.

The agricultural labourer, now educated, well-housed and able to vote for a government of his choice, was now more appreciated for what he was: a highly-skilled, intelligent countryman through whose labour Britain had risen to greatness.