It is always a pleasure to welcome Ashley Cooper, a farmer and author from Gestingthorpe, to our meeting. He has been talking to the Society since it started in 1986 and we have also visited his farm museum and Roman Villa.
His talk this month was on the Tithe Wars and as usual he spoke without notes and with humorous asides and many questions to the audience. Correct answers were rewarded with postcards from his collection.
Tithes were first mentioned in the Old Testament, in Leviticus and since then, a tenth of a farmer’s income in goods or money went to the clergy of each parish. In medieval Suffolk, there were many freemen who resented paying tithes and by the 1600s when there were many Quakers and non-conformists in our part of the world there was more bickering and unrest.
In 1924, Wickhambrook, a Parish of 4348 acres, had many small farms of 100-150 acres. These were mixed farming, so crops were grown, animals raised and shepherds and horsemen were employed but as we know, all that was about to change with mechanisation.
In the 1830s, the Tithe Commutation Act meant that the Tithe could be paid in money rather than goods but bad harvests in the 1880s meant that the tax just could not be paid by most people, leading to riots and unrest. Ashley told us stories of many farmers who found amusing ways to thwart the tax collectors but it was clearly an unjust and unworkable system. A system of redemption was put in place to help farmers pay when they could and this was supposed to run until 1996 but in 1976 it was clear that it cost more to collect it than it was worth so it was abandoned.
We all thoroughly enjoyed this look at local farming in the past and it was an excellent evening to round off our winter programme.
In June, July and August we will be visiting Stoke by Nayland, Pakenham and Thelnethan and the Suffolk Archives.
Dorothy Anderson