The Industrial Archaeology of Agriculture: Rural Life Collections and the National Trust

Abstract

The National Trust has acquired, by virtue of its extensive countryside land holding, a large number of sites which demonstrate much of the history and development of agriculture in Britain. This paper will provide a summary review of the range of such sites, including farms and vernacular farmsteads with their wide range of specialist activities, the 'model' industrialised farms of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often associated with country house estates, and the sites where the processing of agricultural products took place, particularly watermills, windmills, and textile producing works. Reference will also be made to some of the rural life collections, including agricultural machinery and other artefacts which the Trust owns. This paper cannot be comprehensive, but will seek to raise some of the issues which the curation of such a diverse collection raises.