Land 'improvement'

• The wilderness retreats. Agriculture gradually ascended hills, fens were gradually drained, marshes reclaimed, heaths converted to arable use.
• Besides the progressive "enclosure" of rural land, agricultural techniques underwent revolutionary improvement. Crop rotation obviated the necessity to leave fields fallow - pioneered by Thomas Coke, to become Earl of Leicester, but with his Estate in Norfolk.
• Breeding improved horses, cattle and sheep (as exhibited at Dishley Grange in Leicestershire by Robert Bakewell)

Between 1700 and 1790 4,000,000 acres were brought into cultivation, and with the greater productivity of agriculture land values almost doubled.

Cultivation - and enclosure - produces neat, geometrical patterns, the ideal of beauty is linked with fruitfulness and productivity: lush meadows, laden fruit-trees. Cobbett:"I have no idea of picturesque beauty separate from the fertility of soil." (quoted by Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 257).

The wilderness - heaths, marshes, mountains - is despised. It is only as the 19th Century comes into view that this sensibility alters and Romanticism heralded.

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Revised 06:06:03