[taken from a secondhand 20 pp booklet a previous owner had dated 1972]

Crofting in the Isle of Man

I. M. Killip

Extracts from Folk Life [1972]

The terms crofter and crofting are used fairly generally in the Isle of Man with reference to any small farmer working his land up to the early part of this century. Though the words themselves have come into use only recently they are applied to a section of the community and a way of life which was in fact long established in the Isle of Man, though called by other names. The crofter of the nineteenth century was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries referred to in Manx Law as a Tenant Julayne,¹ and in the seventeenth and eighteenth as a Cotler and Intackholder.² The word crofter does not appear to have been used in nineteenth century Manx Statutes, and it would seem to be an entirely borrowed term, its use colloquial rather than official.

The crofting and cottage community in the Island who were only small occupiers and owners of land, played a relatively obscure part in the Island's history compared with the socially and politically more important landowners who employed many of them. There are few biographical and autobiographical accounts of them: for the most part the details of their lives have gone unrecorded, and this lack of information makes their position within the island's social and economic framework harder to define. This has been corrected to some extent by workers of the Manx Museum Folk Life Survey, who when recording details of old Manx farming life paid careful attention to the way of life of the cottager and crofter as well as to that of the bigger farmer, and this article in so far as it deals with the crofter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is based on the information resulting from their investigations.

The houses in which the great majority of people, both crofters and cottagers lived were, until the early nineteenth century, the small low-built type with thatched roof known to us from contemporary description and from a few photographs of late-surviving examples. Some were stone-built where this was possible, others were sod or clay-walled. Early houses consisted of one room, but there developed later the two-roomed house with dividing partition and half-loft. A gable extension was added to some to house a cow, or a small detached outhouse was built nearby. Reference is made to these early Manx houses in the writings of strangers who from the seventeenth century onwards visited the Island and described the living conditions they found there. 'Mere hovels' and 'cabins built of sods'³ are typical phrases found in their accounts of the houses they saw, but however small and simple and 'rude', a word frequently used, these houses were of a kind best-suited to withstand the island's weather, and were the only kind that could be expected at a time when there was little opportunity or incentive to build better. Later nineteenth century croft and cottage building was on a larger scale, resembling more that of a small farmstead.

Crofts were found in various situations in the island. A crofter would have his house ; and small holding of land perhaps in the lowlands, adjoining or forming part of a larger farm, or might occupy a croft on the hills near to the mountains which were the Commonland. Many small houses and crofts were sited by roadsides, and along some of the older roads of the island their ruins can still be found, particularly in stone-building areas. In most cases the land of the croft is now part of a larger farm, and though a few remain separate properties, they are usually now tenanted by a farmer and worked along with a farm. The amount of land a crofter possessed varied from almost nothing at all to twenty or thirty acres, and this means that both the cottager and the small farmer must be included within the definition of crofting. It is necessary to define the crofter as broadly as this, as the family occupying a cottage lived to some extent like the small crofter, and in some cases the crofter tried to increase his acreage and livestock and take on a larger farm. People of both these kinds could be found anywhere in the island, their holdings interspersed between the larger farms, occasionally grouped in small communities and found particularly on the less favourable sites, on land which for a variety of reasons was less readily adaptable for profitable agriculture.

The economics of crofting have received scant attention, and though actual statistics are desirable to show what kind of a living the crofter could make there are few records of these figures, and in such statistics as are available, it is seldom possible to separate them into distinct groups representing crofters and farmers. To fill this need we have to rely on verbal information, the recollections of people who had experience of or remembered crofting conditions in the latter half of last century. Much of what the crofter produced at that time was consumed at home, since the purpose of having land was to provide food and clothing for his family. The livestock he kept was usually a cow, and according to the amount of land he had one or two other cattle, a pig and some poultry and a small number of sheep; some goats were also kept. The small cottager-crofter rented a field and kept a cow or had a small flock of sheep which he pastured on the Commonland. On smaller crofts the crops grown were all too little to maintain the household and the livestock throughout the year. Grain was grown for breadmaking, chiefly barley and oats, but some wheat where conditions were suitable. Potatoes became a staple item of food and all crofters grew them for their own use. Hay and some turnips were grown for cattle fodder and some crofters had a small amount of meadow hay. On small crofts there was no sale of grain or other produce, but some livestock was sold. In the richer agricultural districts of the north of the Island the crofters had a good reputation as rearers of cattle, and their cattle were bought by English dealers and by local farmers, or sold to a country butcher, or to the butcher in the nearest town. The price for an animal sold at two years old was about £12 in the late eighteen hundreds, and on the smaller crofts this return on the yearly sale of one or two such beasts constituted the only substantial profit on the croft. Young stock was disposed of at two years old in Cregneash in the parish of Rushen towards the end of last century, but on many of the poorer hill crofts the young cattle were not kept for more than a year, as the crofters had not enough pasture to feed them and they were sold each year to make room for new stock. Young lambs were also sold except for a few which were retained to keep the small flock going. The wool of the sheep was not sold as it was needed to make winter clothes for the crofter's family. The people relied mainly on the country fairs for the marketing of their livestock. A man belonging to the district of Ronague in Arbory parish has told how the crofters used to drive their young stock in the spring of the year to the fair at St. Mark's in the next parish. He recalls his parents' account of the crofters gathering at an arranged meeting place on the morning of the fair with whatever young animals they had to sell, then setting off together, all helping to drive the stock along the road to the fair.⁴ The crofters' market for their stock was the lowland farmers who came to the fair each year to buy them up and depended upon the crofters to provide lambs and young cattle to stock their pastures.

There were certain other sources of income open to the crofter. His hens laid well in spring, and the eggs his wife sold at the market or the fair, sometimes as cheaply as twenty or thirty for a shilling, but these with a small quantity of butter or milk he might have to sell, was a very limited seasonal surplus, available at a time when nature decreed that hens should lay and cows provide milk profusely. There were some who made a business of travelling round the countryside buying up eggs which they sold at the weekly market. At certain times they would have poultry to sell, and perhaps a quarter of their pig when it was slaughtered, at a price of 4d. or 5d. a lb. Women did much of the trading in eggs and dairy produce. They would walk from their crofts on the hills carrying their produce in large baskets to sell at the market in Douglas or Ramsey. Some accounts of Manx life in the past tend to present the people as idle and thriftless, living in poverty because they lacked the enterprise and initiative to improve their condition, but this hardly seems credible.5 Many stories are told of the long distances that people travelled on foot in all kinds of weather, to their work, to fairs and markets, to church, chapel and school, ample proof that far from lacking energy and powers of endurance they possessed these qualities to a marked degree. It becomes apparent that the crofters of the nineteenth century did what they could to add to their family income: they gathered many things to sell at the market in addition to what their croft produced; flowers, watercress, blackberries, mushrooms, anything in its season that was saleable, and though their profit must have been small, even a few pence made some difference in those days. It is impossible to say what they made by this small trading.

Some crofters owned their land or rented it with little further obligation to the owner, but there were others, farmworkers, who held crofts under a landlord by whom they were employed, the rent being extracted by return of labour or else withheld from their wages. These were Cotlers, and of all crofters they probably had least independence since they were at the beck and call of the landowner.

An early nineteenth century writer on Manx agriculture gives an interesting account of the economic condition of the crofter and cottager of the period — 'A large part of the peasantry being at present in a considerable degree of independence, a custom has been introduced in the larger farms of securing the service of a regular set of labourers, by consigning annually to each family a cottage or a few acres of land without payment of rent, or at a rent less than the value, on the compact that the individuals of that family shall work for their landlord and receive throughout the year wages somewhat lower than at the ordinary rate. To these labourers the provincial name of cotlers is given. . . . Sometimes for the labour of the family at harvest only, a small quantity of land is assigned without a cottage . . . each day's labour at harvest time being valued to 60 feet in length and 4 feet in width of potato butt. The wage besides possession of the land is 10d. a day or 4d.a day and board.'⁶ Though this report states that 'the custom has been introduced' there was early precedent for it. A Statute of 1664 ⁷ stipulates that servants were to be engaged only at appointed times, men in winter and women in summer, the reason being that some farmers kept no servants in winter and summer but at harvest time tried to compel them to work for them by means of a servant jury, so that 'people such as Cotlers, Intackholders, Prentices and the Like, . . . engaged by Trades and giving shearing for Crofts and Nooks of ground for the Relief of a poor Family' were 'mollested by these farmers and compelled to their service by Panel Jury.'⁸

The practice of renting crofts and plots of ground continued throughout the nineteenth century. In a farm account book dating from 1857 a worker's annual wage of £23 included £6 for the rent of his croft, some payments in kind, potatoes, wheat, barley, and the remainder in cash.⁹Towards the end of the century £23 was an exceptionally high wage for a farm-worker and £18 - £20 was more usual. Five shillings a week was the average wage for a woman working as a farm servant. Tradesmen at the end of the nineteenth century were receiving around 2/- - 3/6 day. Miners wages are quoted as low as 7/6 week, but the miner worked on a contract basis and was paid on what he produced. An average wage was 18/6 week but earnings were reduced when a man took a piece of ground to work which proved unproductive. At the fishing £9-£10 was considered a fair taking for the season's fishing from March-October, £20-£25 was an exceptional, and below £7 a poor return.¹⁰

Wages had in fact risen little since the beginning of the century. In 1812 the single farmworker's wage was £12 - £20 with his board: if married he lived in a cottage owned by his employer, received some provisions and was paid as a Cotler. Artisans earned 2/6d. - 3/6d. a day and country labourers 1/4d. and 2/1d. A cottager's expenses over the year are estimated at about £24, his year's income balancing his expenditure with 1/7d. to spare.¹¹ The compiler of these figures adds 'if a small garden or croft be attached to the cottage the rent is higher, but its produce economises the consumption in grain more than in proportion to the additional rent.' Elsewhere in his report the writer observes — 'a garden is highly beneficial to a labourer . . . but a croft is generally a losing concern... the cow often trespassing on neighbours tempts the family into petty thefts of straw hay and grain for her support.' Items such as milk, butter and butcher's meat at this time were paid for 'by profits on pigs and poultry and by extra work of the woman and the eldest child within doors in spinning, knitting, etc. beyond the wants of the family.'¹²

Through the centuries women had played an important part in crofting, carrying on the work in the fields in the absence of the men, as well as working in the house. Manx countrymen had a long tradition of seafaring behind them and their attention was constantly divided between fishing and farming. Each year in spring they were drawn away from their crofts and farms by the necessity of going to sea. 'To have a share in a herring boat is the first object of their ambition and is considered the only road to wealth.'¹³ The women however were under no such compulsion, and they stayed at home and worked the land. 'Two seamen and four countrymen are the number usually employed (in each boat) and from two to three thousand of the latter annually quit their inland habitations for the sea ports for the three or four summer or autumnal months. They leave their wives to turn the soil, to reap, to thresh and dig potatoes.'¹⁴ There was in the eighteenth century a thriving linen industry in the Island which had been promoted and encouraged by the distribution of spinning wheels and reels and of flax seed at a cheap rate,¹⁵and this provided much additional employment for women in spinning, weaving and bleaching. Most people grew some flax at this time both for their own use and for export. There is reported to have been an increase in the export of linen from 12,000 yards in 1765 to nearly 100,000 yards in 1767.¹⁶ The crofter grew some flax on a part of his ground, and the cottager to enable him to grow flax used to hire land at £6 an acre, a high rent which however he paid in labour. The woman of the house could in addition to other work if she was a good spinner earn 3d. or 4d. a day by flaxspinning, and a girl of eleven years could earn 'at least 1d.'.¹⁷

It was especially during the herring season that women were most preoccupied with land work 'the principal part of the field-labour being performed by women. By them the corn is almost exclusively cut, the binding being done by men in proportion of one man to six or seven women.'¹⁸ A woman's wage for general field work was 10d. a day and 1/6d. in harvest. During the nineteenth century many young unmarried women and girls could only find work as servants on farms or as domestic servants in town houses. On the farms they did some field work as well as working in the house, a house servant earned £5 -£6 a year: a woman doing casual field work earned 1/6 day.¹⁹

'There is much justification for the inclusion of the cottager within the definition of crofting, as he was a long-established and familiar figure in the Manx country scene, and even into the early years of the twentieth century was in some cases a keeper of livestock in a small way. In the nineteenth century many cottagers kept a pig and a cow, some had a small number of sheep and availed themselves of the grazing on the commonland, though their right to do so was sometimes disputed. They lived in the manner of small crofters, were often in similar employment and between the cottager and the crofter there was a difference of degree and not of kind. A nineteenth century 'writer on Manx agriculture speaks of the 'cottager-crofter'²⁰ so it is not a new concept. 'The cow-keeping cottager was able to support his cow without possessing land. 'Many cottagers .. . who can purchase food and find winter stall-room for a cow, keep one for their domestic supply of milk. Her winter food is the straw of barley and oats with a little hay.'²¹ At the end of the nineteenth century a man living in one of the northern parishes having no land except a garden is reported to have kept and been able to maintain a cow by grazing it on what was known as the long acre, which meant herding the animal on the roadside, the grass verge of the roads being wider than it is today. He kept it through the winter by working for a farmer and obtained grazing for it as part of his wages.²² Wages in kind, potatoes, grain, the grass of a cow, sometimes figure in farm account books. Herding cattle on the high road was commonly done by crofters and farmers as well as by landless and semi-landless cottage dwellers. Manx records of old trespass laws have much to say about this practice and its attendant evils.

The system whereby the rent of a house or of land was paid by working for the owner was still prevalent in the late nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth. The obligation was sometimes only partial, labour for the rent of a field as in the case of the cottager, but a farmworker who lived in a house belonging to his employer was completely bound to his service as were his wife and family when required for work at busy seasons. It was a bad system as workers could be exploited and imposed upon by an unscrupulous landlord. People who lived in such circumstances, bound toa greater or lesser degree by an obligation to a bigger farmer, even though they were themselves small farmers or crofters, seemed to regard their situation as a kind of bondage and speak bitterly of the hardships they endured as a result. Even small children used to go out into the fields to work, earning a few pence by doing such work as they were considered capable of.

The crofter's dependence on the farmer was chiefly for heavy work requiring horselabour. Among crofters whose holding was larger than the cottager's one or two rented fields, there was the man with five or six acres keeping one or two cattle, but it was only on a croft of about ten acres and upwards that a horse was kept and two crofters with holdings of this size could combine to form a plough team. Those who had no horse were able to sow their crops and do the light work of the croft, but had to rely on a neighbour for ploughing and carting. The crofter who had a horse could undertake carting work for his neighbours, and such a man was always on the look-out for alternative employment of this kind. Many crofters however did as far as possible without wheeled transport. They used creels for carrying, about their farm and to and from the fields — in harvest time crops were sometimes carried in on the back or in wheelbarrows. Similar methods have been recorded for bringing home turf by families living near the hills, in sleds drawn by hand with children helping to drag them. It is probable that many who were not directly employed by a farmer tried as much as possible to do their own work, retaining their independence though with much cost to themselves. Conditions were hard and the crofters labour force was small, and on the crofts there was less team work, and more individual effort was required in consequence.

Though the crofting community included the family living in the cottage at one end of the scale and the small farming family at the other, and some lived their entire lives in one or other of these ways, there tended to be in a few instances an up-grading movement. It was always considered a remarkable achievement and a sign of great industry and thrift when a man who began as a crofter was gradually able to equip himself with the gear and goods necessary to occupy a farm or was able to do this for his children. The ambitious crofter aimed at increasing his holding, and there are instances of some who became owners of farms either as a result of their own or their forebears' efforts, and others who though they did not achieve this, succeeded in expanding their acreage and increasing their stock by renting accommodation land as it was called. This was particularly true of some crofters who continued as such into the present century had to work harder as farming became more competitive in order to keep on and make a living on a family croft. The common grazing land on the hills which was the whole basis of crofting and farming until an Act of Tynwald dispossessed the bulk of the people of their rights in it,²³ was after 1860 no longer available, and other pasture had to be found in place of it. This often consisted of fields rented at a considerable distance from the home croft and involved much travel to and fro on foot, sometimes after a day's work at some other employment, but by means of it, production increased and while the old crofting methods were retained, a living could be made in changing circumstances. There were quite a few women who continued as crofters towards the end of last century and into the early years of this, either widows or single women whose parents had died and who though getting old themselves stayed on and worked the family croft for the rest of their days. Some were at last released from the hard work the croft imposed upon them by being able after 1920 to draw a small pension and retire. Like most Manx country-women of that time they were experienced in every kind of work on the land, and could hold their own when left to fend for themselves.

There has always been a very close link between farming and crofting, and fishing in the Isle of Man, and it is impossible to speak of crofting without mentioning the fishing which was its other side. Very many crofters followed the fishing to the detriment it is often said of their land and crops which as has been mentioned were left to the care of women for a long period of the year. The combination of the two occupations had been the age-old way of life in the Island, practised at one time by the quarterland farmers who in earlier days had to supply a boat and nets for the herring fishing.²⁴ The nineteenth century crofter inherited and carried on this old tradition, fishing for mackerel as well as for herring. The mode of life of the crofter-fisherman had once been traditional over the whole Island until the early nineteenth century when fishing became more competitive, and though the fishing and its associated industries at this period provided increased employment (over 3,000 people being directly or indirectly engaged in it or dependent on it when between 1830 and 1880 it grew into a major industry),²⁵ it became increasingly divorced from farming, and the boats were skippered and crewed by crofters. Increasingly other work such as mining particularly and quarrying to a lesser extent provided alternative employment: the farming-fishing connection which had lasted for many centuries was broken and new patterns of work and living took shape. Towards the end of last century, poor catches at the fishing grounds and the introduction of steam vessels combined with a lack of capital for investment in boats and new types of fishing gear brought about a gradual decline in the industry. Among the crofters only the older men remained on their crofts and carried on with the fishing, while younger men looked for other employment both within and outside the Island. Those crofters who were also miners who worked their crofts between shifts at the mines. They continued living in this way as long as they could find employment with the various mining concerns that in the last century sprang up in almost every parish in the island except in the extreme north. Many of these ventures were short-lived, but the large mines at Laxey and Foxdale which in 1880 employed between them nearly 1,000 men,²⁵continued working into the first and second decades of this century. In certain parts of the Island the houses and fields of their crofts can still be seen deserted and in ruins where once a thriving community lived and worked.

This picture of the Manx crofter is based on information relating mostly to the last and the early years of this century. To fill in the background it would be necessary to examine the history of crofting in detail and attempt the formidable task of tracing its development in each separate area. This of course cannot be done here, but the origins and growth of crofting may be broadly indicated. As regards the size of holdings of land it is obvious from the records we have that even just over a hundrd years ago when a survey was made land was held in much smaller units than it is today, was not consolidated into larger estates, and even in the case of the few who possessed larger estates, some of their property was scattered and consisted of small separate parcels of land, while the great majority of holdings were of small acreage. Crofts of five and ten acres were numerous, large holdings of two hundred acres and over were few, and most farms were of a medium size of fifty or sixty acres.²⁷ Though these figures are typical of the more isolated country parishes, the situation tended to be rather different near to the towns where some of the land around Douglas and Castletown had either been bought up, and in the case of Douglas resold for town development or was in the possession of English and Scottish landowners. In some cases it was farmed by them, or an estate consisting of three or four farms was leased to several tenants. In many parishes at this time a single farm which is today in single occupation or ownership would be farmed by three or four farmers each with up to twenty or thirty acres. Sometimes the division of land was more complicated than this. Another record shows that in the parish of Andreas a farm called the Dhowin was owned or occupied by fifteen people. One man held 57 acres, but nine others had holdings varying from 4 -16 acres, and in the case of five others who were working as either tailors or weavers there is no mention of land though they possibly held some — this record, a census return of 1851, rarely mentions, anything less than 3 or 4 acres.²⁸This district in Andreas was a typical crofting area and crofting community, the tradesmen living in its midst serving the immediate as well as the surrounding neighbourhood. The ordnance survey maps of 1869 show the small fields of this and of similar areas in other parts of the Island, and the survival of these old land systems is a sure indication of an absence of any progress towards a more advanced agriculture, since where this takes place, hedges are taken out and the fields are enlarged. There are other instances of similar crofting communities throughout the Island. Cregneash in the parish of Rushen is an example that comes to mind, and of particular interest is the treen of Fishgarth, now Fistard, which as its name suggests is a coastal treen, and in crofting days a fishing community lived there. Here too the old maps show the fields marked in long strips running from the coast inland. In some of the other crofting areas in the Island, Surby in Rushen, Glen Rushen in Patrick, Ronague in Arbory, the fields are shown as small irregular enclosures, the characteristic grouping of old Manx field systems.

Crofting was by no means a new or late development in the Island's agricultural system, and in order to explain its origins something must be said about the various land denominations in the Island. The chief land unit for farming was the quarterland, a farm averaging about 80 acres, and four of these constituted a treen which was a still larger division of land defined by natural boundaries. The quarterland represented the best arable and pasture land, the land which it was most advantageous to settle and cultivate and eventually to enclose as fields when enclosure began to take place. In the earliest Manorial records dating from the beginning of the sixteenth century, the treens were divided and rented in quarters to tenant farmers by the Lord of Man.²⁹Bordering on the relatively good land of the quarterlands was the waste or Commonland, much of it rough mountain land, but also some bog or curragh, and some stretches of undrained land by river banks and in valley bottoms. It was out of this kind of ground that land was taken in and reclaimed and in the process acquired the name of Intack. These enclosures were made in sufficient quantity to become a separate land category, so that three kinds of land are spoken of, Quarterland, Intack and Waste or Commonland. It was on the Intack land that the crofter was often though by no means invariably found. That he did live there is particularly true of the more mountainous districts of the Island where enclosures were made on the edge of the Commons and with immediate access to them and to the mountain grazing. Crofting on this kind of land was practised in Ronague in the Parish of Arbory, an area of Crofters holdings already mentioned, and in similarly situated upland areas in other parishes. Crofts on enclosed waste land on the slopes overlooking the river and the sea are characteristic of certain parts of Kirk Lonan and reading some of the old rent rolls for these crofts it is possible to see the land in process of enclosure and to visualize the lie of the land and its nature whilst it still lay open. In 1703 a certain James Quill of Kirk Lonan, in addition to the croft he held, paid rent also out of land described as 'the Lhargy' and a further rent in 'the Moaney'.³⁰These are respectively lands on the slope of the river bank and a higher area of turf ground. This property when enclosed became known and is known today as Croit ny Quill, now much built over, but once a sizeable farm sloping towards the Laxey river and extending upwards towards the quarterlands and other crofts of the east or seaward end of the treen of Grauff. In this area some of the croft and field names as well as those of the adjoining quarterlands are named from the Lhargy and the Moaney from which they were enclosed. The name of this croft — Croit ny Quill — is typical of many of these early enclosures — a surname prefixed by Croit, the Manx form of Croft. The English form Croft occurs in a number of quite early croft names. However the Manx-Gaelic names are more numerous, some dating from 1643 in the Manorial roll, but as the tenure of land was uncertain until after 1703, the demand for it became more marked in the early eighteenth century, and many croft names are found dating from that period. Some names of Intack date from the earliest Manorial records — Eary ny Gowin in Kirk Michael from 1515 ³¹ and Garremoar in Arbory an Intack which was occupied by crofters up to recent times, was probably enclosed sometime before 1511.³²

It must not be imagined that Intacks were always crofters' holdings, but even where they were not, they none-the-less were bound up with the history of crofting since they tended to interfere with the rights of access to turf grounds and mountain pasture and to water supply, and in theory no enclosure was permitted or licensed which did this. However extensive enclosures were made in the Commons which eventually became large estates, and others were added as Intacks to quarterlands. One enclosure or Intack : in the central mountainous district of the Island was a stretch of about 300 acres which after enclosure was sold for £3,000.³³ A large enclosure was made in the parish of Maughold by a certain John Llewellyn, a merchant of the town of Ramsey,³⁴ and in the correspondence between him and the Duke of Athol preceding the enclosure and dated 1767 he mentions a petition from the people of Maughold protesting against the enclosure of so much of the mountain land of their parish by a stranger not even living in the parish.³⁵ The proposed enclosure is described as 'a spacious tract of land' which if taken in 'would not leave an inch of Common Ease in the Parish for the use of the inhabitants. . . the benefit of the Commons being their chief support to uphold them in their several Estates and different Circumstances, enabling them to pay their Lord's Rent and Services'. Some of their estates they complained were 'barren ground and others among them had little or no estate and were unable to buy coal or fuel for fire or pay for the pasturage of their beasts'. They claimed that in the frequent dry seasons their lands were dried out and parched and the only way to keep their beasts alive was to take them to the Commonlands on the hills where they could find both 'green grass and water.'³⁶

The reaction of the people to the enclosure of the Commons and the incidents occurring at the time; crofters' sheep driven off the Commonland,³⁷ officials having to be protected from the indignant people,³⁸ the throwing down of enclosure walls,³⁹cannot be given in detail here, but must be mentioned, as the Enclosure Act of 1860 had a profound effect on the crofting community. The protest of the Kirk Maughold people was later withdrawn and John Llewellyn made his enclosure of the Maughold mountain lands. In his comments in the course of correspondence with the Duke of Athol or his Agent on the popular protest against his proposed enclosure, he took what seems always to have been the prevailing official attitude, and one which was echoed some years later by the Agricultural report previously referred to, deploring the people's rights in the Commonland which provided opportunities for dishonesty, encouraged sheep-stealing and caused neglect of their little lowland farms. He writes 'The poor might best thrive by honest labour and industry while at present they have a hankering after the Common. I would be the last person my Lord that would speak against the Interest and privileges of the Poor, for I fear God, but I see so much Evil and Realy upon the whole Poverty attending it and the benefit to my country that would arise by enclosing the Commons, and to them by pursuing honest Labour and Industry, that I humbly beg and hope that your Grace will not hearken to their Petition (which I beg leave to observe would give Encouragement to the people of every Parish to trouble Your Grace with the Like) and deprive me of the satisfaction of being your Grace's Mountain Tenant.'⁴⁰ Later correspondence shows a written statement signed by 'the principal petitioners' revoking the entire petition of the people of the parish and withdrawing completely all that was previously said against Llewellyn. Of those who continued to oppose his licence to enclose it was said that some had no land in the parish, and all offered no other argument than might be used against enclosure of the Commons anywhere else in the Island.⁴¹

The people's rights in the Commons consisted of rights of grazing, turf-cutting and lingpulling for fuel, and of quarrying for stone or slate. They paid a small sum annually for these privileges and for access to the Commonland, to the Lord's Forester. They were important rights, especially to the crofter who had little pasture, but they meant a great deal also to the larger farmer before the cultivation of crops which enabled him to maintain his stock throughout the winter. Cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry were at one time all turned out onto the high lands in the summer, and the lowland pasture was thus conserved and the growing crops safeguarded. It would probably be true to say that the crofter of the nineteenth century using the Commonland in this way, was perpetuating a very old method of farming at a time when it was becoming obsolete on the lowland farms where more crops were grown and more pasture was available. The mountain grazing was the whole basis of crofting and small farming and it made possible what was a distinctive feature and a very important item of the crofting economy, the keeping of sheep. The Island had native breeds of horses, cattle and sheep as well as other animals, but there is much to support the view that sheep were the chief asset in the old Manx community of crofters and hill farmers. Not only clothing, but some household goods and working tools were of sheep's wool or sheepskin, and statistics show a large exportation of both wool and sheepskins in the sixteenth century.⁴² Though the crofter's pig, fed and fattened and subsequently slaughtered and cured, provided most of the meat he had to eat through the year, it was mutton that was eaten at Christmas and at any other season that called for feast or celebration. Certain old Manx songs, some ancient laws and offices now repealed or obsolete as well as the lore we have of spinning and weaving provide strong evidence of the importance of sheep-rearing to the old Manx people. An observer of the early nineteenth century notes that 'the immediate and apparently larger . profits from liming, marling and then taking successive crops of grain, have seduced the farmer to abandon his forefather's sheep . . .'⁴³ Sheep however provided the crofter with many essentials for living, and in early wills of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, which give some idea of the goods of the small as well as of the larger landowner and householder, sheep are sometimes the only livestock mentioned, and are frequently left as legacies to children and grandchildren. An inventory of the goods of a fairly comfortably circumstanced crofter of the parish of Ballaugh who died in 1753 lists among his chief possessions — spinning wheels, a chest, earthen vessels and querns, a griddle, firetongs, pots, baking-board and sieve, and of livestock one cow, two geese, two lambs and three sheep'.⁴⁴

The availability of the common pasture enabled the crofter to make a more varied use of his few acres at home, where he could grow corn and potatoes and hay to feed his household and his stock in the winter. The cottager with little or no land, taking advantage of the mountain grazing had some degree of independence, and did not rely solely on his wage as a worker or on his earnings from the trade he was engaged in. In some cases it seems to have given him little more than independence. Some of the old wills are of persons who had very few worldly goods, and it is obvious from them that a crofter who was a tradesman, a weaver for instance, was considerably better off than one who was only a farmworker.

Former generations of Manx people regarded the right they had in the Common as a permanent and stable factor of their existence, and showed their dependence on the Commonland and their resourcefulness in the use they made of it in a current saying about the three best places to make a living. These were, near to the mountains, in the curraghlands, and by the sea, three situations which provided them freely with fuel — turf from the mountain and from the curragh, also with ling and gorse; with material for their houses, building stone, roofing turf and thatch, and with naturally grown fodder for their cattle, in the meadowlands of the curraghs as well as on the mountain pastures. The sea had the obvious advantage of allowing them to fish, and also provided driftwood for fuel and for house construction. The big farmers had all the good land and the smaller man was inevitably pushed to the outer edges. He could not pay large rents or prices and he knew that the best agricultural land was not for him, so he seems to have settled deliberately on land that was later to be classed as uneconomic, the marginal land of present day agriculture, and because of his mode of life he was able to turn these places to positive advantage.

In this examination of the way of life of the crofter some distinction has to be made between him and his neighbour the quarterland farmer. Increasingly there was a tendency as the crofting system declined for the farm to swallow up the croft, and this eventually happened, particularly in the lowlands. Though economically it is probable that the smaller farmer on the quarterland can have been little more than a crofter, for centuries they remained two distinct groups, the occupier of the farm the Quarterland owner or tenant, and of the croft the Intackholder or Cottager. The distinction in their status was not so much a social as a legal one, and each had a different set of obligations. In the fifteenth century a poor man was not likely to become a tenant of a quarterland farm unless he had some 'goods' with which to stock his farm. The old laws tell us that if such a man was enrolled as a tenant and had not the means to pay his rent to the Lord of the Isle, the Setting Quest, the body responsible to the Lord for his rents, were required to pay for him 'for putting him in the Rowles that hath no Goods' as the law expressed it.⁴⁵ The poor man could only hope therefore to occupy a plot of Intack land, perhaps settled on it by a landowner as a Cotler, but it is apparent that some held the land independently. The Intack holder who had been a Tenant Julean, a term which seems to bear the same meaning as 'Cotler', was allowed at least until a rent was fixed, to hold his land without paying rent. It was stated that 'no manner of Person was to hold Iinclosure of the Lord's Land unrented or conceal the same, except such tenants as have been anciently called Tenants in Layns, that is Cotlers or Cottingers that hold Inclosures or Crofts being betwixt or adjoining the farmlands or Quarterlands that pay rent to the Lord.'⁴⁶ A rent was put upon these holdings eventually when new Intacks made over a certain period came under review.

There was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as later in the period a chronic shortage of labour, and all the laws dealing with servants applied to the Cotler and Intack-holder. Even the small tenant occupying quarterland could be compelled to work for some-one paying a larger rent, and there were servant juries which could compel working people to employment.⁴⁷Some tried to escape from the conditions of a labouring life by taking up a trade, but here too the law restrained them. It deplored 'the binding of youth to trade for two or three years, then before they have learned it fully they set up for themselves and marry and so live meanly and poorly, turning Cotlers and Enclosurers on some Highway and are commonly given to pilfering and stealing and entertaining of Vagabonds'.⁴⁸ The result of this legislation was that a bond of £10 had to be paid, a five years' apprenticeship served, and special recommendations as to character had to be produced from a reputable source before they could either practise a trade or marry. Young people could not leave the Island without a permit — the remedy provided in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by emigration was at this early period denied to the people of the Island. If they became Cotlers and Intackholders they were beset by laws dealing with trespass and fodder supplies, and were indeed often the object and cause of such laws.⁴⁹In the sixteenth and again in the seventeenth centuries laws were made stressing the necessity for enclosing land and building a sufficient fence to restrain livestock and protect crops,⁵⁰ but until the eighteenth century land lay open and unfenced, and the trespass of livestock of all kinds by Cotlers and Intackholders was the subject of much legislation and they were accused of allowing cattle, horses, geese, swine and goats to stray upon the Highway. There was further legislation in the seventeenth century when a fodder jury was set up to control the number of stock kept by Cotlers and Intackholders and stock over and above the number they could maintain were taken and sold.⁵¹ The Cotler was responsible as was the Quarterland owner for the repair of the Highways, but being unable to send a man with a horse and 'carr', had to attend in person with such tools as he had.⁵² He had also to pay tithe in proportion to his holding and the stock he possessed, a heavy burden on the small resources of a croft or cottage holding.⁵³

The Act of Settlement of 1704 by which the Manx farmer was confirmed in the tenure of the land dealt rather summarily with the holder of Intack and the Cottager.⁵⁴ Briefly, the Cotler who had a holding taken out of the Highway since 1610, or adjoining a quarterland or other estate, if the Intack could be proved a nuisance within eighteen months of the passing of the Act of Settlement, was to be dispossessed of his land, and it was to become part of the property it adjoined, the rent on it to be paid to the Lord by the occupier of the Land to which it was annexed. The Intack-holder himself was to become a subtenant to the new tenant on agreed terms, or if no agreement was reached, he was to be evicted, though compensation was to be paid to him for any improvement he had made. Many crofts must have become part of larger estates in this way: as an instance, an entry in the Manorial roll of 1703 records an application on the part of Deemster Parr to annex an Intack adjoining his estate in Arbory, for which he 'craved the benefit of the late Act made on that behalf'.⁵⁵

As can be seen from the Statutes quoted, the Cotler and the Intackholder were classed together and stood in a similar relation to the law. Before the sixteenth century it is thought that most of the Cotlers were cultivating and living on lands which belonged to Rushen Abbey, and were employed by the monks. One authority distinguishes between the Cotlers on the Abbeylands and those on the Lord's estates — 'Those whose holdings were very small were called Cotters. They were mainly settled on the Abbeylands and most of their time was employed in cultivating the Abbey estates, while the Cotters who were on the Lord's lands appear to have supplied all the labour required by the tenants, since it is probable that there was no landless labouring class till after the monks disappeared.'⁵⁶ It is doubtful whether any continuous occupation by crofters or cotlers can be traced on the Abbeylands, for though crofting settlements can be found on former Abbeylands, the crofting tradition is by no means confined to them, and as has been indicated already there are many other areas which have supported crofting communities up to recent times.

There must be some reservation in the acceptance of the terms crofter and crofting in application to some of the districts mentioned, Cregneash for instance, and also Fistard and the Dhowin. The so-called crofting community found in these places may be of recent date and therefore represent no continuous crofting tradition. These are the names in fact of treens or quarterlands which in our earliest records were rented by quarterland tenants. The Intack-holding crofter is more truly representative of the crofting tradition. His small isolated hill-farm or croft in the curraghs or by the roadside is in many cases the longer-established and indeed the original type of crofter's holding. The quarterland farm which has become crofting land has done so by some accident of circumstance. In this way the village of Cregneash has probably developed. Some quarterlands have been farmed continuously by descendants of the original tenants whose names appeared first in the rent rolls in the early sixteenth century, but others have changed hands. Of Cregneash it is recorded that in 1682 a greater part of the treen fell into the Lord's hands through poverty⁵⁷ and it is therefore likely that it was through subsequent changes in occupation and ownership that the Cregneash village community settled on the lands there as crofters, though some families there date from before the last century. This qualification does not alter the fact that the old land systems, once a feature of quarterland farming, became a characteristic feature of the crofting system. The people occupying the crofts continued to use the old field systems without alteration or enlargement, but where these are found on quarterland farms with traceable records as continuous quarterland holdings, they obviously did not originate with the crofter.

It is possible that the development of local industries had helped in the settling of the non-traditional crofting lands and in perpetuating and stabilising the crofting way of life. Fishing and perhaps quarrying in Cregneash for instance, and mining in Lonan Foxdale and Ronague, and in many other parts of the Island for briefer, periods. These alternative sources of employment helped to stabilise and maintain the crofters on their land when the old fishing-farming pattern of living which had survived for so long was breaking up.

The Dhowin has been specified as a typical crofting area. However the history of each treen or quarterland must be examined in order to determine the date of the crofting tradition found there in the nineteenth century or later. The Dhowin is part of the treen of Smeale Beg in the parish of Andreas, and a brief outline of the changes in occupation in this treen will show how it became a crofting community. In 1515 the treen was held by eight persons paying rent out of the four quarterlands of which the treen was composed, the Dhowin being one. In 1594 of the original names only two hold land, and two new names Lace and Crenilt appear, five persons holding the treen at this time. By 1672 the number has increased to twenty-three, and by 1821 sixty people pay small rents: a Lace is still there, the largest occupier and also a Crenilt, names which first appeared about 1594.⁵⁸ It is probable that the farming of this treen was carried on on a crofting basis from early in the seventeenth century. One reason for the fragmentation of estates was the practice of mortgaging them 'into the hands of several occupants' and a law relating to mortgages in 1687 states that at this time the forced sale of lands so mortgaged resulted 'in many good estates being piecemealed and embezzled.'⁵⁹ Daughters' marriage portions consisting of one or two fields, had the same effect of breaking up a farm, and it is possible that some groups of small separate crofts may be occupied by people with a common ancestry, though this has not been definitely established. The connection of the Lace family with the treen of Smeale Beg is interesting, as there is much information about the family, father and sons as skilled woollen weavers. It is not known how far the trade goes back through the generations of this family, but it is believed that a weaving factory was established in Andreas in the eighteenth century, and a wind-driven tuck mill was still in existence up to 1920 on Johneois, a quarterland of the treen of Smeale Beg. It is likely therefore that the weaving industry was an important factor in this district in holding the crofting community together and making possible a prolongation of its way of living. The weaver was an essential member of every small country community and there was a close interdependence between him and the sheepkeeping crofter.

The death blow to crofting is always believed to have been the Disafforesting Act of 1860 which deprived the people of their rights of Common. Manx people however have always been tenacious of the old ways and they did not all leave their crofts immediately, especially the older people, and statistics show that the crofting population of miners and fishermen in the south and south-west of the Island particularly showed no major decline until after 1891.⁶⁰

In the richer lowlands of the north of the Island, the enlargement of farms and the expansion of agriculture resulted in the crofts being incorporated in the larger farms, and here the crofter's disappearance was more rapid, though a few carried on through the period between the wars in the first half of this century. There was no agricultural expansion on the hill farms, rather a movement away from them, and these crofting lands after the decline of fishing and of mining were left uncultivated. The crofting population is believed to have been at its height in the years between 1885 and 1890, when the extent of the Island's arable and improved land amounted to 71% of its total acreage. ⁶¹ By 1900 the percentage had decreased to 65%, and by 1957 to 53 %, the reduction since the peak year of 1885 calculated to be about 25,000 acres, most of it formerly cultivated high Intack land. It is difficult to give any exact estimate of how much of this land was occupied by crofters. Census returns of 1851 and 1861 give some idea of crofting acreages for each parish. An approximate figure for Andreas is 623 acres, for Arbory 500, and crofters, holdings in the curragh lands of Lezayre amounted to about 136 acres beside further acreage on the hills in this parish.⁶² Taking into consideration fourteen other parishes, the crofting land for the whole of the Island must have totalled some thousands of acres.

Footnotes

1. Gill J. F., The Statutes of the Isle of Man (London, 1883). Vol. 1. p. 102.

2. Athol Papers, 28-11.

3. Feltham, J. A Tour Through the Isle of Man. 1797-1798 (1800), p. 185. Townley, R., A Journal Kept in the Isle of Man. Vol. 1 (Whitehaven, 1792), p. 35.

4. Manx Museum Folk Life Survey.

5. Townley, Op. Cit., p. 39.

6. Quayle, T., A General View of the Agriculture of the Isle of Man (London, 1812), p. 122.

7, Gill. The Statutes of the Isle of Man (London, 1883), Vol. I., p. 120.

8, Ibid. p. 122

9, Farm Account Book. Manx Museum. MS.: M.D.18.

10. Manx Museum Folk Life Survey.

11, Quayle. Op. Cit., p. 124.

12. Ibid. p. 153.

13. Curwen, J. C., 'Manx Report', in The Rules and Proceedings of the Workington Agricultural Society. (Workington, 1807).

14. Woods, G., An Account of the Past and Present State of the Isle of Man (London, 1811), p. 80

15. Athol Papers 36/38(2)-18.

16. Athol Papers 33B(2)-4. 36/38(2)-18.

17, Quayle. Op. Cit., p. 123.

18. Ibid. p. 123.

19, Manx Museum Folk Life Survey.

20, Quayle. Op .Cit.

21. Ibid. p. 109.

22, Manx Museum Folk Life Survey.

23. Gill., Op. Cit., Vol. III, p. 19.

24, Ibid. Vol. 1., p. 141.

25, Birch., J. W., The Isle of Man, A study in Economic Geography (Cambridge, 1964), p. 138.

26. Ibid. p. 155.

27. Wood., J. Atlas and Gazetteer of the Isle of Man. (1867).

28. Census Enumeration Book: Parish of Andreas, Isle of Man (1851).

29. Talbot, T., Manorial Roll of the Isle of Man. Translated from the Latin by T. Talbot. (Oxford, 1924).

30. Lord's Composition Book (1703).

31. Kneen, J. J., Manx Place Names. (Douglas, 1927), p. 440.

32. Talbot, T. Manorial Roll of the Isle of Man, 1511, 1515. (Oxford, 1924), p. 8.

33. Athol Papers. Bk. 55, p. 57.

34. Athol Papers, 147-7.

35. Athol Papers 36/38(2)-21.

36. A.P. 33B(3)-38.

37. Moore, A. W., A History of the Isle of Man (London, 1900)., Vol. II, p. 892.

38. Ibid.

39. Quayle, J. R., 'The King's Forest'. in Proceedings of the I.O.M. Nat. Hist. & Anat. Soc., Vol. IV (1937-1940), p. 373.

40. Athol Papers. 36/38(2)-21.

41, A.P. 33/B(2)-19.

42. Cubbon, W. 'Maritime Commerce at the End of the Sixteenth Century', in Proceedings of the I.O.M. Nat. Hist. & Anat. Soc. Vol. IV (1940-42), p. 620.

43. Quayle, T., Op. Cit., p. 116.

44. Inventory. Manx Museum. MS.

45, Gill, J. F., Op. Cit., Vol. I., p. 5.

46, Ibid. p. 173.

47. Ibid. p. 122.

48. Ibid. p. 128.

49. Ibid. pp. 128, 195.

50. Ibid. pp. 56, 150.

51. Ibid. p. 138.

52. Ibid. pp. 193, 194.

53. Ibid. pp. 42, 43.

54. Gill. Statutes of the Isle of Man, Vol. I, p. 78.

55. Lord's Composition Book (1703).

56. Moore, Op. Cit., Vol. II, p. 874.

57. Lord's Composition Book (1703).

58. Libri Assedationis, (1515, 1594, 1672, 1821).

59. Gill, Op. Cit., Vol. I, p. 142.

60. Birch, Op Cit., p. 25.

61. Ibid, p. 80.

62. Census Enumeration Books—Isle of Man. (1851 and 1861).