Small Farms in a Sussex Weald Parish 1800–60

The Sussex Weald is an area where many small farms survived into the nineteenth century, and their fate in Chiddingly parish between 1800 and i860 is explored. They thrived up to 1815; between 1816 and 1842, nearly half were lost, many of the remainder changed from owner- occupancy to tenancy, and a few additional ones appeared on newly-enclosed land; after 1842, changes were few. The timing points to the post-Napoleonic agricultural depression as the fundamental cause of change, mediated by a range of personal and holding characteristics that resulted in varying ability to withstand economic pressure. Changes were greater during this depression, than during those of the early eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries, because the small farmer's cash outgoings, especially in paying his poor rates, frequently exceeded his income.