The settlement of
Cistercians waste places, with their practical survival imperative
for self-sufficiency, initiated an active process of improved
agriculture and the conversion of moorland, woodland and scrub to
better grassland. In this the order was an important part of
the European movement that resulted in large-scale land clearance
for grazing. These lands mostly had acid, siliceous soils and at
high altitudes the moors vegetated by heather, cotton-sedge and
purple moor grass, often had peaty soils, or indeed in the wettest
places a blanket of peat often 2-6 metres deep. These heaths and
moors were a useful source of grazing and of fuel from peat, but
were often eyed as potential agricultural land by groups of people
who were willing to invest personal and animal energy in
transforming them. The heaths and the lower edge of the moorland
might be potentially cultivable by squatters, who were dispossessed
by individuals seeking to create an commercial agricultural
holding.
The boundary between
enclosed and cultivated land around the Cistercian abbeys moved
upward as 'intakes' of land were made; conversely at times of lower
prices or harsher climate, the intakes were abandoned and the
vegetation slowly reverted to the wild as the stone walls fell and
crumbled away.
Paring, using a
breast spade, and burning was a commonly employed practice in
monastic reclamations. Medieval farmers reclaiming upland
moors in England had to pare off and burn 8-10 cm of acid peat, as
well as clear away stones and construct field boundaries. Burning
the peat, followed by ploughing, produced a soil with better
drainage, higher pH and lower organic matter levels which was
friable and fertile enough for cultivation. The lowland heaths (as
found in Germany, the Netherlands and England, for instance) once
enclosed were easier to maintain as grasslands or arable, so areas
once dominated by them have seen the piecemeal disintegration of
large areas of heathland into smaller relict pieces: the gloomy air
of the Wessex heaths so strongly pervasive of Thomas Hardy's novels
has been dissipated by the conversion of many of them to improved
pasture. In the Suffolk sandlings until the early twentieth century
the heaths were an integral part of a rural economy of sheep and
rabbit warrening. This has now disintegrated, leaving odd patches
of scrubby heath for military training, nature conservation, and
outdoor recreation.
