Farm Buildings as a Source for Researching and Writing Local Histories of the Twentieth Century: Buildings for Smallholdings on the Lincolnshire Fens and Marshlands

Abstract

Farm buildings, and the oral testimony of those who worked in and around them, are an important source of evidence for twentieth-century history. This evidence is rapidly disappearing as the older generation of farmers passes on, requirements of our farming industry change and old farm buildings are converted, demolished or simply left to decay. If the information contained in the buildings of our countryside is to be preserved and understood it is vital that we seize every opportunity to observe and record them and to talk to those who occupied them. Focussing on the buildings provided for smallholders on the Lincolnshire fens and marshlands, this article will consider the ideologies and politics of early twentieth-century Britain exhibited in the provision of such buildings and the agricultural and social changes they narrate.