Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [493]
It was not destined to. For unknown to Samuel and unknown to Obadiah, Margaret Shockley had already made other plans.
There were, in any case, several other events taking place in the days after Michaelmas which took Samuel’s mind off the quarrel with Obadiah.
The first concerned the water meadows. For they had to be repaired.
Samuel Shockley loved his water meadows. He understood their complex workings. For they were not only the glory of the Shockley farm but also brought to its final perfection the system of corn and sheep farming that had been the mainstay of the Sarum area for more than two thousand years.
The principle of growing corn was simple – one sowed fields, and fertilised them by folding the sheep upon them to manure them. The more sheep, the more corn could be grown, and for many centuries the only limiting factor had been the amount of feeding for the sheep on the Downland. If only more grazing could be found!
It was there all the time, potentially, in the rich valley bottoms, where for centuries there had been only bog or half-drained meadows. The trouble was, no one, at least since Roman times, had known how to drain them.
“But now we have the floated meadows,” Samuel would say proudly.
It was a magnificent system.
At the top of the meadows, water was drawn off the river Avon into a channel. This was the main carriage that ran like a raised spine down the centre; off this flowed the carriers – smaller channels that ran along the tops of the meadows’ big furrows and over the sides of which, called the panes, the carefully regulated water supply spilled before being collected in drains that carried the excess water away. At its widest point, the Shockley water meadows were over two hundred yards across; the main carriage was half a mile long, and the whole system was regulated by an elaborate series of hatches – little wooden sluice gates raised and lowered with iron ratchets. That was the main carriage system. But there were dozens of little carriers, each of which could be individually controlled by stops of turf inserted or removed by the controller of the meadows.
For this was a new and most important figure on the farm, who watched over the operation of the floated meadows as carefully as a shepherd over his flock: indeed, he was second only to the shepherd in the hierarchy of the farm. This was the drowner – a position proudly occupied on the Shockley farm by Jacob Godfrey’s second son William.
“You see,” William the drowner used to explain to Samuel, “all through the winter and early spring, by controlling each raised channel, I can keep the whole surface of the meadows covered with a thin layer of water, and the water is always moving through the system so it drops its rich mud on to the earth and enriches it. It keeps the earth warm too,” he explained, “like a blanket, so that all the time, underneath the surface, the richest grass is growing. Then when the sheep have taken the best grass from the ridges, we let the water run off and bring them down here – the best grazing in Sarum.” It was indeed – and all over the area others like Lord Pembroke in his meadows in Harnham, were building similar systems.
Above all, Samuel loved to come and watch the meadows when they were flooded; for then, as William Godfrey would murmur lovingly:
“See how the water moves over the meadows, never still. You can feel the grasses growing underneath.”
It had been that year, in late summer, that William the drowner announced that extensive repair work on the channels was needed.
The meadows at that time of year were high with hay. Margaret had stomped around them thoughtfully.
“We could extend them too,” she pointed out.
But where were the hands to do it? The Shockley farm had not enough labour.
It was just before Michaelmas when she and Samuel had been visiting the city that Margaret had suddenly clapped her hands with delight.
“I’ll have some of those Dutchmen out of the cloisters,” she said. “Holland is all