STOTFOLD, BEDS

STOTFOLD, BEDS.

The coprolite diggings started in this area of Southeast Bedfordshire in the late-1850s when the drainage work on the Hinxworth estate revealed the coprolite bed. This was a seam of fossils valued not just for the light they shed on animal life in Jurassic and Cretaceous times but as a source of phosphate, much in demand by the nation’s manure manufacturers.

It was worked by a company set up by the surveyor, John Bailey Denton, who was involved in the Enclosures of surrounding parishes. The subsequent drainage work to lay the mass-produced clay tiles exposed the coprolite bed at the base of the Cambridgeshire Greensand which lay at the junction of the chalk marl and the gault clay. This seam strecthed in a wide southwest - northeast belt and was worked throughout the 1860s - 1880s in the parishes of Astwick, Arlesey, Campton, Shefford, and Henlow and across into Stondon, Meppershall, Shillington, Higham Gobion and further west into Buckinghamshire.

Hundreds of men and boys were engaged by the farmers to raise the fossils from their fields, or, where the landowner wanted a large extent worked, by a coprolite contractor who paid up to £200 an acre to work them. The major contractor in the area was John Bennet Lawes, of Rothamsted in Hertfordshire. In 1842 he had patented the technique of mixing the ground coprolites with sulphuric acid to produce superphosphate, the most effective and popular fertiliser in those days. His London-based chemical manure company made an enormous fortune out of the business. Selling at up to £7.00 a ton, superphosphate was much in demand by agriculturalists across Europe and the colonies. The other manure companies had to pay him £0.25 for every ton they manufactured.

A number of Lawes’ agreements with landowners to raise the fossils have come to light but none specifically for land in Stotfold. The first evidence of the industry here was in the 1871 census. 28 year old Charles Willmott, described himself as “Beerhouse Keeper and Foreman over Coprolite Works.” Whether the diggings were in Stotfold or in fields nearby is uncertain. Drinking was an acceptable custom out in the fields. Farmers often used to provide beer at harvest time and coprolite contractors did the same. There are records from other parishes where beer was freely available on site with the cost deducted from their wages on pay night. There was also a gang of 28 men and boys engaged as fossil diggers. Their average age was 26. There were two 11 year olds, Joseph Triplow and Albert Albone and the eldest was 40 year old William Day. Eight lived on Baldock Road, one on Dark Lane, four on the Green, three on the Common, three on Biggleswade Road and ten on Hen End. From the table below it can be seen that most of the men were in their early twenties.

Age structure of Stotfold’s 1871 coprolite diggers.

11 - 14 4

15 - 19 0

20 - 25 12

26 - 30 4

Over 30 9

(Beds.R.O. 1871 census)

All but seven of them were actually born in the parish but none were recorded as lodgers. As their pay was often double that of ordinary farm labourers it had an inflationary effect on the local economy. Farmers were forced to raise wages to get the harvests in. The higher wages allowed men greater spending power which would have stimulated local trade, as well as the beerhouses.

No coprolite agreements between landowners and coprolite contractors have come to light but in 1873, on the death of William Wand, his executors arranged the sale of

“9a.2r.7p. of Highly Fertile Accommodation land, (part containing coprolites) with butcher’s shop and four tenements.”

(Cambridge University Library, Royston Crow,October 1873,p.733)

There was every likelihood that the purchaser arranged to have them worked as there was a report of workings in the parish in 1877. (Kelly’s Directory 1877) Who was involved is not known. A local farmer might well have got their agricultural labourers to work them or an outside contractor might have brought in a gang of men or taken on locals. The last four years of the 1870s were dominated by heavy rain and poor harvests. Low yields were one thing but the introduction of Free Trade caused a severe Agricultural Depression. Massive imports of cheap grain and meat from the United States, Canada and South America flooded the British market. Farmers appealed for lower rents, many went into arrears and many went bankrupt. There was an associated drop in demand for superphosphate. Prices fell by over 50% but farmers didn’t want to row what they couldn’t sell.

The rains also curtailed the coprolite diggings causing increased pumping costs and amking the work in the slippery clay very dangerous. But it was economic factors that caused the bottom to fall out of the coprolite market. This lucrative business came to a temporary close in the late 1870s as Mr. Lawes and other coastal manure companies started making large purchases of foreign rock phoshate from Charleston, on the east coast of the United States. This forced coprolite prices down from about £2.90 a ton in 1877 to £1.40 in 1879 - more than a 100% fall. This was uneconomic for contractors with deep pits, high pumping and labour costs and loans for plant and machinery to repay.

As a result, pits were left unlevelled; they were allowed to fill up with water; the topsoil wasn’t replaced and the “... countryside was littered with abandoned workings and rusting machinery no-one could afford even to remove. Inns were closed near the workings.” (Porter, Enid ‘The Coprolite Diggers,’ Cambs.,Hunts & Peterborough Life, 1971,pp.42-3)

During the economic upturn of the 1880s some pits were reopened and new pits opened. These were often related to the inland manure companies who were having to pay high transport costs to bring in the cheaper foreign phosphates. It was also the case that many of their directors were local farmers who still had coprolites on their land that, even at lower prices, were still worth exploiting.

Whether they restarted in Stotfold during the 1880s has not been evidenced. Although 23 year old Offspring Dear was described as a “fossil digger” in the 1881 census there was no evidence he worked in the parish. There were three engine drivers who could have been employed at the works but local farmers had started using steam engines on agricultural work by this time. (Beds. R.O. 1881 census)

In the early 1890s there were records of the deposit being reworked. It seemed that the nearest manure manufacturers, the Farmers Manure Company of Royston, still found it worthwhile to make local purchases. In 1894 there was a mention in the local trade directory that Mr. Frederick Smith of Kneesworth Street, Royston was operating pits in the parish. (Kelly’s Directory 1894) He had been working pits in Abington Pigotts, Bassingbourn and Shepreth and supplied the Farmers Manure Company but for how long he kept the Stotfold pit in operation is uncertain. Most workings had become uneconomic by the turn of the century when the government’s Quarry Act imposed expensive restrictions on pits over 25 feet deep. The other, more important factor, was that overseas phosphate supplies provided almost all the manure manufacturers’ needs.