William Cobbett’s Rural Rides (1821-6) criss-crossed the southern counties – Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire. Appropriately they began at the highest point in south east England: Leith Hill, from where a rolling panorama unfolds in every direction.
At the time, England was in flux. The Napoleonic Wars were over, but returning soldiers found the countryside no longer had jobs for them.
Cobbett was convinced this was endemic of a nation tearing its own heart out – that heart being agriculture.
In this journey, Nick tries to find out if Cobbett was right or wrong. Were the advances in agriculture destroying 'old England', or was Cobbett just a traditionalist railing against progess? Is anything left of Cobbett’s countryside – and why did his journey nearly land him in prison?
Who was William Cobbett?
Born in Surrey in 1763, Cobbett spent nearly 20 years overseas with the army, in newly-independent America and revolutionary France.
Returning in 1800, he became convinced the agricultural England he’d loved was being destroyed. His campaigning grew, until, aged nearly 60, he began his rural rides to prove his case.
These confirmed Cobbett as one of the Industrial Revolution’s most committed agitators. A radical, adventurer and sharp-tongued political journalist, he wrote 30 million words during his career and gave the depressed countryside a voice.
More than anything, Cobbett understood the countryside thrives when tended by local people. And that – in a lesson still relevant today – it has a delicate balance we interfere with at our peril.
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