Crop Failures on the Winchester Manors, 1232-1349

• Published in: Transactions - Institute of British Geographers (1965) 1984-01, Vol.9 (4), p.401-418
• Main Author: Dury, G. H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Barley; Climate change; Climate models; Crop harvesting; Crops; Grains; Oats; Sowing; Weather; Wheat
• ISSN: 0020-2754; 1475-5661
• DOI: 10.2307/621777

The crop returns for the Winchester manors, 1211-1349, serve to identify the years, among those for which records survive, when one, two, or all three of the grains wheat, barley, and oats cropped badly. Cutoffs for crop failure can be identified, in part with the aid of magnitude-frequency analysis. Adjustment of yields to fixed rates of sowing eliminates the sowing rate variable. Conversion of yields on a given manor to percentages of the long-term average can be assumed largely to eliminate the variable of differential productivity among manors. The percentage values supply data for isopleth mapping. The worst harvests all appear to have been weather-related, either directly or through the intermediary of plant diseases; barley was especially liable to suffer from summer drought, but heavy and prolonged rain was the dominant proximate cause of crop failure generally. Part at least of the context was provided by progressive soil exhaustion. For some of the years of missing crop records, something can be done with wheat prices, contemporary comments on seasonal weather, and with considerations of probability. For 1310 and 1339, the changing synoptic pattern of the harvest season can be reconstructed. For 1331, an outbreak of tornadoes appears a possibility.