Until the late 18th century, the agriculture supplied three
traditional staple commodities; grain, sheep and root crops in rotation,
serving local needs. Better communications, first through the turnpike, then
after 1841, on the Botley Fareham and Gosport railway, brought changes to the
market. It led the farmers to expand their vision, increasingly supplying fresh
fruit and vegetables to the growing towns of Fareham, Portsmouth and the Navy.
Mudie remarked in 1839 that the climate is favourable for the growth of
vegetables and later in the century the parish was said, with some
exaggeration, to supply most of the cabbages to the Royal Navy.
Strawberries as a commercial crop are said to have been introduced into the
district by the Carpenter-Gamier family of Rookesbury Park near Wickham, who in
the 1800’s encouraged the tenants on their smallholdings at Hundred Acres to
undertake their cultivation.
It has been suggested that the very first strawberry plants to be commercially
cultivated had been stolen from the lands of one or other of the great houses
of’ Fareham and its environs. This seems entirely feasible. Seasonal labour
would have been brought in to harvest the produce from the large acreages of
Rookesbury Park, Sarisbury Park, or Cams Hall. The entire estate of Cams Hall,
for example, extended over 300 acres. We know that it was solely in the grounds
of these large houses in the 18th and early 19th centuries that soft fruits
were grown for the delectation of the upper classes. The traditional mildness
of the south Hampshire climate helped to produce the occasional out-of-season
treat. For example, on 7 December, 1818, The
Hampshire Telegraph reported: “On the first of this month was gathered from
the garden of H.P. Delmé. Cams Hall, a large plate of strawberries in high
perfection a circumstance never before remembered by the venerable gardener
who has resided on the premises more than half a century.”
Whatever the method of introduction, by the early Victorian period the
strawberry industry was well established and Titchfield Common had been
transformed.The southerly aspect of the Common, with the Isle of Wight giving
protection from the elements, invariably produced a bumper harvest. It was a
highly labour-intensive process and provided work for both young and old. Such
was the productivity of these growing fields that it was estimated that between
two and four acres of strawberries was sufficient to support a family
throughout thc year.
The commercial success of the soft-fruit business generally received a further
boost by the break-up of many of the large estates in Fareham and the
surrounding villages. Servicemen returning from the First World War were able
to buy small plots of land through subsidies made available by the government
and the County Council.Certainly by the time the enclosure of Titchfield Common
was complete, the market for strawberries was sufficiently well developed to
make it an attractive crop for the new smallholder tenants there to grow.
Strawberries need little capital investment, produce income from a crop in the
first year of cultivation and can be easily propagated by “runners”. The
problems of disease which became evident in the 1930’s and 1940’s were absent
on the fresh soils of the common in the 1860’s. Given buoyant markets, a
smallholding of two or three acres, worked by members of a single family and
with low overheads, could produce a good annual income.
In the heyday of the industry it was easy to obtain credit from local
tradesmen: “pay you in the picking” was the jocular phrase. A family with four,
five or six acres could become relatively wealthy, able in a few years to build
one of the characteristic red-brick villas of the period by the side of the
corrugated iron shed which had until then stored their tools and baskets. Cheap
seasonal labour for the “bedding-down” (with straw) and the picking was
provided by the gypsy families who normally arrived in the parish in their
horse-drawn caravans in the early summer (traditionally on Wickham Fair Day,
May 21st), and left again to find odd jobs near the seaside towns in July and
August.
The thin, stony soils of much of the old common useless for the ploughland
agriculture of earlier times, was exactly suited to the shallow rooted
strawberry plants. Where they lay over gravel, the soils were well-drained and
warmed quickly in spring sunshine, and the warm prevailing wind coming over the
waters of the Solent and the Hamble reduced the risk of frosts in the critical
weeks of flowering. Little heavy equipment was needed: ploughs, harrows and
horse-hoes could when necessary be hired from those farmers who still practised
traditional mixed farming. Many strawberry growers had a single pony for
carting the crop daily to the market or the railway station, but others relied
on neighbours with larger two-horse carts who acted as carriers for the rest.In
the 1860’s and 1870’s horse-drawn carts had to leave Titchfield and Locks Heath
at 2.30 a.m. to reach the markets in Portsmouth and Southampton; others went to
the nearest railway stations at Botley and Fareham.
A jam factory was built on
Locks Heath Road in the 1880’s, to turn inferior end-of-season fruit
into jam. The three cottages next door became the public house which was
named the "Joseph Paxton" after one of the varieties of strawberry popular at
that time.
It was the construction of the new railway and the opening of the station at
Swanwick in 1888 which transformed the local industry and produced something
like a gold-rush or an oil-strike. Special strawberry trains left Swanwick
every evening during the season, to reach particularly the Covent Garden market
early next morning. But Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and other cities were
also customers for the local friut.
Roads to Swanwick Station were often blocked with long queues of horsedrawn
carts waiting to load the trains. Up to 100,000 baskets of strawberries
could be loaded in a single day; over 3,000 tons of strawberries passed through
Swanwick in the 1913 season.
In the late 19th century steam-driven traction engines were introduced to draw
heavier loads to railway stations or direct to markets. With the introduction
of the petrol engine, speeds increased and the Swanwick ritual was superceded
by special fitted motor vans and lorries.
From the beginning Hampshire had been in competition with Kent for the London
strawberry market. Much depended on the vagaries of the weather; cold winds
over Kent might give Hampshire a critical fortnight’s advantage in getting the
highly-priced early strawberries on to the market, but a warm Kent spring might
lead to a sudden fall in prices just as the Hampshire season was getting into
its stride.
By the First World War the local industry was also meeting
competition from imported French strawberries and, as communications improved.
Belgian and Dutch, even Mediterranean, strawberries added to the competition.
The use of glass cloches and other forms of frost protection, though widely
used by local growers, also enabled growers further north, for example in the Vale
of Evesham, to become more competitive.
The strawberry bubble began to burst in the inter-war period. The economic
depression of those years, the competition, and the development of crop
diseases resulted in a steady reduction in acreage. After the Second World War,
higher wages for agricultural workers, and then greatly increased competition
from strawberries flown in from all parts of the world, accelerated the
process. The slaphappy smallholder of the earlier era, living on tick and
enjoying his outing to Goodwood Racecourse after the picking, became an
anachronism.
Some expertise, knowledge of plant varieties, artificial
fertilisers, insecticides and the like became essential. But the Hampshire
strawberry survived, and is still sought. Their reputation for
quality and appearance, find them a special place at Buckingham Palace garden
parties and in London’s best hotels. The main competition in the 1980’s comes not
from Kent, Israel or California; but the bricks, mortar and tarmac. They now
spread remorselessly over a Common which once produced 3,000 sheep and in
another era 3,000 tons of fruit.