The information provided by the 1881 census shows that the balance of tenancies of large and small farms had remained basically the same for at least 200 years but Lord Feversham had made changes to the Scawton land he had purchased by making Antofts a Home Farm where he employed John Armitage as farm bailiff and he also drastically reduced the size of Scawton Croft from 130 acres to 25.
The census shows that the population of Scawton had fallen from 149 to 126 in the space of thirty years and the fact that the number of adults over the age of 18 had fallen from 89 to 68 is explained by the reduction in the number of farm labourers from 24 to 14 and the number of servants had fallen from 9 to 2. These changes are thought to have been caused by the poor state of farming affecting the whole village economy, a state of affairs that was probably reflected in a letter written in 1878 by the Reverend John Oxlee who had been taking services at Scawton church for the absentee Rector the Reverend Thomas Worsley, to whom he wrote ‘the parish needs all the help it can get as the people complain of hard times’.
Farming had gone through difficult times at the beginning of the 19th century when the end of the war with France caused a return to lower prices that left many farmers unable to meet their increased costs. In 1816 John Tuke reported to the Board of Agriculture that some farmers had no stock or corn to sell to allow them to pay their rents that were due on Lady Day and as all Lord Feversham’s tenants pleaded for rent reductions and Lord Fauconberg seems to have recognised the problems faced by his Old Byland tenants by reducing their rents there is no reason to doubt that Scawton farmers faced similar difficulties. Nevertheless, the 1851 census shows that they were still able to employ more labourers and servants than was the case thirty years later.
The end of the 19th century was not a good time for farmers and all the people who depended upon them for employment and trade and although the 1901 population census marks the beginning of a new century it also reflects changes that had been taking place during the last quarter of the 19th. It is reproduced on the following pages together with a table that provides statistical comparisons between the years 1851 and 1901 showing trends that were to continue and accelerate during the 20th century.
