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HEXTON, HERTS.

 

During the 1860s and 70s coprolites were being raised from the Greensand bed between the clay and chalk marl around Shillington. They were records of them similarly being raised in the small parish of Hexton which only had a population of 241 in 1871. The census return for that year included no evidence of anyone describing themselves as being involved in the diggings. This could be that the workings were on fields where the farmer engaged his or her agricultural labourers to do the work over the winter months and they didn’t describe the work as coprolite or fossil diggings. It could also have been described general labour. In nearby Shillington there were 154 described as involed and in 1876 a trade directory stated there were 1,600 involved!

 

As the work spread over towards Higham Gobion during the 1870s it is possible many local men and boys gained employment. According to a parish survey, (1936, p52) the contractors took on a few “of the casual type labourers” but it suggested it was “never as important as a source of labour as at Shillington”. As the wages in the diggings were considerably higher than agricultural labourers it had an inflationary influence on local farmers as many men would have been tempted to work these coprolite pits. There are reports of farm wages having to be increased to ensure harvest work was done. In cases where the farmer organised the diggings instead of an outside coprolite contractor the men worked over the winter months and went back to farm work for the spring and harvest. Whether this was the case in Hexton is uncertain as there are no records of leases or other agreements.

 

The First Edition geological map records a “coprolite working” about a mile to the north of the village in the fields at the foot of the slope. (1” O.S. Geol. ....) Early Ordnance Survey maps show, just northeast of Hexton Common, a long north-south trench at the southwest corner of Apsleybury Wood and another cut just to the southwest of Apsleybury Farm moat. These could well have been water filled trenches left when the diggings had all but ceased in the latter half of the 1870s. (O.S.  6” Beds. 22SE 1881)

 

Heavy rains for four successive years had ruined harvests and disrupted the diggings. The Introduction of Free Trade had allowed huge imports of cheap meat and grain from the United states, Canada and south America. Prices for local foods dropped. Farmers appealed for lower rents. Many went into arrears. Some went bankrupt. Labourers\were laid off and there was little demand for fertilisers. No point growing what you couldn’t sell.

 

By the early 1880s the weather improved and farming got back to normal. demand for the coprolites resumed and the industry restarted. In 1881 the population had dropped to 200 but there was still a 49 year old local man, William Oliver, employed as a “fossil digger.” There was little alternative employment available apart from farming and many left the village to find better paid work in the towns.

 

There is little evidence today of the work. Where formal agreements were written up, the land agents specified that the topsoil had to be replaced and levelled fit for farming. In some areas patches of white clayey subsoil are apparant where the slurry washed from the fossils was not covered properly. Subsequent ploughing has left it on the surface. The local historian, Ivan O‘Dell, reported seeing a coprolite mill and slurry pan at the northern end of Hexton Common. (O‘Dell, I., ‘A Vanished Industry’, Beds. Mag. 1951; see his original ms.,p.18, Luton Museum)