Hi All, Last evening I went to a Lecture on Ag Labs. It was said that between 1840-around 1900 there was a great north/south divide in the UK. The north being the more wealthy, the pay quoted for an Ag Lab in Surrey was 8/6d whilst in Yorks and Lancashire it was quoted as 13/6d. The industry in these areas paid well and so people moved away from the land to work in the mills or coal mines. Cornwall also paid more highly because of the copper and tin mining and the china clay industry. The pay might have been better but I would have expected living conditions to have been worse with all the pollution from the industry. As a footnote he also said that the children of Ag Labs would have got very little milk, butter or cheese because the milk was sold for more money when it was sent to the cities. Gleaning was usually allowed though it could be regarded as theft and a good gleaner could collect enough grain to feed the family for a few months. Katherine