WAR-TIME LIMING IN ESSEX.
243
400 per cent. Essex shared in this increase and indeed deliveries
in the county were well above the average for the whole country.
However, the great area of marginal land to the south-east
did not participate to any appreciable degree in this movement.
It was still not an economic proposition to cultivate the heavy
clays, for prices had not increased at that time. The immediate
result in Essex was, therefore, increased liming and chalking
on the fertile loams and lighter clays of the Tendring Hundred
and the north-western Boulder Clay areas.
Shortly after the outbreak of war, however, the country
embarked upon an extensive ploughing-up campaign. Under
this scheme the permanent pasture lands were ploughed-up for
corn or food crops of some kind, and liming was necessary in
the majority of instances in order to ensure satisfactory cropping.
Over most of the Essex countryside the upward cycle in farming
was starting and once more the heavy London Clay land felt
the plough, only this time the swinging motion of the three
horses was displaced to an increasing degree by the steady action
of the tractor.
Immediately the heavy clays were tackled the demand for
lime and chalk from this district of acid land increased
tremendously. In order to meet this demand more chalk pits
and quarries were developed and old ones re-opened.
Fortunately the north-west and south of Essex have ample
supplies of chalk at or near the surface of the land, well distributed
to supply the county.
Something must be said about the types of lime and chalk
most in demand amongst the Essex farmers. Essex in common
with most of the eastern and south-eastern counties of England
is advantageously placed with regard to chalk and marl beds
and early in the history of farming took full advantage of its
favourable situation. There is no doubt that chalk and marl
were used by the La Tene III peoples in pre-Roman times—
and indeed Tacitus comments on their use by their ancestors
in the continental settlements. Lime burning, i.e. the calcining
of calcium carbonate to produce quicklime or caustic lime—
is a much later innovation—probably belonging to mediaeval
times. Lime burning became much more popular in the lime-
stone districts beyond the areas of cretaceous limestone or chalk ;
it will be obvious that, whereas chalk can be utilised as dug without
further treatment, blocks of limestone, other than chalk, would
clearly have such a slow rate of assimilation by the soil as to
be useless.
There is another reason why the burning of chalk for lime
never reached the state of popularity achieved in the other