Welsh Journals

THE WELSH CATTLE DROVERS. By Richard J. Colyer. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1976. Pp. 155, ix plates. £ 5.00 It is impossible to investigate the agricultural history of any county in southern England without being very quickly made aware of the import- ance of the annual influx of cattle from Wales; and for Wales itself the export of live cattle was a vitally important source of revenue. But, in spite of its importance, it is difficult to obtain any precise details of the trade or of the men who conducted it, for the drovers left few written records either of themselves or of their business activities. This book is, therefore, to be warmly welcomed as helping to fill the gap, although it concentrates mainly upon the cattle trade during the nineteenth century when sources are much more copious, and is, quite properly, concerned more with the effect of the drovers' activities upon Wales than upon England. Notwithstanding his apparently comprehensive title, Dr. Colyer does not claim to provide a complete history of droving between Wales and England, and devotes comparatively brief space to the evolution and significance of the trade before the eighteenth century. The early chapters give a detailed account of Welsh farming and cattle raising, particularly during the nineteenth century, and of the circumstances which led to live cattle being the major export from Wales to England. The lengthy discussion of these topics, while undoubtedly important and relevant to the trade in live cattle, inevitably takes us some way from the drovers themselves, and does not always make for easy reading. But on his main theme, the droving and drovers of the nineteenth century, Dr. Colyer has produced an extremely interesting work, which describes the important part played by the drovers both in the economy of Wales and also in the social and cultural life of the country, for besides cattle and sheep the drovers also transmitted money, news and letters as well as religious and other ideas, and brought to remote parts of Wales some glimpse of the wider world. The sources used include surviving account books of drovers, court records, diaries and letters, and, perhaps most interestingly of all, personal interviews with persons who had family connections with or memories of the drovers and the cattle trade. The economics of the business and the various ways in which it was financed, the costs of droving and the mani- fold practical problems of conducting live cattle over such long distances are discussed in detail. Many of the drovers possessed considerable social and financial standing within their communities, and dealt in very large numbers of cattle which they purchased at markets and fairs over a wide area; and Dr. Colyer makes it clear that many were men whose abilities ranged far beyond the art of persuading large herds of reluctant cattle to travel great distances. He also provides an excellent account of the way in which the droves of as many as three or four hundred cattle were assembled, and how they were marked and shod before beginning the long journey to England, a journey which had to be conducted with great care to ensure that the cattle arrived at a suitable market at the right time and in the best possible condition. The routes which the drovers followed from central and south-west Wales to the Welsh border and thence on to the southern and eastern counties of England, and the sites of the assembly points, shoe- ing stations and of the inns which provided overnight accommodation have been identified through a combination of painstaking fieldwork, local