From the late 1870s, with the beginning of large-scale importation of grain from the American prairies and meat in refrigerated ships from New Zealand and Argentina, prices fell and farming entered a depression from which it did not recover until the Second World War. Grain production became concentrated on the drier soils of the eastern and southern counties and increased demand for meat and dairy produce stimulated interest in grassland management.
Planned steadings and buildings in some areas reflected the increased importance of dairying, particularly of liquid milk – the steadings of the Tollemache and Westminster estates in south Cheshire being one such example. The inter-war period witnessed the development of more intense forms of housing for pigs and poultry, and the replacement, as a result of hygiene regulations, of earlier forms of housing for dairy cattle with concrete floors and stalls, and metal roofs and fittings. County Councils entered the scene as a builder of new farmsteads, built in mass-produced materials but in traditional form, in response to the Government’s encouragement of smallholdings of up to 50 acres (20 hectares). Alongside the construction of new farm buildings, traditional farm buildings were adapted to new needs, and the use of corrugated iron (mostly for repair) has guaranteed the survival and reuse of earlier buildings, particularly the increasingly redundant threshing barn.
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