The settlement of Cistercians waste places,
with their practical survival imperative for
self-sufficiency, initiated an active process of improved agriculture and the conversion of
moorland, woodland and scrub to better grassland. In this the order was an important
part of the European movement that resulted in large-scale land clearance for grazing.
These lands mostly had acid, siliceous soils and at high altitudes the moors vegetated
by heather, cotton-sedge and purple moor grass, often had peaty soils, or indeed in the
wettest places a blanket of peat often 2-6 metres deep. These heaths and moors were a
useful source of grazing and of fuel from peat, but were often eyed as potential
agricultural land by groups of people who were willing to invest personal and animal
energy in transforming them. The heaths and the lower edge of the moorland might be
potentially cultivable by squatters, who were dispossessed by individuals seeking to
create an commercial agricultural holding.
The boundary between enclosed and cultivated
land around the Cistercian abbeys
moved upward as 'intakes' of land were made; conversely at times of lower prices or
harsher climate, the intakes were abandoned and the vegetation slowly reverted to the
wild as the stone walls fell and crumbled away.
Paring, using a breast spade, and burning
was a commonly employed practice in
monastic reclamations. Medieval farmers reclaiming upland moors in England had to
pare off and burn 8-10 cm of acid peat, as well as clear away stones and construct field
boundaries. Burning the peat, followed by ploughing, produced a soil with better
drainage, higher pH and lower organic matter levels which was friable and fertile enough
for cultivation. The lowland heaths (as found in Germany, the Netherlands and England,
for instance) once enclosed were easier to maintain as grasslands or arable, so areas
once dominated by them have seen the piecemeal disintegration of large areas of
heathland into smaller relict pieces: the gloomy air of the Wessex heaths so strongly
pervasive of Thomas Hardy's novels has been dissipated by the conversion of many of
them to improved pasture. In the Suffolk sandlings until the early twentieth century the
heaths were an integral part of a rural economy of sheep and rabbit warrening. This has
now disintegrated, leaving odd patches of scrubby heath for military training, nature
conservation, and outdoor recreation.
