A GIS-based approach to reconstructing mid - 20th century agricultural land use around Lewes, East Sussex

The main objective of this project has been to reconstruct agricultural land use around Lewes, East Sussex between 1931 and 1959. The key aims were to contribute to the debate around theories of productivism and to demonstrate the power of GIS as a tool for historical reconstruction. The data for 1931 included the field sheets and one inch maps from the First Land Utilisation Survey, and significant differences were identified between these two sources. The data for the early 1940s included the maps and forms from the National Farm Survey along with a Luftwaffe aerial photograph. Using these, some farms were reconstructed successfully, although there were issues with the consistency of the data. The remaining datasets were aerial photographs from 1945/7 and 1959 along with the parish summaries of the 4th June agricultural census data. In terms of the productivism debate, a fuller definition of pre-productivism was proposed as a result of examining the 1931 data. The shift towards productivism in this part of East Sussex was considered by looking at the snapshots of land use provided by the different datasets. A clear growth in arable land, an increase in farm size and intensification in terms of livestock farming was identified. Finally the use of GIS allowed the integration of disparate datasets and the mapping of different types of land use in a way that has not previously been attempted for this area.