Dairy Cattle Housing in Lancashire, Seventeenth to Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract

The modernisation and adaptation of dairy cattle housing over 400 years is explored, focusing on the historic county of Lancashire. A distinctive regional building type was continuously upgraded in response to structural changes in dairying and to new business opportunities resulting from industrialisation and improved transport links. Higher standards of animal husbandry and further upgrading were required from the mid-nineteenth century to conform to a succession of national public health regulations. Medical Officers of Health were aware of potential infection risks, both from cattle and from workers in the dairy trade, which they were determined to minimise. Traditional buildings were modified to conform to legislation by providing more spacious housing, with improved cleanliness, light and ventilation. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the adapted buildings were finally outmoded by further pressures, both local and national, bringing about the end of the vernacular tradition.