That latest article on the Black Death is very interesting Maggie; so that and bubonic plague are the same strain - how very interesting that the incubation periods have changed so dramatically.
I've been reading up about how the Black Death affected life in Lancashire. Apparently, one-half of the population of the county was wiped out in the outbreaks of 1348 and 1351. Before this time, there had been quite a rapid expansion in arable farming, with pastures being ploughed up to grow crops, woodlands cleared, and even rough uplands being ploughed up to produce crops.
Following the Black Death, however, there was insufficient manpower for the labour-intensive industry of arable farming and consequently there was a reversion to livestock farming once again. It was soon found that there was a ready market for wool in both Britain and the continent and therefore it was not long before the county had developed a thriving wool trade. Following on from this, the presence of so many rivers and other watercourses meant that the county was ideally placed to branch out into textile manufacturing on a larger scale than hitherto. Consequently the cloth-making industry of Lancashire developed, as a result in part of the ready supply of wool following the re-focusing of farming after the Black Death.
The fact that in the wake of the Black Death, Lancashire was predominantly involved in livestock farming, other than in the fertile valleys, meant that the raised strips of the earlier period were left unploughed; and consequently we have the legacy of that era as these raised strips and field systems are in many places still apparent today.
