Evesham Custom

Through this compensation payment and by giving security of tenure, the Custom also gave tenants confidence to invest in crops, like asparagus, that took several years to reach maturity.

[3] From the larger landowner's perspective, the Custom removed from the landlord the trouble and expense of making improvements themselves and the need to negotiate the tenancies of many small garden plots.

[5] Although definite records of the Evesham Custom first appear in the early-mid 19th century, some commentators in the past have assumed that the rights originated from "some earlier epoch".

[6] The ruralist writer H. J. Massingham, who was familiar with the operation of the Custom, expressed a belief that the tenant rights of Evesham were a direct descendant of those of the "small masters" who from the early mediaeval period practised cultivation in open fields owned by the Abbey.

[7] Massingham commented that after the 1874 agricultural depression, the area's large landlords split their farms up and let smaller parcels of land to labourers who were protected by the survival of ancient customary rights and by the local influence of Joseph Arch.

In 1995, at the reading of the Agricultural Tenancies Bill, the local MP Michael Spicer observed that there were still around 420 tenants potentially affected, and noted that they could expect to realise "ingoing" payments of £200-£300 an acre (at that time, 50% of the land's freehold value).