mobility of agricultural labourers

[Wulfsige]

If my research from the early 1600s to the early 1700s is correct, my forebears moved, being agriculatural labourers, as follows from Wiltshire to Somerset:
Horningsham
3 miles
Maiden Bradley
6½ miles
Brewham
3½ miles
Upton Noble
4½ miles
Milton Clevedon
3½ miles
Pitcombe
My question is: how and why did ag labs move around so much? How did they find work and a home in a place some miles away, even when turnpike roads were for the rich and everyone else travelled by foot or (if lucky) by cart? It has puzzled me for a long time.

[jimbo50]

I believe it was the purpose of hiring fairs, where workers were hired. Travel by coach was pretty rough anyway. Better to walk in good weather. Pepys diary records a mile an hour, and getting lost because of indefinite roadways. The cattle/sheep Drovers offered security of a sort, many movers joined with them to walk, especially for long distances. Drovers operated, for instance, from Scotland/Wales to London and everywhere in between for centuries before the railways opened up.
The distances you mention are fairly small. I used to walk to school, as a 7 year old, further than that in the 50's, and back again.

[BumbleB]

I certainly agree about the hiring fairs and their usage, and that those mileages would almost have been regarded as "next door".  I'm not sure that this would have applied to ag. labs. but I was told a long time ago that well-to-do people would recruit their domestic staff from far away so that they could not just walk off home if things got tough. 

[Andy J2022]

Those distances were relatively trivial in those days. And at those distances I would have expected that word of mouth would have accounted for finding most of the work, which was pretty seasonal and therefore predictable, depending on the ag lab's skills (arable or livestock related). You didn't need to pay to travel on foot on a turnpike. 

[Wulfsige]

Thank you. So now I need to learn about hiring fairs for ag labs in Somerset and Wiltshire, from say 1700 to 1840, for I imagine they were not equally distributed round the country. How far would a man need to go to get to a hiring fair in search of work, especially in those two counties? And how often were they held? Unless I've missed it, it seems to me that these books don't mention tham at all: J H  Bettey Rural Life in Wessex 1500-1900; J.L and B. HammondThe Village Labourer; Richard Jefferies, The Toilers of the Field

[Andy J2022]

Hiring fairs were generally annual and held in the Autumn. They were far more concerned with domestic staff and skilled labourers. So a stockman or an experienced ploughman might get work that way, but I wouldn't have expected more general ag labs to have found the fairs of much use. The fairs were held in market or county towns.  Agricultural market days were, and still are, the ideal occasion for getting the gossip and job news.

[BumbleB]

From Mr Wiki 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiring_and_mop_fairs

[AlanBoyd]

There is a Wikipedia page on hiring fairs – probably you have looked at it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiring_and_mop_fairs?wprov=sfti1

One of the references in that article is to a book – Kussmaul, Ann (1981) Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (includes a list of hiring fairs which existed in that period). I don't see second-hand copies for sale on ebay or at abebooks, but it is available new on Amazon. Even better, the book is available to read online at archive.org. It is a "borrowing" item so you need to register (for free) to read it:

https://tinyurl.com/368zfskj

This is an academic publication that goes into a lot of detail. To give you a flavour of it, here is a table that relates to your question, from page 58 of the book:

[Wulfsige]

Aha! This looks promising! Thank you.