The below passage on agricultural life in the 1800's was prepared by Rev Herbert Brown who was Rector of St Lawrence from 1901 and went on to write the excellent histories of St Lawrence and Bradwell on Sea in the 1920's Many of the older inhabitants remember going to work at the age of six, some have lived to accomplish four score years of work; retiring from field work at eighty six years of age, they might still be seen busy chopping wood for the house. The wage to start was four pence a day, even that was a rise upon what their parents had had when children were employed at 3 pence a day. The child labourer was for rook scaring, or leading the plough team, or sorting potatoes; one woman claims to have done as much on four pence a day with the teams as now a man with a wage of thirty shillings a week will do. One old body who rests from her labours, having a large family, would rise before daybreak to pick winkles on the beach, and then put in  a full day's labour; on the Saturday night she would tramp to Rochford to see her daughter and return on the Sunday. Wages were nine shillings a week for an able bodied man, and the man who was known to drink would take something of that before the family was thought of;  perhaps as late as Thursday five or six shillings would be parted with for the family needs. St Lawrence had no inn, but neighbouring inns were visited, these mostly had bowling alleys, where after a quarrel much blood was shed, and in the bars at such times beer would be flung about until the floor was flooded to the depth of the soles of the men's boots. A vendetta sometimes rages between villages and regularly at the end of each week a free fight would take place on the borders. Compared with those days the social conditions of today are infinitely better; in conduct, in dress, in food, in rational enjoyment, in knowledge of the outside world, the villages have awakened to new life.
	At harvest the produce of fifteen hundred acres of arable land, all to be reaped with the sickle, was only gathered with outside help; the harvesters who were called " Yankees" and often would lift up their hands and exclaim at the abundance of crops. Besides the cereals there were fields of Holn, which could only be reaped when slightly damp with dew, the powerful scent when dry quite overcoming the men, so that they staggered about as though drunken. Tow o' clock in the morning saw the reapers busy hasting before the sun was powerful enough to dry the stalks. Caraways were grown: one farmer is said to have cultivated them to escape paying tithe; the reaping of this crop proved very trying, as the scent causes strong sneezing. As the years of the century passed, wages increased to 11/-, 12/-. 15/-. the stockmen and horsemen lived rent free and a ton of coals was added each year. Where a dairy was kept the cowmen received a certain quantity of milk daily for the needs of their families.