EAST YORKSHIRE LANDED ESTATES IN TH E NINETEENTH CENTURY by J. T. WARD EAST YORKSHIRE !'OCAI. IIISTORY SOCIETY 1967 ( Reprinted 1977) E.}'. LOCAL HISTORY SERIES: No. 23 Series Editor: K. J. Allison Coyer Illustration: Bur/on Constable Hall in the 19th century. Reproduced from all engraving in the Local History Collection in Hull Central Library by kind permission of the Director of Leisure Services, Humberside County Council. PRICE £1 Further copies of this pamphlet tredueea I',/ce to members, 50p) and of others in this series may be obtained from the Secretary, East Yorkshire Local History Society, Beverlev LIbrary, Champney Road, Beverley, North Humberside. 900349. 23. 9. EAST YORKSHIRE LANDED ESTATES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY by J. T. WARD Professor of Economic History University of Strathclyde © Ease Yorkshire Local History Society 1967 (Reprinted 1977) ACKNO~'LEDGMENTS Several people have helped in the preparation of this paper. Owners offamily and estate papers made their collections available and answered my queries. Professor S. G. E. Lythe ofthe University ofStrathclyde and Mr. K. A. MacMahon of the University of Hull (who first suggested the paper to me) read my drafts and made invaluable comments based on their great local knowledge. Mr. Norman Higson, the East Riding County Archivist, gave me gener­ ous help during visits to the County Record Office. Mrs. B. Elder deciphered and typed my script and purged it from several errors. I am deeply grateful to these and other friends for their kindly help. The imperfections which remain are my own responsibility. In tracing family histories I have largely relied on the following issues ofthe Burkes' reference books (referred to only by date in the notes) ; A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland ... (3 vols., 1836), ed. John Burke. A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary [History] of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (1845,1956,1963 edns.). A Genealogical und Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain [a'ld Ireland], 1898 edn. (2 vols., ed. Sir Bernard Burke, A. P. Burke); 1925 edn.; 1937 edn. (ed. H. Pirie-Gordon); 1939 edn.; 1952 edn. (ed. L. G. Pine); 1965 edn. (Vol. I, ed. Peter Townend). Throughout the period during which this paper was produced I have received much generous help from Mr. E. J. Beattie, Group Captain Robinson and the Committee of the East Yorkshire Local History Society to whom I am greatly indebted. J. T. WARD. 3 IHUMBERSIDE LIBRARIES I EAST YORKSHIRE LANDED ESTATES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY r In recent years historians have become increasingly interested in the development, organisation and management of the great English landed estates. Yet even preliminary surveys of particular areas are scarce. The East Riding affords particular attractions for such an examination. In 1873 the "New Domesday" Return reported that 706,683 acres in the Riding (excluding 4,049 acres of commons and wastes) were owned by 19,576 individuals and instit­ utions. Of the estimated gross rental of £2,032,195, the Return showed that £752,985 was received by 15,012 owners of less than one acre, whose total property amounted to only 5,398 acres. The remaining 701,285 acres, with an annual value of £1,279,209, belonged to 4,564 owners. Such proprietors possessed anything from minute freeholds to vast estates. East Yorkshire was in fact proportionately more "aristocratic" than the other Ridings. At the top ofits landowning hierarchytwelve families, each owning over ten thousand acres, had a total acreageof213,606 acres with an estimated rental of£267,445; and the three largest owners received £101,781 from 87,519 acres. Many details in the Return were subsequently challenged and amended, but the general picture is clear: East Yorkshire was dominated by a fairly small number of landed families. When examining any nineteenth-century rural society, the historian must take cognizance of the often dominant role of the squirearchy. It is not yet possible, however, to prepare a 'definitive' survey ofEast Yorkshire landowners and their estates. Undoubtedly there are manuscripts which have not yet been made available to the researcher; and, equally certainly, many personal experiences and memories remain unrecorded and unknown. The following account is based on those documents, publications and recollections which have been available to the writer. If it helps to provoke further investigation, particularly of the inevitably declining number of first-hand reports, it will have served a useful purpose. 5 I East Yorkshire's nineteenth-century landowners were remark­ ably varied. Ancient dynasties like the Constables, Grtmsrons, St. Quintins, vavasours, Saltmarahes and Hildyards had been joined over the centuries by newly-enriched mercantile families seeking to mark business success by social progress. Commercial profits had brought such names as Sykes, Broadley, Denison and W'att into the ranks of the Landed Interest; and railway promotion briefly added the name of Hudson. Gentility might depend upon ancient wealth, but arririscc squires were rapidly integrated with the old order. While "new" men (and all but the greatest ofthe "old" men) could not aspire to the rare heights of the Lord Lieutenancy, "trade" connections provided no bar to such stages of social acceptance as appointments as J,P., D.L. and Yeomanrv or Volunteer officer. Regional accents were only slowly overtaken'by the standard upper­ class diction of the tsth-cenrury public school; uncouth old "Tatters" Sykes, 4th baronet, owner of 34,000 acres and the most popular sportsman of his day, was hidden away by his genteel wife and Harrovian son during mid-century London visits. 1 A country gentleman might have good taste in architecture, paintings and books; he was generally expected to have good taste in horses, dogs, livestock, crops and port; it was long before he was assumed to possess any metropolitan sophistication, play baccarat and holiday abroad. "Squire Western" survived well into the age of railways and cotton mills. Squirearchicalsociety produced many men of'Indepenqence and even eccentricity. Colourful sportsmen like Osunldeston and Sykes mingled with distinguished military and naval men like the Hothams, 'recusants' like the Constables, politicians like the Bcthells and Woods and such recipients of Royal favour as the Denisons. Ancient names, varying from small squires, ruined by Cavalier loyalties, Roman Catholic beliefs or various forms of conspicuous consump­ tion, to such grandees as the Dukes of Devonshire and Leeds, might disappear from the lists ofcounty proprietors. But the new squires quickly followed the established conventions. Most landed families shared a common interest in agricultural improvement: old and new squire alike improved their property by enclosure; the Sykes family's creation ofan empire on the Wolds was a dramatic saga of agricult­ ural revolution; and the Legards, Stricklands, St. Quintins, vavasoure and Hildyards were keen improvers." Agricultural interests led many owners to support transport improvements, originally as promoters of l Sth-century turnpikes; such families as the Grimstcns, Hildyards, Constables and Bethells aided the schemes of town corporations.3 But, as elsewhere, land· Christopher Sykes, Four Studies in Loyalry (1947), 18. Tattoo's father had, however, been worried about his '<Yorkshire lone" as early as 1778. 2 See Olga Wilkinson, The Agricultural Revolution ill the East Riding "f York­ shire (East Yorkshire Local History Society, 1956), pUJsim. See K. A. MacMahon, Roads and Turnpike Trusts in Eauem Yorkshire (East Yorkshire Local History Society, 1964). 6 owners reacted in different ways to the railways. The "Railway King", George Hudson, was interested in the county both as a rail­ road imperialist and as a hopeful developer ofsuch coastal towns as Whitby, Bridlington and Scarborough. In 1844 he was planning a York-Bridlington line, and as the best route would pass near Boynton he approached Sir George Strickland, courteously promis­ ing not to persevere if Strickland were hostile. "I am about to build a house at Ocron", he frankly wrote, "and am naturally anxious to have the railway as near to me as possible. At the same time I will be no party to annoy my neighbour". But Strickland insisted that . the valley near Boynton was very narrow and that a railway would be totally destructive of that place which has been the residence ofmy ancestors and family for five hundred years. I should, therefore, feel it to be my duty to my family and to myself to make every exertion in my power, and to spend all the money I could afford in opposition to a plan so injurious to myself and, as I believe, uncalled for by the general public. He thought that his neighbour, Alexander Bosville would also be hostile. "I consider that you are as much interested as I am in preventing the nuisance of a Railroad entering our valley," he told Bosville. " ... I made use of your name, because I had heard, from Miss Creykethat you were quite opposed to a Railwayapproach­ ing Thorpe."" Strickland later virtually killed a proposed Hornsea­ Malton line. But Hudson had persevered. Partly to defeat the Manchester & Leeds Railway's plan to enter the preserve of his York & North Midland network, in 1845 he bought Londesborough Park and 12,000 acres for £470,000 from the 6th Duke of Devon­ shire. Several landowners-notably J. D. Dent-later became men ofimportance in the railway world, and many more, including Lord Galway, Colonel George Cholmley ofHowsham, Ralph Creyke, Sir Edward Vavasour and Strickland himself, were investors." The rural world offarming, hunting and magisterial duties did not fill the lives ofall squires. A handsome house, a landscaped park and a respectable library (despite Sir Tatton Sykes' example in 1832 of preferring hounds to books) were general interests. Some mixing with "genteel" society and "learned" societies at York, Beverley and Hull became as normal as subscribing to local writers' pre-public­ ation patronage lists.