North West Geography
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ISSN 1476-1580 North West Geography Volume 13, Number 2, 2013 North West Geography, Volume 13, 2013 14 John Wood’s town plans and the evolving urban hierarchy of Cumbria Brian Robson School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester. [email protected] John Wood, the 19th-century cartographer, produced 1833 date cover towns in or near Wales – Chester, Oswestry, plans of seven towns in what now is Cumbria1. They Holywell and Wrexham – he may in 1833 have travelled to comprise Carlisle, Cockermouth, Kendal, Penrith, Ulverston, Wales from his home in Edinburgh, but stopped off to survey Whitehaven and Wigton. These large detailed plans are both Kendal (a much more accessible location than the towns of an interesting insight into Wood’s work as surveyor and west Cumbria), and then on to survey Chester en route to cartographer as well as important sources of information Holywell and Wrexham in north Wales and then to Oswestry on the towns themselves. in Shropshire. Penrith could either have been surveyed in Wood was trained as a surveyor in North Yorkshire Wood’s 1832 season, or – more likely – as part of his 1833 but subsequently married and lived in Edinburgh. He trip from Scotland to North Wales. So it seems probable that, produced detailed surveyed plans of some 150 towns across leaving aside Carlisle, 4 of the other Cumbrian towns were Scotland, Wales and England (Robson, 2014a). He typically surveyed in 18323 and 2 were probably surveyed in 1833. covered regional clusters of towns in a single season of field His Cumbrian plans illustrate rather effectively work between spring and early autumn – probably late the pattern of Wood’s movements during his surveying March to September/October. He then normally returned seasons. In addition to his permanent home in Edinburgh home for the winter months to have his drafts engraved and he appears to have rented a succession of houses or other published in Edinburgh, a city which at that date had an accommodation as medium-term bases for his various forays impressive array of engravers, lithographers and publishers. south of the Scottish border and also to have stayed in short- Each of Wood’s seven Cumbrian plans record the engraver’s term lodgings in some of the towns that he surveyed. This name and indeed all of them were Edinburgh-based (Carlisle is well exemplified by the Cumbrian plans. For Carlisle and by Robert Walker; Penrith by William Forrester and William Whitehaven, for example, he simply gave his Edinburgh Nichol; and Cockermouth, Kendal, Ulverston, Whitehaven, address, but for Cockermouth and Wigton he specified and Wigton by William Murphy, who was responsible for ‘Croft’, and for both Kendal and Ulverston he specified engraving a large proportion of all of Wood’s UK plans)2. ‘Northallerton’. Both of these two English addresses, With the exception of Carlisle (Figure 1), his Cumbrian each in North Yorkshire, appear to have been examples towns were surveyed between 1832 and 1833. Carlisle was of his medium-term bases. Croft-on-Tees lies just south of done a decade earlier, in 1821, at a time when Wood was Darlington and it is possible that it was the Croft coaching working almost exclusively on producing plans of Scottish inn that he used as one of his bases4. In addition he also used towns, most of which were completed between 1818 and shorter-term accommodation in some of the towns that he 1826 (covering no fewer than 52 towns of his eventual surveyed. For example, in Carlisle Wood advertised in the Scottish total of 57). However, during this period he also Carlisle Patriot in September 1820 ‘to solicit the attention of hopped just south of the Scottish border to survey Durham the nobility and gentry and the public to his ground plan and Berwick in the east, and Carlisle in the west. Three of of Carlisle now making’, and during his survey he stayed at the other Cumbrian plans are each dated 1832. Whitehaven Cooper’s Lodgings at Botchergate which was the address has no date, but was almost certainly done along with the at which he noted that potential employers could place other West Cumbrian towns in his 1832 surveying season. commissions for him to undertake estate plans or for orders Penrith has no date and Kendal is dated 1833, which suggests to be placed for his map. By September 1821, having left the that it was done in the following surveying season. What city, he advertised that his ‘plan of Carlisle was to be seen at seems most probable is that since Wood’s other plans with an the shop of B Scott and at other booksellers’. North West Geography, Volume 13, 2013 1 Likewise, for Wigton, there is evidence of his short- be held in private collections or in the offices of law firms. term accommodation in the town itself. The local Wigton Penrith, for example, is only known from a single copy in historian, Carrick, noted: the Carlisle branch of the Cumbria Archive & Local Studies ‘… in 1832 a surveyor, John Wood, of Croft, York, stayed in Centre; Whitehaven is accessible only in reproduced form Wigton and made a map giving the names of the proprietors from a copy owned by the local bookseller Michael Moon; of land from part of the Print Works, or Stampery, to Highmoor. He also delineated on his map in intense and Ulverston is known only as a photocopy held in the black, 23 inns, etc, numbering these and naming them in a Barrow branch of the Cumbria Archives5. Somewhat more reference, numbered 1 to 29, but leaving number 11 blank. copies of the other four towns do survive (as the Annexe Murphy, of Edinburgh was the Lithographer. Wood stayed in Wigton at the King’s Head, and, curiously enough, he shows) but even for them known copies are in single figures. omitted the house he boarded at altogether!’ (Carrick, The happenstance of the survival of one of Wood’s 1949, p.282). rare Wigton plans was usefully recorded by Carrick, who His mapping of towns in a very wide set of regions recounted the story of the origin of the lone copy that he across the UK cannot have been a trivial venture since was able to discover. It had been rescued when the solicitor’s most of it was done at a time – as with Cumbria – before office in which it had been kept was closed down: the emergence of an effective railway network in the areas ‘What is, I am sure, one of the only copies in existence, that he surveyed. Travel to and within any of the regions belongs to Mr Daniel Easton. This copy was probably cannot have been easy since it relied on coaches that were bought by Joseph Studholme, solicitor. Later Mr James McKeever had it in his office, and it was still hanging there slow and infrequent. In Cumbria for example: on the wall when that office … was closed … Mr Easton was ‘It was not until the year 1841 that the railway was extended then a young clerk in Mr Gibson’s office, and he has told to Wigton, and previous to this the coach “Royal Swan” ran me how, when the place was empty and ready for being daily between Carlisle and Whitehaven; a carriage ran on locked up, he went back and took the map down from its Tuesdays between Cockermouth and Carlisle; and 4 carriers nail in the back office, where it had hung for years, and plied their trade between Wigton, Carlisle, Cockermouth, took it home.’ (Carrick, 1949, pp.282-3) Keswick, Penrith and Whitehaven’ (Anon, 1894, p.48). Carrick expressed his delight at this since access to A contemporary local Cumbrian directory gives an the plan enabled him, in his chapter on ‘Inns of Wigton’, indication of the times involved by drawing a sharp contrast to identify the 23 inns shown and named on Wood’s plan between the time of overland travel by coach as against sea and to trace subsequent changes to the town’s inns (Carrick, journeys by the packet steamers that were available from 1949). Whitehaven: for example, the journey to Liverpool took 2 days by coach as against overnight by steam navigation; and Dedications journeys to Dumfries and other nearby towns on the Scottish One significant aspect of the Cumbrian plans is that, coast took one-and-a-half to two days by coach as against 3 unusually, no fewer than five of the seven include to 5 hours by sea (Parson & White, 1829, p.275). Wood must dedications in their titles: Cockermouth and Wigton to necessarily have relied largely or wholly on overland travel the Earl of Egremont; Penrith to the Duke of Devonshire; both to move from town to town and to make his annual Ulverston to Colonel T. R. G. Braddyll; and Whitehaven return visits to Edinburgh. Given this, mapping not merely to Viscount Lowther. This is a far higher percentage of one but a number of towns within a single year’s surveying dedications than for his plans in other regions of the season has to be seen as a quite heroic achievement. United Kingdom: of all his 150 plans of towns in England, Yet copies of any of Wood’s numerous plans are Scotland and Wales only 12 have dedications, so the five extremely rare, especially for towns in England and Wales. Cumbrian dedications represent almost half of the total. Even allowing for their probable loss through damage This may reflect the strategic role that some major land and and usage over the years, this suggests that only limited property owners played in Cumbria, not least in a period numbers of copies were printed, which raises questions when it was undergoing major economic changes with the about the economics of Wood’s work, the sources of his discovery and exploitation of new mineral sources and the finance and the reasons why he undertook the challenging growth of industrial activity and trade, especially in west and arduous task of surveying so many towns, not only Cumberland and in Furness.