The Agricultural Activities of John Wilkinson, Ironmaster by W
The Agricultural Activities of John Wilkinson, Ironmaster By W. H. CHALONER ii T is not generally known that besides culture, who honoured Wilkinson with a visit i! i it being a large-scale industrialist, John to Castlehead in x8o5, it would have been Wilkinson (i728-i8o8), the celebrated called in Scotland a "flow moss." On the :1 I ironmaster, was also one of the "spirited average about five feet of the first stratum proprietors" who appear so frequently in consisted of a soft, spongy kind of peat, which agricultural history during the latter half of made very poor fuel. Below this, however, the the eighteenth century. His youthful back- black peat was deep (I 5 feet and over) and of i: ground was semi-rural, but his career as a excellent quality. After these two layers the large-scale landowner does not appear to bottom was "a fine strong blue clay," capable i i ~ have begun until the War of American Inde- of being used as a top dressing after being pendence (z776-83) , when it became difficult burnt in small heaps with peat, but otherwise to satisfy public and private demands for "unfriendly to vegetation until it has been cannon. Consequently his profits as an iron- long exposed to, and ameliorated by the master accumulated rapidly, and some of atmosphere."" them were invested in agricultural improve- Wilkinson's first attempts to improve ment. About z777-8 he bought the bleak hill about four or five acres of this waste marsh, of Castlehead, near Grange-over-Sands in on which animals could only be pastured in north Lancashire, then surrounded by a frosty weather, began in I778 and were un- peaty marsh, and the adjacent Wilson House successful.
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