"Sowing Seeds in Lines"

"Sowing Seeds in Lines" A genealogy of Smyths, Wardleys and Kemps in Sweffling and Peasenhall. 2005 An educational resource for those interested in the sociality of the industrial revolution Family Edition December 2005 In memory of Hannah Kemp of Rendham Sweffling & Peasenhall Mother of 10 children 1758-1828 1 1 Foreword .......................................................................................................................... 3 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 5 1.1 Sociality of invention ......................................................................................... 5 1.2 Town and country ............................................................................................... 7 1.3 Creative becoming .............................................................................................. 8 2 Sowing With Machines........................................................................................ 11 2.1 Jethro Tull (I674-I74I).................................................................................... 12 2.2 How are things to be made better? .............................................................. 15 2.3 The inventor's environment........................................................................... 18 2.4 Evolution of the mass- produced drill.......................................................... 19 3 The Smyth's Contribution ................................................................................. 23 3.1 Kemps and Smyths ........................................................................................... 23 3.3 Thinking like machines ................................................................................... 32 4 The Wardleys And Their Kin........................................................................... 34 4.1 Wardleys Kemps and Smyths....................................................................... 34 4.2 Wardleys and Baldwins.................................................................................. 35 4.3 The Etheridge-Baldwin connection............................................................. 37 5 A Family In Business............................................................................................. 40 5.1 The male perspective.................................................................................... 40 5.2 A female perspective................................................................................... 50 5.3 Illegitimate fertility...................................................................................... 56 5.4 Paths of kinship ............................................................................................ 57 5.5 The Sociology of relatedness .................................................................... 57 6 Ideas About Human Production........................................................................... 64 6.1 Expanding and networking of know-how............................................... 64 6.2 Family and failure....................................................................................... 67 6.3 The triumph of individuality ..................................................................... 71 7 Continuity Of Local Crafting In Wood and Metal.......................................... 76 7.1 Carpenters and joiners .................................................................................... 77 7.2 The Kemps......................................................................................................... 80 7.3 Mass crafting of machines .............................................................................. 83 8 Conclusions............................................................................................................... 86 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 90 References...................................................................................................................... 91 Appendix: Selected Census Records...................................................................... 92 2 2 Foreword This is an account of an important episode at the beginning of the industrial revolution in Suffolk. It is written from the point of view of the histories of the local families, who played a major part in establishing the first workshops for the mass production of machines to sow seeds. In particular, it focuses on a production system to make these devices called seed drills, which was set up in the village of Peasenhall by James Smyth, the local wheelwright, around the year 1800. Smyth was the third Suffolk machinist to develop the idea of producing agricultural implements for a mass market. The first was Richard Garrett of Leiston, who acquired a blacksmith’s shop and forge in 1778, which eventually expanded to a work force employing thousands. About ten years later, Robert Ransome arrived in Ipswich to begin the mass production of ploughs. All of these family businesses, which made very significant contributions to the British economy, are now extinct. Their legacy is a general model of world development. Individuals with little learning but much native wit build family businesses, which are driven by consumerism in a competitive market, energised by innovation and the increasing scale of production. The other feature is that invention is more likely to arise in a community that sets store by things of the mind than in one that seeks only material ends. Suffolk, in the short span of years between the accession of George III and that of his son, William IV, when the Garretts, Ransomes and Smyths were gathering resources for production, provided such a free-thinking environment. The Smyth drill-making operation was the smallest of the three Suffolk family enterprises, but it can be argued that it had the greatest impact on agricultural output in relation to its size. However, in its growth, peak and decline, the Peasenhall business illustrates the inherent limitations of organisations that depend on fathers handing on a family enterprise to their sons, where there seems to be an inevitable failure to sustain a competitive edge across the generations. The system of human relationships that defines the industrial revolution had its origins long before 1760, and attained its full development long afer 1830. Most ‘inventions’ were achieved through two or more previously independent ideas or processes which, brought together in the mind of the inventor, issue in a more or less complex and efficient mechanism. The ancestral skills of the Smyths of Peasenhall reached back into the craft families working in wood and metal, who lived, generation after generation, on the eastern edge of Suffolk’s clay plateau. Their complex network of kin and neighbours, spreading ideas and injecting capital, played a vital part in James Smyths initial success. His enterprise was carried forward with a new blend of old village skills of working wood and metal based on common sense and job satisfaction. The role of women as wives and mothers, played a crucial role in the success of the drill works but also contributed to its eventual failure. These women were of a time when marriage was viewed as a masculine economic investment and a biological system for the production of male heirs. The death of a new-born child before that of its parents may seem unnatural 3 3 today, but in the Smyth’s time this unfavourable chance multiplied against every infant’s existence and the perpetuation of patronomy. Finally, old Peasenhall has an important ecological message for the present about the dangerous environmental impact of burgeoning industrialism. Starting from the times of the Suffolk machinists, farm mechanisation has brought about a decline in global biodiversity to a level that now threatens Earth’s ecological stability. Forty years after the closure of Smyth’s drill works, we now understand that biodiversity has value equal to that of planting seeds in lines. In recognition of this, Peasenhall’s farmers are being paid by the government to reduce the fertility of their village’s arable seed bed, a process designed to return rural nature to its pre-industrial condition. Indeed, it seems that time has run out on the Smyth’s modern-age Georgian values, with their dedication to technology, unlimited production and consumption, self-advancement, individualism and domination of nature. 4 4 1 Introduction 1.1 Sociality of invention It is always interesting to learn how a new idea is turned into a commercial success. Usually the story concentrates on the problem to be solved and how a profitable technical solution was produced, apparently out of nowhere. The invention of the Suffolk seed drill was one of the important drivers of world development. Between 1800 and 1900 from the small Suffolk village of Peasenhall, tens of thousands of drills, incorporating the latest ideas of mechanised sowing and mass production of farm implements were sent around the world. This was at a crucial time when Britain had a profound influence on the world environment and its economy. The history of the Suffolk seed drill was presented in the East Anglian Daily Press, July 6th 1901 in a somewhat novel and romantic way. The article highlighted the social network of the inventor, James Smyth, which was an important key to his success. James happened to be the village wheelwright

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