AGENTS AND PROFESSIONALISATION: IMPROVEMENT ON THE EGREMONT ESTATES C. 1770 TO C. 1860 SARAH ANN WEBSTER, B.A. (HONS), M.A. Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2010 Abstract This thesis examines aspects of estate improvement on the Egremont estates in Sussex, Yorkshire and Australia between 1770 and 1860. Using the Petworth House Archives and others, it documents large-scale improvement projects, including William Smith‟s work in mineral prospecting in West Yorkshire, and Colonel Wyndham‟s land speculation in South Australia. The third Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) himself has received some biographical attention, but this has concentrated to a great extent on his patronage of the arts. This thesis therefore documents a number of important matters for the first time, in particular the detailed work of the middle layer of personnel involved in estate management and improvement. Episodes of „failure‟ in estate improvement are also revealing in this study. This thesis contributes to debates regarding the nature of „improvement‟ in this period, and most particularly, to understandings of the developing rural professions and to scholarship regarding professionalisation; interpreting key episodes in the archive utilising a „landscape‟ approach. It uses the concept of an „estate landscape‟ to draw together the dispersed Egremont estates in order to better understand the management structures of these estates, and how they relate to the home estate at Petworth. The thesis examines the relationships between Lord Egremont and the various agents (in the widest sense) who acted on his behalf; the configuration of which agents was different for each of the different estates. It makes a particular contribution to ongoing debates about the formation of the professions in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England in suggesting that despite the contemporary stress on applied agricultural expertise, legal land agents remained more influential than has been supposed. The belated professionalisation of the Petworth agents and the significant differences in their roles when compared with a land agency firm such as Kent, Claridge and Pearce suggests that estate management was far more diverse than has been suggested. Egremont himself emerges from the archive as neither a hands-on agricultural improver nor as an uninterested and neglectful absentee. Instead, I suggest, he acted as co-ordinator and as an impresario amongst the men engaged to act on his behalf, the middle layer of developing rural professionals including agents, surveyors, and engineers. If the literature to date has concentrated on Egremont as patron of art, he emerges from this thesis as a patron of improvement. 2 Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 2 Contents ................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 6 Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 9 1.1 Research Aims ...................................................................................... 9 1.2 Overview of Thesis .............................................................................. 12 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................... 20 2.1 Improvement ....................................................................................... 20 2.2 Landowners and Improvement ............................................................ 22 2.3 Estate Management ............................................................................ 25 2.4 Agents and Professionalisation ........................................................... 27 2.5 Theoretical approaches: Networks ...................................................... 36 2.6 Correspondence Networks .................................................................. 38 2.7 Landscape and Cultural Geography ................................................... 43 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH SOURCES AND METHODS .......................................... 47 3.1 Power, the writing of History and life stories ....................................... 47 3.2 A note on time period and research limitations .................................... 49 3.3 Archives ................................................................................................ 50 3.4 Document analysis .............................................................................. 54 CHAPTER FOUR: EGREMONT, WYNDHAM AND THEIR ESTATES ............................. 58 4.1 The Egremont estates ......................................................................... 58 4.2 George O‟Brien Wyndham: A biographical account to 1794 .............. 64 4.3 Egremont‟s move to Petworth (1794) ................................................... 72 4.4 George Wyndham, 1st Baron Leconfield .............................................. 75 4.5 Egremont as an Improving Landowner? .............................................. 77 CHAPTER FIVE: THE HOME ESTATE .......................................................................... 85 5.1 James Crow‟s 1779 estate survey ...................................................... 86 5.2 Agricultural leases ............................................................................... 92 3 5.3 The management of the home estate ................................................ 95 5.4 The estate office ................................................................................. 99 5.5 Augmentation of the wider estate ..................................................... 103 5.6 Estate administration and other responsibilities ............................... 105 5.7 Financial management of the home estate ...................................... 111 5.8 Petworth as a model farm ................................................................ 114 5.9 Timber management and estate repairs .......................................... 120 5.10 The improvement of agricultural equipment and livestock ............... 123 5.11 Drainage and enclosure ................................................................... 126 5.12 Estate management post 1835 ........................................................ 129 CHAPTER SIX: YORKSHIRE: THE BEVERLEY AND BARMSTON DRAINAGE ...... 132 6.1 The Beverley and Barmston Drainage (1796-1810) ........................ 133 6.2 Proposals for the Beverley and Barmston Drain (1796-1798) ......... 137 6.3 Opposition and a defeated Bill (1797) .............................................. 141 6.4 The Beverley Drain (1799-1810) ...................................................... 146 6.5 William Chapman‟s reports (1796-1809).......................................... 155 6.6 The revaluation of the Leconfield estate .......................................... 157 6.7 Summary: the impact of the Beverley and Barmston drainage ....... 166 CHAPTER SEVEN: THE WYNDHAM INVESTMENT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA ................ 170 7.1 Early interest in Australia ................................................................. 172 7.2 The Purchase of land in South Australia .......................................... 176 7.3 The Ayliffe emigration and settlement .............................................. 181 7.4 Frederick Mitchell, land agent .......................................................... 184 7.5 Conclusions ...................................................................................... 194 CHAPTER EIGHT: ESTATE MANAGEMENT, LAND AGENTS AND IMPROVEMENT ... 196 8.1 Land agents and estate improvement ............................................... 197 8.2 The Egremont estates and the Petworth agents, 1772-1835 ........... 199 8.3 Nathaniel Kent and the Yorkshire estates ......................................... 211 8.4 Professional career of John Claridge ................................................ 215 4 8.5 Conclusions ....................................................................................... 223 CHAPTER NINE: PATRONAGE AND PROFESSIONALISATION ................................ 229 9.1 William Smith and the Egremont estate ............................................. 229 9.2 Networks of patronage: Board of Agriculture and Royal Society ....... 230 9.3 Coal mining in Yorkshire .................................................................... 233 9.4 Spofforth coal surveys, 1798-1805 .................................................... 236 9.5 The management of the Yorkshire coal trials, 1803-1805 ................. 241 9.6 Professional reputation ..................................................................... 250 9.7 Professional status ............................................................................ 252 9.8 Conclusions ....................................................................................... 254 CHAPTER TEN: CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................. 258 10.1 Improvement and estate landscapes ................................................ 258 10.2 Landscape and Cultural Geography ................................................