©Clive Barnes Oct 2023
William was responsible for several estate surveys in Dorset between 1769 and 1775. Not only of Milton Abbas, but of a newly acquired estate of Lord Milton’s in the Marshwood Vale in West Dorset, and of the extensive holdings of Henry Bankes of Kingston Lacy, including the Kingston Lacy estate itself and Corfe Castle. This led me to believe he might be a local man, until I found an advertisement in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal for 18 July 1768 and an online account of the life and work of William’s son, the wit and caricaturist George Murgatroyd Woodward (1765-1809), both of which gave me a better idea of who William was. He has an entry, too, in the standard reference work, The Dictionary of Land Surveyors and Local Map Makers of Great Britain and Ireland, 1530 -1850, which reveals that, beyond Dorset, he was also responsible for surveys in Devon, Buckinghamshire, Kent, Somerset, Essex, the Isle of Wight and Gloucestershire.
His advertisement in 1768, which probably resulted in his engagement by Lord Milton, gave his address as Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn, London. “Having [been] engaged to survey Lands in Cornwall” he offered his services to those Gentlemen and Noblemen who have Estates situated in any of the western Counties, and are desirous to ascertain the exact Quantity, Quality &c – thereof, with plans accurately delineated on Vellum, describing all Boundaries, Divisions, Roads, Lanes, Foot-Paths, Hills, Trees. Water-Courses, &c… with Survey Books drawn therefrom, containing distinct Plans of all the Farms.” His “reasonable Terms” would not exceed 6d an acre “with less in Proportion to the Quantity”; and he would “attend gratis” (without a charge for expenses). This was an offer likely to appeal even to a man like Lord Milton, with a reputation for being careful with his purse.
Although Woodward’s place and date of birth are uncertain, he was probably only in his twenties and at the beginning of his career at the time of the advertisement. He already had a family. He married Betty Murgatroyd in 1763, and their son George was born two years later. William had trained with the prominent London surveyor John Eyre and already he could claim that “Recommendation may be had, if required, from several eminent Colleges and Persons of the first Rank, By whom he has lately been employed in surveying upwards of 40,000 Acres.”
William probably arrived in Milton Abbas sometime in early 1769, and was walking the boundaries of the manor with the parish worthies at the end of April. Yet, by early August, Lord Milton had despatched him to west Dorset to survey the estate that his Lordship had bought there the year before. All of Woodward’s Dorset survey books are now in the care of the Dorset History Centre, and, comparing the two surveys he completed for Lord Milton between 1769 and 1771, it is apparent that he was asked to approach them differently. The Milton Abbas estate had been in Lord Milton’s hands for more than fifteen years and Milton’s priorities for it were already set. William was required to do little more than map and value the estate. In West Dorset, however, he was asked to make urgent recommendations for improving the land holdings and his survey of Abbotts Wootton was presented as a “Scheme to facilitate the Uniting the small Farms and Tenancies…According to this Scheme the Estate which now consists of near one Hundred Tenements herein itemised will be reduced to twenty excellent Compact Farms.”
William did not restrict himself to these recommendations but made trenchant comments about the state of the estate and the plight of the tenants in west Dorset: “many speak truth in alleging their poverty, their small gains, and hard bargains; but on a true enquiry into the cause, the fault will center [sic] in themselves, not in the land, it being impossible that ground should produce plentiful crops without proper care and maintenance, let it be of ever so fertilizing a nature. By dint of bad husbandry, and neglect, the respective soils, in general, are all impoverished—drains stopt, and the fences spread to such a degree, that scores of acres are rendered entirely useless; therefore, no wonder if the occupiers are in low circumstances.”
How Lord Milton knew William could be trusted to make such assessments is a mystery. It had not been part of William’s advertised skills, although it featured in later advertisements. It may have been mentioned in any references that Milton had taken up, or it may have come up in conversations between William and Lord Milton’s steward or with Lord Milton himself. At this time, improvement in agricultural practices was regarded not only as essential to put estates on a proper financial basis but also as the mark of a responsible and forward-looking landowner. Improving your land was both prudent and fashionable. When the well-known agricultural improver Arthur Young visited Lord Milton the following year, Milton probably showed him William’s survey of Abbotts Wootton to support his own credentials as an improving landlord; and William’s strictures about neglectful tenants were subsequently quoted by Young in The Farmer’s Tour Through the East of England Volume 3, although William was not named (391).
When he returned from West Dorset, William finished the Milton Abbas survey, and compiled the hand-drawn plans and references of both surveys in separate handsome leather-bound folio volumes, just as he had promised in his advertisement. By 1771, he had also drawn a large map of the Milton Abbas estate which was subsequently displayed on the wall of the library at Milton Abbey house. The map has since been returned to what is now the staff common room of Milton Abbas School, but in a poor state, torn and disfigured from fire and water damage in the last century.
That Lord Milton displayed the map so prominently illustrates that both the map and survey book were not simply records of estate holdings but an expression of his status and good taste, like the architect designed marble fireplace over which the map hung and the shelves of carefully collected books that surrounded it. A surveyor, in drawing up plans for this class of client, was required to be both an accurate draughtsman and something of an artist. Working by hand mainly in pen and ink, coloured pencil and watercolour, he was required to work quickly and in considerable detail to produce maps that were not only informative but pleasing to look at. And, apart from the routine elements in a map that provided some scope for a surveyor’s individual expression (lettering or showing hedges and woodland, for instance), there was sometimes an opportunity to add further decoration.
Perhaps the most common form of decoration was the cartouche, defined as a frame used to highlight a piece of text, and which was often used to surround the title of a plan or to contain the landowner’s coat of arms. For many mapmakers, the obvious choice for such a frame were swags, scrollwork, or imitation architectural moulding of some kind; but for Woodward it was a wreath of wild flowers and grasses. This featured on both the frontispiece of his surveys and on some individual plans. It was distinctive, and perhaps you might think a bit schizophrenic, for a man whose bread and butter was the fixing of the boundaries of cultivated land, to show an interest in the flora of the margins and hedgerows. But the care he took over this work, seldom repeating the same combination of blooms and leaves, suggest this was something of a passion for him, and in 1764 and 1765 he had won prizes in the Royal Society of Arts annual competition in the category “Compositions of Flowers After Nature.”
It was possibly on Lord Milton’s recommendation that Woodward returned to Dorset in 1773-5 and was engaged to survey the extensive landholdings of the Bankes family, recently inherited by Henry Bankes, resulting in another two survey books. In 1775, however, William’s life changed. The Earl of Stanhope, who had estates in Devon, Buckinghamshire and Derbyshire, appointed William as his land agent. William retained his London address and was also given a grace and favour house, Stanton Hall, in the village of Stanton-by-Dale in Derbyshire. He lived there as a gentleman until his death in 1817, although he was dismissed as the Earl’s land agent in 1802 after a disgruntled employee made complaints against him. Some of his estate and personal correspondence, is in the Stanhope of Chevening manuscript collection in Kent archives.
William’s son George, who was educated in London, worked for the Earl alongside his father until about 1791, but, from 1785, was publishing caricatures from the family home in London and eventually moved to the capital to join the circle of Thomas Rowlandson, Isaac Cruickshank, and other caricaturists, publishing his first book of self-illustrated prose and poetry Eccentric Excursions in 1797, which he dedicated to his father. William supported George in his precarious career with a yearly allowance. He said George was drawing before he could speak and it is tempting to believe that George’s interest might have been encouraged and even tutored by his father. George drew much of his inspiration from London social and political life, whose salons and taverns eventually proved the death of him. He died in the Brown Bear Tavern in Covent Garden in November 1809, reputedly with a glass of brandy in hand, and his father was left to settle his considerable debts. There is no doubt of William’s pride in his son. He preserved some of George’s early work and it is believed that the bulk of the Derbyshire Record Office collection of nearly five hundred of George’s works came originally from Stanton Hall.
“The Genius of Caricature” Thomas Rowlandson after George Murgatroyd Woodward, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This is a Woodward drawing, etched and coloured by Rowlandson.
For further information about William and George see:
There are images of Derbyshire’s holdings of George’s works on the Record Office website, ranging from satires of contemporary politics, that now require historical notes to grasp their meaning, to rather coarser knockabout humour which leans heavily on derogatory national and racial stereotypes, particularly of Jews and the Irish, all illustrative of the attitudes of its time.
Milton Abbas Local History Group, Dorset, UK 