John Wood 2: Planning and Paying for His Town Plans

Abstract

John Wood, the 19th-century urban cartographer, surveyed almost 150 towns spread widely across Great Britain. His detailed large-scale plans are an astounding achievement. In light of this, two questions are posed: did he have a strategy that guided the places which he surveyed; and how did he pay for his work, given that so few copies of his plans appear to have been produced for sale – or at least to have survived.

Keywords:

• John Wood
• town plans
• atlas
• finance
• surveying

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe warm debts of gratitude to many who have helped me explore unfamiliar territory. Ralph Hyde let me look through his notes from the work he did on Wood in the 1980s; Chris Fleet opened up the treasures of the NLS, guided me to new leads and provided new digitized plans of the Stornoway MS; Margaret Wilkes helped with access to RSGS material; Martin Ebdon gave me details of his catalogue of plans in south-west England. Roger Kain and Richard Oliver let me access their catalogue of urban plans; John Moore and Chris Perkins offered helpful cartographic advice; and the archivists and staff of numerous record offices around Britain were invariably helpful, interested and enthusiastic. My wife Glenna brought an invaluable historian’s eye to help with some of the explorations in record offices. To all of them I am most grateful and hope that I have done justice to their assistance by adding some flesh to the bones of Wood.

Notes

i Digitized by the National Library of Scotland. See http://archive.org/details/descriptiveacc1828scot.

ii In a Wood ‘atlas’ sold by Christies the plans of Berwick, Dalkeith, Kelso, Perth and Hawick were shaved, and the descriptive note in the auction particulars commented: ‘Some of the larger plans are almost invariably trimmed owing to the considerable variation in size of each plan’.

iii The irony is that it was 160 years later that Wood’s 12 plans of north-east towns were published by the Newcastle publisher Frank Graham in a limited-edition atlas of plans which he had bought in 1981 and published in 1991 (Graham, 1991).

iv The Alnwick archives do not contain copies of the replies to Wood’s letters, but it is clear from the rather resigned tone that Wood adopted in his later letters that he had not received the support for which he had hoped. His letter of 12 November simply notes that ‘…Mr Robson at Alnwick Castle subscribed for a plan of Alnwick’. The ‘Mr Robson’ is likely to be either Robert or Richard Robson, both of whom were Bailiffs in the 1820s (pers. comm.. Christopher Hunwick, Alnwick Estate archivist). The archives hold two copies of Wood’s Alnwick plan. Sadly, there appear to be no records showing relevant financial payments to Wood.

v Neither volume has a title page: one includes all 12 Durham and Northumberland plans; the second is a part-atlas of seven plans (South Shields, Sunderland, Newcastle, Durham, Darlington, Stockton and Barnard Castle). In the preface to his facsimile atlas Graham (1991) commented, ‘Although the Northumberland and Durham maps were never published as an Atlas two bound sets only (to our knowledge) have survived.’ These may well have been the Newcastle volumes which could have been those sent to the Duke of Northumberland.

vi The most authoritative recent text on English cartography (Delano-Smith and Kain, 1999) does not mention Wood, even though it has a whole chapter devoted to town mapping.

vii The 1821 and 1831 censuses were not taken by enumerators and the data are recorded for administrative areas which are not necessarily good definitions of ‘towns’. Some data refer to burghs or towns, some to parishes.

viii Some of the excluded places were hardly buoyant, as reflected in their population loss during the 1840s, suggesting that they may have offered less potential for sales.

ix It was Lancashire that Lt Drummond evinced as an area that did not need many new surveys when he issued his instructions to the boundary commissioners for the Reform Act plans: ‘Where possible existing plans should be used (in Lancashire, all the principal towns have been surveyed for Baines, but they may need to cover a larger area)’.

x See the map of the geographical distribution in Robson, ‘John Wood 1’.

xi The original surveyors’ drawings, on which the 1” maps were based, are listed by Hobson (1989) and show that most areas were surveyed at 2”:mile, with a very few such as in Kent and the Isle of Wight at 6”.

xii Seymour (1980, pp.113–4) notes that by 1845 only four towns – Fleetwood, Clitheroe, Manchester and Lancaster – had OS plans at this scale in hand; although by 1849 a further 35 had been completed or begun.

xiii An interesting parallel with Wood’s peripatetic mapping by a wealthy surveyor was Robert Cunningham who had wealthy parents in Edinburgh and was thus ‘relieved of the necessity of entering a profession’ (Boud, 1993). Unlike other surveyors who attempted to win prizes for geological maps of Scottish counties offered by the Highland Agricultural Society from 1834 and who only surveyed a single county, Cunningham was able to produce maps spread across Scotland (Sutherland, Banff, Lothian, Kirkcudbright, Mull, Canna, Skye and South Shetland).

xiv An example is the plan of Wigton. The local historian, Carrick, includes a telling story about the origin of the lone copy that he was able to discover. It had originally hung in the offices of a local solicitor and, when the office was closed, a young clerk went back and took the map down from the office where it had hung for years. Carrick expressed his thankfulness for this since it enabled him, in his chapter on ‘Inns of Wigton’, to identify the no fewer than 23 inns listed by Wood and to trace subsequent changes (Carrick, 1949).

xv The list comprises 3 Dukes, 2 Earls, 3 Lords and the Lord Chief Commissioner, 6 Knights (including Walter Scott), a General, an Admiral, a General’s widow, a Colonel, 2 MPs, 2 Major-generals, 2 Lieutenant-colonels, 3 Advocates and 23 Esquires. Despite the relatively lowly social status of surveyors, the list tends to suggest that Wood himself (or through his wife) was a person of some standing and able to move in or to have access to influential sections of society.

xvi Three examples are Cirencester where one might have expected a dedication to Earl Bathurst, Tavistock much of whose land was owned by the Duke of Bedford, and Launceston where the Duke of Northumberland owned large swathes of land.

xvii This item was kindly unearthed by the local Barnstaple historian Peter Christie via Martin Ebdon.

xviii For example, in the margin of Wood’s Leith map of 1826 is a list of prices: ‘thin sheet 3/6d, drawing paper 4/6, ditto coloured 5/6, in case or rollers 7/-‘, and for Edinburgh ‘in case or rollers 8/6d or united with Leith in case or rollers 14/-‘. His notice in the Kelso Mail advertises proof copies of his Kelso plan at 14s; and his notice in the Monmouth Mercury advertises his plan of Newport at one guinea – a far from trivial sum.

xix Plans of Alnwick, Durham, Morpeth, Whitby, Carlisle, Beverley, Boston, Kings Lynn, Newark, Northampton, Carmarthen and Caernarfon. This represents a high proportion of the plans that Wood had completed before 1832. Reform Act surveyors of other towns may also have drawn on Wood plans, but not included copies amongst their papers.

xx Some of his newspaper notices make it clear that he was not averse to doing one-off ‘jobbing’ work. As well as land surveyor, he called himself a ‘Pleasure Ground Planner’ in the Kelso Mail, and elsewhere talks of planning estates and advising on husbandry. His notice in the Carlisle Patriot begs the nobility and gentry to honour him with their employment.

xxi Other surveyors called John Wood were involved in 1820–1840 both in tithe and enclosure surveys and estate commissions: John Wood of Lindfield, Sussex, produced a plan of Needs Farm in Sussex, as well as enclosure and tithe plans; the two John Woods of North Cave, Yorkshire, produced enclosure maps in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire; and John Wood of Grantham did tithe and estate maps and two estate plans for Frederick Hervey, 5th Earl of Bristol. All differ in style from that of the Edinburgh John Wood.

xxii The elder Humphrey Senhouse was responsible for developing the village of Ellenfoot into a port, Maryport, which he named after his wife. His grandson, Humphrey, would probably have been the family member involved in making any commission to Wood. Yet, oddly, a plan of Maryport surveyed by W. Mitchell in 1834 was ‘most respectfully inscribed to Humphrey Senhouse Esquire’ suggesting that if Wood was commissioned to do the Cockermouth survey he may not have been able to sustain his link with the Senhouse family for very long. Wood’s plan shows the outline of proposed developments and expansion of one of the mills along the mill race. Only the latter development appears to have materialised. The land, which was part of the Senhouse estate, is now occupied by Cockermouth Cricket Club which was initially established in 1823 and rented the site from the Senhouse family (Robson, 2013).

xxiii These sources were kindly explored by Sue Laker, Deputy-Chief Librarian of the Priaulx Library, which holds two copies of Wood’s plan of St. Peter Port.

xxiv The topography of the line was difficult territory for a railway, and the line suffered a high incidence of accidents – justifying its popular title of the ‘Breakneck and Murder Railway’. Barrie (1957, p.7) wryly noted that it was ‘…a railway upon which it was always more amusing to travel than to arrive’.

xxv Bendall (1997) records this as the only plan produced by John Rook and his son.

xxvi Chris Fleet (personal communication) makes the point that in the 18th century significant mapping of towns such as Inverness and Perth was only by military engineers of the Board of Ordnance, and that military map-makers had a significant influence on various other Scottish towns including Edinburgh and Aberdeen. This was long after most military map-making of English towns had ended. As this military funding in Scotland receded in the later 18th century, surveying and publishing town plans was only supported through local patronage (for example, John Ainslie’s support through the Society of Antiquaries) or the relevant Town Council. Wood never seemed successful in getting funding from either source.