The landscape of ‘Phinny Animals’: fish husbandry at Rufford Abbey 1700–1743

ABSTRACT

Elements of the eighteenth-century water management system at Rufford Abbey, a significant Nottinghamshire estate and once Cistercian monastery, are still visible in its landscape. From estate plans, accounts and correspondence it has been possible to reconstruct an extensive water system developed by Sir George Savile, 7th Baronet, and his estate servants during the baronet’s ownership (1700–1743). This landscape of water was part of a complex demesne landscape encompassing pleasure grounds, spring woods and parkland which fulfilled multiple functions. Central to these was the management of fish. The present paper looks at the many ways in which Sir George improved and extended the fish habitat he inherited and his motives for doing so, weighing them against practices promoted in agricultural treatises of the period. It draws attention to the collaborative nature of this enterprise, involving as it did successive stewards, gardeners, carpenters, at one stage a consultant, and the baronet himself, whose scientific and practical understanding fed into the design process. It concludes that carp husbandry was of enormous significance to the cultural geography and identity of the Rufford Estate in the first half of the eighteenth century and suggests, contrary to prevailing chronologies, that water continued to be managed for the supply of fish well into the eighteenth century.

Keywords:

• Canal
• carp
• dam
• estate management
• fish
• husbandry
• pisciculture
• pond
• sluice
• stew
• water

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The work was supported by an AHRC collaborative doctoral award bringing the University of Nottingham in partnership with Nottinghamshire County Council.

I thank Michael Athanson of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for valuable discussions and his assistance with geographical information system (GIS) work and map preparation; Mark Spencer of the Linnean Society for help in identifying plant species.

Notes

1 There are references to this stretch of water as the River Idele [Idle] in the thirteenth century; from the seventeenth century it was known variously as in the medieval period, indicated a holding pond/servatorium by the eighteenth century (Currie 1990, p. 43, fn. 3). Rainworth Water, Rufford Water or Rufford River (Holdsworth 1972–81, vol. 2, p. 354).

2 On forest margins it was common for landowners to be granted licence by the Crown to make temporary enclosures known as ‘brecks’ or ‘breaks’ for pasture or arable cultivation. According to Fowkes (1977, p. 57), breck cultivation within Sherwood Forest was extensive on the Rufford Estate.

3 Winkerfield within Sherwood Forest gradually became known as Inkersall during the eighteenth century. While both names appear in archival references during the period under consideration the earlier name, Winkerfield, has been consistently adopted for clarity.

4 Usage of medieval pond terminology is not clearly understood and may have been fluid even at the time (Bond 2016b, pp. 159–60). Stagnum (‘slow flowing’) was also used to describe a medieval millpond (Steane 1988, pp. 39–40)

5 ‘Stew’, a term used for a breeding pond/vivarium

6 Approximate dimensions for White Walk Canal are specified by Thomas Smith during construction (E.Corres. NA, DD/SR/211/227/122); the length of 210 yards was derived from measurement of the feature described on an estate survey made by Thomas Smith in 1725 (NA, DD/SR/202/47).

7 From the mid-seventeenth century at least, water to Rufford Mill was augmented by Cold Well River, a stream whose course close to the south-east corner of New Park is suggested by the locations east of the Hall of ‘Cold Well Meadow’ on Bunting’s 1637 Survey and ‘Cold Well Spring’ on George Sanderson’s 1835 map Twenty Miles Round Mansfield. By the early nineteenth century this river had become the main feeder stream to the then naturalised Great Canal and may have augmented the flow earlier (Parliamentary Survey of the Manors of Rufford within Sherwood Forest, 17 September 1656, Natl Archives, E317/Notts/22; E.Corres. NA, DD/DR/211/227/45; E.Accts NA, DD/SR/235/1).