Thomas Watson-Wentworth. The sheer range of records that have been preserved in record offices up and down the country is staggering. It was while working in Sheffield Archives, investigating the ways in which the coppice woods on the Irish estate of an absentee landlord earned large amounts of income, that I came across detailed entries in the estate account books of a trip in the early 1700s by the English landowner to his distant estates. And it must be emphasised to any reader who has not perused account books that they are not just boring lists of figures, they contain some fascinating information that can be used with other archive documents to paint a vivid picture of a place, a time and people. Because money was involved, either being received or paid out, no detail is spared. The records analysed here throw light on a number of related issues of interest to family and local historians, both professional and amateur: early travel, taking precautions against highwaymen, early migration, the transformation of the landscape, estate workers and tenants, to name a few.

The landowner and his estates
The landowner in question was Thomas Watson-Wentworth (1665-1723) who had inherited in 1695 the estates of the 2nd Earl of Strafford, who had died childless. It was a surprising inheritance because Thomas was not the Earl of Strafford’s son, he was a nephew, the third son of the Earl’s sister, Anne Wentworth, who had married Edward Watson, 2nd Baron of Rockingham of Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire. The will stipulated that on his inheritance he had to move to live permanently at Wentworth Woodhouse and change his name from Thomas Watson to Thomas Watson-Wentworth. His descendants were the 1st and 2nd Marquises of Rockingham and the earls Fitzwilliam.

And the estates that he inherited were immense. In South Yorkshire, surrounding Wentworth House was a compact estate covering 9000 acres. Not only did this estate contain farmland, it had more than two dozen productive coppice woods and beneath the ground there were extensive seams of ironstone and coal that would be exploited for great profits by his descendants for more than two centuries. Thomas Watson-Wentworth devoted much time extending his South Yorkshire estate, making 42 separate purchases and adding another 1641 acres. He also inherited a vast acreage in Ireland that had been acquired by his great-uncle the 1st Earl of Strafford. There was a small estate in County Kildare but the rest was in County Wicklow in five blocks at Newcastle, Wicklow Town, Rathdrum, Toorboy, Cashaw and Shillelagh. Altogether the Irish estates amounted to 90,000 acres. The purpose of his journey to Ireland was to inspect his estates, particularly his woodlands (which provided not only building materials but also charcoal for iron smelting and oak bark for tanneries) and to set new tenancies on the farmed estate properties. These were made chiefly to Protestant settlers (sometimes called chief tenants or middlemen) who then in most cases sub-let parts of their rented property to under-tenants. The smallest tenancies were those occupied by Irish Roman Catholic smallholders. He was very particular about the tenancies to chief tenants, insisting that improvements were made such as improving buildings, enclosing farmland and planting trees. He was also keen to establish estate villages where craftsmen and shopkeepers lived and where a substantial number of new schools and churches were built during his landlordship.

The journey to Ireland
Thomas Watson-Wentworth probably left Wentworth House towards the end of the second week in August, 1713. He was not alone; he was accompanied by a number of servants who were to go with him to Ireland together with others who were making the journey to the port of embarkation and then returning to Wentworth. They were probably in charge of a coach which contained enough luggage for a protracted stay. As we shall see, he took his own riding horses with him, so besides personal servants he would also have had the services of a groom. Only one of his servants can be identified: Matthew Charlton, who is buried at Hooton Roberts, just five miles from Wentworth. His gravestone is fixed to the outside of the church wall.

A letter Thomas had posted to his principal Irish agent before he left England had been sent from Chester, so it is almost certainly this port from which he embarked on his sea crossing to Ireland. His route across the Pennines must remain a mystery but he probably went along the ancient salt route from South Yorkshire to Northwich. The journey would probably have taken three days with two overnight stops. Parts of the route were packhorse routes and his coach may have had to be pulled out of deep mud if there had been any heavy rain.

The ship to Ireland would, of course, have been a sailing ship dependent on the wind, so that the date of sailing, the duration of the journey and the date of arrival would only have been known approximately. And this is borne out by the expenses in his principal agent’s (Captain Abraham Nickson) accounts itemising his expenses as he waited for his employer – referred to as ‘my master’ or ‘his Honour’ – to arrive. Altogether Nickson went to Ringsend, the port area of Dublin, five times between 16 and 25 August. On the fourth of these visits, on 23 August, he went to Lazy Hill, from which there was a good view of the harbour and incoming vessels. He then went down to Ringsend where he waited in vain for two hours. He went again on the 25 August, but there was no sign so he returned to his lodgings in Dublin. Then a messenger came to say the ship had arrived. He went to greet his employer recording in his accounts that he had paid ‘the sea men yt slung his Honrs Horses to shore’ and for the hire of a car (a two-wheeled cart) to carry his employer’s ‘Portmantle, Sadles etc’. He also paid for a load of straw and two barrels of white oats for the horses.

Thomas’s stay in Ireland
Nickson had taken lodgings for Thomas Watson-Wentworth and his servants in Jervis Street in the centre of Dublin. Having installed them there, he arranged for copies of the Irish estate papers to be brought from two secure rooms ‘at Mr John Kennedy’s in High Street, Dublin’, where they were permanently stored. There are no records of what happened over the next few days but no doubt they were largely taken up with meetings between Watson-Wentworth and Nickson about estate matters.

Eventually they set off on horseback to the headquarters of the largest section of the estate at Coolattin in southern County Wicklow, a journey of more than 40 miles. Before they set off the estate clerk, Joseph Waterhouse, together with Captain Nickson’s cousin Joshua (who assisted Captain Nickson in running the Shillelagh and Cashaw parts of the estate) and two trusted employees, Edward Smith and Abraham Slater, had arrived in Dublin carrying more than £600 destined for England. On such trips these men were heavily armed. In 1712 it was recorded in the accounts that a payment had been made for mending a ‘double barreld Carbine in ordr to Guard ye moneys’ because Nickson had reported that a man had been killed by robbers on the road between Dublin and Coolattin. This armed party provided the escort for Thomas Watson-Wentworth when he set off to ‘view his estate’. For the rest of September Thomas Watson-Wentworth was based at Nickson’s old house set in the park at Coolattin. In 1711 Nickson recorded that he was building a new house and Watson-Wentworth gave Nickson £100 towards building costs. This new house was replaced in 1807 by the country house that still stands today. He would have had a busy time inspecting properties and his managed woods and setting new leases.

Again it must be stressed that like many other absentee Irish landlords he, like his family before and after him, stuck rigidly to his politically circumscribed leasing policy and continued to lease to some non-resident and residing Protestant chief tenants of substance who showed little inclination to improve beyond the boundaries of their demesnes. On the other hand the estate records throughout the rest of the 18th century show that there appeared to be a range of social gradations among both the Protestant and Catholic populations.

It would be interesting to know what abiding impressions Thomas Watson-Wentworth took home with him after visiting very different parts of his estate. On 11 September he was at the outlying property of Toorboy high in the Wicklow Mountains at nearly 2000 feet, inspecting them before setting new tenancies. His tenancies were usually for 21 years. There were three properties there that were described in two surveys done in 1728 and about 1730, less than twenty years after Thomas Watson-Wentworth’s 1713 visit. Anyone researching their family history whose ancestors lived on the Irish Watson-Wentworth estate would find these two surveys very revealing. On one of these properties that covered more than 1490 acres, the chief tenant Alexander Straghan was said to live in Dublin and he set his property to 11 Catholic under-tenants who no doubt lived in small cabins. The total population was 74. The surveys give the first names and surnames of every male under-tenant and the number of their children and whether these were sons or daughters. The property was said to be ‘mountainy’, would not grow corn and the tenants were ‘entirely maintained by potatoes’. One of the other two of these upland properties was tenanted John Kinch, a Protestant, who ‘dwelleth upon the land’ and who had six Roman Catholic under-tenants. He was said to be an industrious man improving the property little by little even though the property contained much bog and boggy pasture.

In complete contrast to these two properties were two others visited by Thomas Watson-Wentworth and his principal agent in September 1713 that lay on the lower, better farmland in the valley of the River Derry. The first was Raheengraney six miles south-west of Coolattin. This 344 acre property in 1730, 17 years after Thomas-Watson Wentworth’s visit, was tenanted by James Parsley who was said to be ‘the best improving tenant’ on the estate. He sub-let parts of the property to 15 under-tenants. In 1730 it was said to have been ‘well improved’ and was ‘fit for ploughing and grazing with Extraordinary good meadows’. The second was Cronyhorn, a property of more than 600 acres, just to the west of the estate village of Carnew. According to the survey of 1730 the chief tenant was Walter Carter who was resident in what was described as ‘a very good house’. He was also a leather tanner with his tannery on the property. He had ten under-tenants. With their dependants the number of people living on the property in 1730 added up to 53, the majority of whom had Irish not English names. The property was described as having ‘the best & greatest meadows in Shillely’. Incidentally, living in the neighbouring estate village of Carnew at that time were the ancestors of television personality Graham Norton (his family name was Walker) who had migrated from a village on the South Yorkshire estate of Thomas Watson-Wentworth in the early 18th century – and continued to live in Carnew until the 20th century. In the late 18th century one of the Walker family was recorded as being an estate coppice keeper.

By early October Thomas Watson-Wentworth was back in Dublin having spent time visiting his smaller properties in Wicklow Town, Newcastle and Rathdrum. He continued to have meetings with Abraham Nickson who moved between Dublin and various places within the estate. Drawing up and signing leases, meeting those chief tenants who lived wholly or for part of the year in Dublin, and taking part in the social and cultural life of Dublin would have taken up much of Thomas Watson-Wentworth’s time. It is interesting that during this period Nickson arranged for his master to taste Ireland’s unique drink and meet an animal long extinct in England. On 13 October payment was made for a man who ‘fetched a vessel of Usqebagh from Drogheda’. Usquebaugh is the Gaelic for ‘water of life’, in other words Irish whiskey. And on 28 October Nickson paid Dennis Duiggan for ‘bringing ye Wolf whelp from Coolattin for his Honr’. Wolves had been extinct in England since the late 14th century.

The final record of Thomas Watson-Wentworth’s stay in Ireland was on 11 November when Nickson recorded that he was due ‘to Imbarque for England’.

Although they were absentee landlords living a long distance from their Irish estates, the Watson-Wentworths continued to set long leases with many sub-clauses leading to the continued improvement of their properties. Almost a century after Thomas Watson-Wentworth’s visit to his Irish estates, Edward Wakefield in his An Account of Ireland, statistical and political (1812) stated that ‘Earl Fitzwilliam’s Wicklow estate exhibited an appearance that would do honour to any part of Europe.’ Praise indeed.

Acknowledgements: Details of Thomas Watson-Wentworth’s visit to his Irish estates will be found in the Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments in Sheffield Archives: Irish General Accounts 1707-1713 (WWM 758) and Irish Timber Accounts (WWM 760). The two surveys mentioned were by Moland in 1728 (WWM A769) and William Hume in about 1730 (WWM 768). I am grateful to Eric Leslie for his superb line drawings.