'Turnip' Townshend - the original EDP feature

 

pic reproduced courtesy of Poppyland publishing, Cromer, Norfolk 

A bit of a first for my blog readers here. My EDP Weekend feature on Turnip Townshend (25 October 2014) had to be adapted because of the lack of an available picture of the great man. It became ' Humble crop was a turnip for the history books' with turnip pics to match. You, dear blogger, can have both this revised feature and - feature first below - the original, focused more closely on dear old Charles. Plus the photos they might have used, given world enough and time...

Viscount (‘Turnip’) Charles Townshend of Raynham –a Farmer for All Seasons

Raynham Hall, Norfolk 

Ever wondered if you are in the wrong job?

If British foreign secretary Viscount Townshend of Raynham (1674-1738) – the Lord Lieutenant and effective political leader of Norfolk – hadn’t by 1729, he should have done. His credentials came from the Tony Hancock School of Careers Advice.

First, unlike Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole of Houghton, his ‘noisy’ neighbour, Townshend was a famously poor public speaker. “Inelegant in his language’… ‘often perplexed in his arguments’ was the verdict of a peer who’d endured his longwinded speeches to the Upper Chamber since 1701.

Second –by his own admission to Walpole - he displayed “fits of spleen for which you have so often laughed at me” that made him “impatient of contradiction…impetuous… and overbearing.” Lord Hervey was less kind - “a slave to his passions…rash in his undertakings, violent in his proceedings, haughty in his carriage, brutal in his expression and cruel in his disposition.” Apoplexy would be the literal death of him in 1738.

Third, he made bad decisions and stuck to them.

Walpole needed a foreign policy that secured peace, prosperity and low taxes for the Hanoverian settlement, taking the wind out of Jacobite sails and restoring a fiscal confidence shattered by the South Sea Bubble scandal. Walpole tried to keep Townshend, then in Hanover with George I, on message: “My politics are to keep free from all engagements as long as we possibly can…I wish to God we may at least for a little time remain neutral and look on, if all the rest of Europe does the same thing.”

Instead, Townshend, more Hanoverian courtier than British statesman, schemed for aggressive war alliances with traditional enemies.

Fourth, he didn’t do subterfuge.  “If there be a place in the world where faction and intrigue are natural and in fashion, it is (the court of Hanover) which makes it no easy task for a stranger to behave himself inoffensively….”

Not the best choice of diplomat for one of the trickier moments of European history.

Townshend-and-Walpole were the Britain-leading West Norfolk dream team of 1722, double-heading a landslide Whig administration.  By 1727, to Townshend’s fury, this had become Walpole-and-Townshend and by 1729 was ending in a heated exchange about the way Walpole was managing the House of Commons. Walpole thundered “there is no man’s sincerity I doubt as much as your lordship’s!” whereupon Townshend – with his usual sincerity - seized his burly brother-in-law by the collar and both men went for their swords. Only the intervention of friends prevented an affray.

So ended a career that began so brightly in the reign of Queen Anne when Townshend was a member of the commission concocting the Act of Union with Scotland (1707). Highland Scotland supported the Stuart line of succession: James ‘III’ (The Pretender) Anne’s closest heir, but Catholic. England and Scotland had shared one monarch since 1603 but separate parliaments. Some Scots even favoured reverting to two kingdoms.

Townshend was promoted after the deal so presumably took credit for the Act’s buying off Presbyterian opposition to bishops and its creation of a free trade market between the countries. The Act gave Scotland access to Britain’s overseas colonies (Scotland’s traditional trade lines to France and Holland were in decline or war-ruin). The continuation of an independent Scottish legal system was conceded; Presbyterian rights guaranteed and reduced rates of taxation (because of Scottish poverty) added to the economic inducements – which included a degree of bribery. The Scottish Parliament was history – sold (to London-based Scottish aristocrats) ‘for English gold’ - until 1997.

Raynham Hall - pic reproduced courtesy of Poppyland publishing, Cromer, Norfolk 

But ‘Turnip’ Townshend was an undisputed world-leader in the scientific revolution of eighteenth century agriculture, to which he devoted his spare time, and ‘retirement’ (1730-1738.) It was a revolution led by rich landowners, farming large estates in Norfolk, especially ones underwritten by political influence and incomes outside farming. Like Coke of Holkham, Townshend inherited an estate totally unencumbered by debt and could afford to risk experiments, his successes then emulated by progressive but capital-inhibited yeomen farmers.

Position gave his experiments authority. Happily married to Walpole’s sister Dorothy and leading the family ‘firm’ of Townshend and Walpole as a recent Knight of the Garter, he began transforming Raynham Hall, lake, gardens and park at the height of his political power in 1724-5, His fashionable good taste, informed by long political sojourns in Holland, are reflected in the quiet elegance of the new entrance hall and grand saloon.

It was the age of growing literacy, ‘improvement’ culture and agricultural text books; of falling grain prices and a 13 per cent rise in the value of cattle; of greater incentives to improve pasture and find better winter feed. Scientific farming was incompatible with the primitive open field farming still being practised across half the country and with the small-scale yeomen farming that had replaced it in some areas.

Enclosures were back in vogue and this time not with the Elizabethan object of turning arable land into sheep pasture but of transforming communally cultivated, open fields –including the strips of Townshend’s smaller tenant units – into large compact farms on which the new and more scientific mixed farming could thrive. Waste (and common) land was enclosed, hedged and made effective.

England went Dutch. Dutch meadow grasses like clover and sainfoin and fodder crops were imported; Dutch immigrants grew turnips and carrots in small enclosed English fields; Dutch textbooks were translated into English; Norfolk farmers sent their sons to Holland to learn the new methods. Traditional East Anglian ties with Holland (windmills, drainage) all helped this.

But what really put the ‘turnip’ in Townshend and transformed the eighteenth century farm was using turnips – which still only made up 9% of the cropped land by 1720 - as a break crop between two cereal plantings.

Fed to livestock on the land, turnips caused it to be manured at the same time, doubly more productive than leaving it fallow. Along with clover and artificial grasses this rotation yielded nutritious pasture and a good hay crop. Stock could be improved in quality, increased in number and used to fertilise the soil all at the same time.

The ‘Norfolk Four Course Rotation’ - cereal-turnips-cereal-grasses - in a four year cycle was internationally celebrated. The Norfolk farmcart was the vanguard of the world.

Classical designs for farmyards were made; a ‘philosophy of improvement’ informed the placement of house in relation to farm buildings; the size of the barn; its number of doors, whether the facings of such utilities should be brick or otherwise.

The Norfolk system, according to Arthur Young in 1771, combined turnips, rotation, rationalised buildings, enclosure, the use of marl or clay to improve soil, the creation of large farms and the granting of long leases by landlords to change the farmer into an improving landowner. Turnip Townshend’s leases typically included conditions prescribing these. And he was doing it all decades before Arthur Young proclaimed it.

As early as 1704, Townshend was instructing his estate manager to oversee hedging, marling and selective breeding of the best stock – cattle as well as sheep – among his tenants and already engaged in ‘Enlightened’ farm-building and hedging.

By 1738 Townshend’s reputation as an improving landowner – with hedged fields “of a proper size for farms between 300 and 800 acres…square, well-disposed in relation to the home stall, the roads and the soil” - and his encouragement of turnip-growing -was proverbial throughout Europe. “He certainly practised the turnip culture on such an extent and with such success that he was copied by all his neighbours,” approved Young. By 1787, Norfolk was being described as ‘the cradle of the Agricultural Revolution.’

All this increased Townshend’s income by £900 per annum –a football transfer fee nowadays - and the total rental of the Raynham estate doubled between 1701 and 1756.

He transformed his Norfolk landscape from sheep-roamed heaths and commons into the hedged fields, compact farms and ‘classical’ architecture still recognisable today. Inspired by his Cambridge education, Grand Tour and a mind broadened by travel and government posts abroad, he rebuilt and re-landscaped the countryside.

Jonathon Swift could be contrasting the relative value of Townshend’s two careers when he writes in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’: “whoever can make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.”

For more see the English Model Farm (Windgatherer Press) and ‘Turnip’ Townshend: Statesman and Farmer (Poppyland Publishing) by Susanna Wade Martins. For Gareth’s EDP Weekend features and playscripts on Norfolk notables see www.garethcalway.co.uk/ blog.

And here's how that feature was published in EDP Weekend on Saturday Oct 25.

It was the crop that propelled Norfolk from a farming backwater to the envy of a nation - and brought huge wealth back to the county. GARETH CALWAY and TREVOR HEATON tell the story of the humble turnip, and the not-so-humble man who saw its golden potential...

Imagine if foreign secretary Philip Hammond were on a state visit to Germany, and while travelling around spotted an unusual crop growing in a field.

“Stop the car!” he tells his driver, and rushes out to find out more. Fired up with enthusiasm, he sprints back home to his Surrey constituency and persuades local farmers to grow this wonder plant. They do, and become very rich. And they all live happily ever after...

Sounds unlikely? But that’s just about what happened three centuries ago. And it was a Norfolk politician who spotted that there was ‘gold’ in them thar fields.

His name? Well, you’re probably ahead of us here: Viscount Townshend of Raynham (1674-1738)... better known to history as ‘Turnip’ Townshend.

But agriculture was only Townshend’s second career. As Lord Lieutenant and effective leader of Norfolk, he had - with his brother-in-law Sir Robert Walpole - been rising up the greasy pole of national politics for years, eventually reaching the giddy heights of foreign secretary.

It’s fair to say, though, that he was soon out-paced (and out-smarted) by his far-wilier in-law, who famously went on to be Britain’s first prime minister.

It didn’t help that as a politician he had four big drawbacks. First, unlike his ‘noisy’ neighbour Walpole of Houghton, Townshend was a famously poor public speaker. “Inelegant in his language”… “perplexed in his arguments” as one peer who’d endured his long-winded speeches to the Upper Chamber since 1701 put it.

Second – by his own admission to Walpole - he displayed “fits of spleen for which you have so often laughed at me” that made him “impatient of contradiction…impetuous… and overbearing.” Or, in Lord Hervey’s judgement, “a slave to his passions…rash in his undertakings, violent in his proceedings, haughty in his carriage, brutal in his expression and cruel in his disposition.” In the end, apoplexy would be the literal death of him in 1738.

Third, he made bad decisions and stuck to them.
Walpole needed a foreign policy that secured peace, prosperity and low taxes, taking the wind out of Jacobite sails and restoring a financial confidence shattered by the South Sea Bubble scandal. Walpole tried to keep Townshend, then in Hanover with George I, on message: “I wish to God we may at least for a little time remain neutral and look on, if all the rest of Europe does the same thing.”

Instead, Townshend, more Hanoverian courtier than British statesman, schemed for aggressive war alliances with traditional enemies.

Fourth, he was too blunt for subterfuge. “If there be a place in the world where faction and intrigue are natural and in fashion, it is (the court of Hanover) which makes it no easy task for a stranger to behave himself inoffensively….” So not the best choice of diplomat for one of the trickier moments of European history.

Townshend-and-Walpole was the Britain-leading Norfolk dream team of 1722. But by 1727, to Townshend’s fury, this had become Walpole-and-Townshend and by 1729 was ending in a heated exchange about the way Walpole was managing the House of Commons.

Walpole thundered: “There is no man’s sincerity I doubt as much as your lordship’s!” whereupon Townshend very sincerely seized his burly brother-in-law by the collar and both men went for their swords. Only the intervention of friends prevented an affray. And that was the end of Townshend’s political career.

No, it was not politics that was to secure Townshend’s place in history, but a humble root crop. Turnips, (Brassica rapa subsp. rapa), helped make the Norfolk landowner an undisputed world-leader in his second career: the scientific revolution of agriculture, to which he devoted his spare time, and eight years of retirement until his death.

It was a revolution led by rich landowners, farming large estates in Norfolk, especially ones underwritten by political influence and incomes outside farming. Like Coke of Holkham, Townshend inherited a debt-free estate and could afford to risk experiments, his successes then emulated by progressive if not quite so wealthy yeomen farmers.

Position gave his experiments authority. Happily married to Walpole’s sister Dorothy and leading the family ‘firm’ of Townshend and Walpole as a recent Knight of the Garter, he began transforming Raynham Hall, lake, gardens and park at the height of his political power in 1724-5. His fashionable good taste, informed by long political sojourns in Holland, are reflected in the quiet elegance of the new entrance hall and grand saloon.

It was the age of growing literacy, ‘improvement’ culture and agricultural text books; of falling grain prices and a 13 per cent rise in the value of cattle; of greater incentives to improve pasture and find better winter feed. Scientific farming was incompatible with the medieval open field farming still being practised across half the country and even with the small-scale yeomen farming that had replaced it in some areas.

Enclosures were back in vogue, transforming communally cultivated open fields – including the strips of Townshend’s smaller tenant units – into large compact farms on which the new and more scientific mixed farming could thrive. Waste (and common) land was enclosed, hedged and made effective.

England went Dutch. Dutch meadow grasses - like clover and sainfoin - and fodder crops were imported; Dutch immigrants grew turnips and carrots in small enclosed English fields; Dutch textbooks were translated into English; Norfolk farmers sent their sons to Holland to learn the new methods. Traditional East Anglian ties with Holland (windmills, drainage) all helped this.

But what really put the ‘turnip’ in Townshend and transformed the farms was using the crop – which still only made up 9pc of the cropped land by 1720 - as a break crop between two cereal plantings. Before he spotted its potential, turnips were something that only interested gardeners - something grown in pots or in gardens to top-up the family larder.

But when Townshend accompanied George I on a visit to his Hanoverian lands, he noticed how this ‘valuable root’ was being used to enrich the soil, a soil which reminded him of his own Norfolk estate.

So on his return to England, he urged his tenants to grow it in a similar way. As Nathaniel Kent later wrote: “The experiment succeeded, and by degrees, is gradually spread over this county, and in the course of time, to other parts of England, though their cultivation is by no means so general as it continues here.”

Kent’s 1796 account continued: “A good acre of turnips in Norfolk will produce between thirty and forty cart loads, as heavy as three horses can draw; and an acre will fat a Scotch bullock, from forty to fifty stone, or eight sheep.

“But the advantage of this crop does not end here, for it generally leaves the land so clean, and in such fine condition, that almost insures a good crop of barley and a kind plant of clover; and the clover is a most excellent preparative for wheat, so that in the subsequent advantages, the value of the turnip can hardly be estimated.”

Fed to livestock on the land, they caused it to be manured at the same time, doubly more productive than leaving it fallow. Along with clover and artificial grasses this rotation yielded nutritious pasture and a good hay crop. Stock could be improved in quality, increased in number and used to fertilise the soil simultaneously.

It was a win-win-win situation. The ‘Norfolk Four Course Rotation’ - cereal-turnips-cereal-grasses in a four-year cycle - was internationally celebrated. The Norfolk farmcart became the vanguard of the world, and money poured into estates to improve farmyards, farm buildings - and, of course, the big houses.

The Norfolk system, according to Arthur Young in 1771, combined turnips, rotation, rationalised buildings, enclosure, the use of marl or clay to improve soil, the creation of large farms and the granting of long leases by landlords to change the farmer into an improving landowner. And Townshend was doing it all decades before Young proclaimed it.

As early as 1704, Townshend was instructing his estate manager to oversee hedging, marling and selective breeding of the best stock – cattle as well as sheep – among his tenants and already engaged in ‘Enlightened’ farm-building.

By the time of his death Townshend’s reputation as an improving landowner – with hedged fields “of a proper size for farms between 300 and 800 acres… square, well-disposed in relation to the home stall, the roads and the soil” - and his encouragement of turnip-growing - was proverbial throughout Europe. “He certainly practised the turnip culture on such an extent and with such success that he was copied by all his neighbours,” approved Young.

By 1787, Norfolk was being described as “the cradle of the Agricultural Revolution.” All this increased Townshend’s income by £900 per annum – equivalent to a football transfer fee nowadays - and the total rental of the Raynham estate doubled between 1701 and 1756.

He transformed his Norfolk landscape from sheep-roamed heaths and commons into the hedged fields, compact farms and ‘classical’ architecture still recognisable today. Inspired by his Cambridge education, Grand Tour and a mind broadened by travel and government posts abroad, he rebuilt and re-landscaped the countryside.

Jonathan Swift could well be contrasting the relative value of Townshend’s two careers when he writes in Gulliver’s Travels: “Whoever can make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.”

What did the Townshends do for us? Bring Norfolk farms back to levels of prosperity not seen since the Middle Age wool boom, that’s what.

And it was all down to a Royal visit, a Norfolk politician... and a turnip.

For more see the English Model Farm (Windgatherer Press) and ‘Turnip’ Townshend: Statesman and Farmer (Poppyland Publishing) by Susanna Wade Martins. For Gareth’s EDP Weekend features and playscripts on Norfolk notables see www.garethcalway.co.uk/ blog.

The crop that built a county It’s hard to overstate the importance of turnips to Norfolk. If our medieval wealth was based on wool, then our 18th-century equivalent was heavily indebted to the crop and its associated innovations.

A 1796 report on Norfolk farming by Nathaniel Kent to the Board of Agriculture waxes lyrical about its impact. But it was not an easy crop. Kent wrote how it was ‘teasing and precarious crop, and admits of no certain rules to ensure absolute success’.

And Kent warned that he had recently met an Hanoverian nobleman, Count Hardenberg, who had told him that the crop of turnips had now declined in his home country, ‘which is a matter of surprise’. Kent urged Norfolk farmers to avoid similar problems by growing potatoes or vetch in their place every now and then.

The biggest enemies of turnips were the black canker caterpillar. Kent recommended filling the fields with ducks (which loved to eat them) or follow the Yorkshire farmers in employing women (at 5-8 shillings an acre) and children (at 3d or 4d each per acre) to pick them off the crops by hand.