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The Marquis of Anglesey: working and social relationships on a Dorset estate (c. 1812–1844)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Carol Beardmore
Carol Beardmore*
Affiliation:
De Montfort University, Leicester
*
Email: carol.beardmore@dmu.ac.uk
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Abstract

The Marquis of Anglesey on his Dorset estate was an absentee landlord who maintained close relationships with his estate through extensive correspondence with his land agent William Castleman. The surviving letters are a very rich source by which to examine the minutiae of rural life and a way to reconstruct social and working relationships within the nineteenth-century English landed estate. By focusing on a range of customary and unwritten rights, this article will consider issues such as how tenants navigated renegotiation of their leases, sought rent abatements or compensation for damage to their crops from hunting. Working and social relationships on such an estate were closely interlinked, as is widely shown here. The article also raises more contentious estate issues such as who had the rights to fallen and standing timber, the customs affecting courts, the repair of churches, and the responsibilities for building and maintaining schools. Throughout, the issue of ‘social control’ is assessed. Together the range of documented work and social interactions provide a fuller picture of the functioning of a southern English great estate in the early nineteenth century, and allow us to examine this rural community beyond the remit of its agricultural history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , October 2020 , pp. 135 - 150
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1 Sixpenny Handley is usually referred to in the archive as Hanley, which has been adopted here.

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4 Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 5th March 1804.

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47 DHC D/ANG/B5/46, 18th October 1834.

48 Hainsworth, Stewards, Lords and People, p. 66.

49 DHC D/ANG/B5/60, 28th December 1943.

50 DHC D/ANG/B5/61, 8th January 1844.

51 DHC D/ANG/B5/61, 11th January 1844.

52 Hainsworth, Stewards, Lords and People, p. 66.

53 DHC D/ANG/B5/60, 18th April 1843.

54 Ibid.

55 DHC D/ANG/B5/61, 31st January 1844.

56 DHC D/ANG/B5/61.

57 DHC D/ANG/B5/61, 31st January 1844.

58 DHC D/ANG/B5/61, Report from Mr Robert Noone.

59 DHC D/ANG/B5/61, 1st February 1844.

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71 DHC D/ANG/B5/25, 21st October 1819.

72 Ibid.

73 Quoted in Beardmore, ‘Landowner, tenant and agent’, 184.

74 DHC D/ANG/B5/25, 21st October 1819.

75 The Times, 31st August 1826.

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80 DHC D/ANG/B5/39, 16th February 1827.

81 DHC D/ANG/B5/39, 14th February 1827.

82 DHC D/ANG/B5/51, 1st January 1837.

83 DHC D/ANG/B5/37, 3rd February 1826.

84 DHC D/ANG/B5/75, 23rd October 1826.

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88 Ibid.

89 DHC D/ANG/B5/15, 13th August 1814.

90 DHC D/ANG/B5/15, 1st July 1814.

91 DHC D/ANG/B5/37, 3rd November 1826.

92 DHC D/ANG/B5/37, 10th November 1826.

93 DHC D/ANG/B5/48, 27th April 1835.

94 DHC D/ANG/B5/61, 12th September 1844.

95 DHC D/ANG/B5/37, 3rd February 1826.

96 DHC D/ANG/B5/46, 22nd January 1834.

97 DHC D/ANG/B5/46, 4th February 1834.

98 See Hoyle, Farmer in England.

99 See Jones, Stalbridge Inheritance.

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