The Agricultural Activities of John Wilkinson, Ironmaster
Chaloner, W.H.
Agricultural History Review, Volume 5 part 1 (1957)
Abstract
It is not generally known that besides being a large-scale industrialist, John Wilkinson (i728-18o8), the celebrated ironmaster, was also one of the “spirited proprietors” who appear so frequently in agricultural history during the latter half of the eighteenth century. His youthful background was semi-rural, but his career as a large-scale landowner does not appear to have begun until the War of American Independence (1776-83) , when it became difficult to satisfy public and private demands for cannon. Consequently his profits as an ironmaster accumulated rapidly, and some of them were invested in agricultural improvement. About 1777-8 he bought the bleak hill of Castlehead, near Grange-over-Sands in north Lancashire, then surrounded by a peaty marsh, and the adjacent Wilson House estate, with the double purpose of building a country residence on the former site, and “with a view of making iron from the peat with which the country so much abounded” on the latter. ~ The peat-smelting of iron, although technically successful, was however not aft ,~conomic proposition, and his thoughts turned “to consider what other uses could be made of so extensive a tract, in particular whether it could not be made capable of cultivation.”
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