Julie Moore - final PhD submission.pdf - University of Hertfordshire ...

The View from the Mansion
In many ways, the story of landowning in Hertfordshire at the end of the nineteenth
century was a continuation of long-established patterns in this county which had so
much to offer those with ties to the capital. The commercial entrepreneurs Barker,
Maple, Gilbey and Faudel-Phillips, the financiers Rothschild and Barclay, the men of
law Grimthorpe and Part, were following that earlier pattern set by newly enriched
Tudor courtiers, the nabobs of the East India Company and the bankers who serviced
them all. However, where their predecessors had seen the acquisition of a landed
estate as an essential element in the acquisition of status and power and the
culmination of a career, the new wealthy of the late nineteenth century understood
their estates as an addition to their portfolio rather than the summit of their
achievements; the country estate still provided status but anybody looking to live off
rentals and the home farm would be demonstrating a presumably uncharacteristic
onset of commercial blindness. There were those who retired upon buying their land,
such as Hancock and Hodgson, but these men were at the end of their active
working lives, drawing on investments made over a lifetime of business activity. For
others, the possession of the estate meant a pleasant environment in which to bring
up their families and entertain guests, whilst still keeping their focus on the careers
which made it all possible.
The country estate had always offered the opportunity for fine living and pleasure,
but the fear at the end of the century was that with their economic focus turned
elsewhere the new wealthy would neglect the traditional functions of paternalism
owed to those amongst whom they lived. However, as this thesis has shown, the
newly wealthy from a range of economic backgrounds were mindful of the
expectations of a society which continued to consider the notion of paternalism and
gentlemanly behaviour as one of its strengths. In addition they brought wealth and
the energy which had created that wealth to bear upon the communities in which
they lived. Motives may have been mixed: George Hodgson’s improvements to the
village of Hexton and renaming of his home as Hexton Manor may have been as
much about his own imagining of his place as a rural squire as the desire to improve
the lives of those who moved into damp free cottages with access to clean water.
However, that imagining came from a man with a strong urban and indeed industrial
profile, and reflected just how assumptions of what constituted rural living fed into
the perpetuation of those assumptions.
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