Thomas Woodward was my great-great-grandfather. He farmed at Providence Hill until 1837, and subsequently, until his death, at Baxby Manor. The Woodward family had previously lived, as far back as records exist, in Raskelf before moving to Husthwaite towards the end of the eighteenth century. The surname derives from the title of the official charged with care of the forests on behalf of the King or local nobles, during the Middle Ages. At that time, forest covered much of the country.
Use of the forest and its resources was however heavily regulated for most people. The responsibility of enforcing these restrictive laws made Woodwards sometimes unpopular figures. In 1351 John le Wodeward of Raskelf was granted a pension of 3d per day by Edward III “for good service and especially because his eyes were torn out and his tongue and fingers cut off by malefactors”. John was still waiting for his pension 24 years later: inefficiency of public services is nothing new! As forests were cut down, there was less need for Woodwards. It seems natural that some moved into farming.
Thomas lived till he was 89, an unusually long span for the nineteenth century. In later years he spent much time writing, with beautiful copperplate script that puts our modern-day scrawl to shame. By that stage his sons were running the farms, so he had time on his hands. What did he write? Well, he had a great interest in genealogy, and there are two volumes covering the ancestries and inter-relations of local families. Over 100 different surnames appear in the indexes. The first volume is titled “Mary Sedgwick’s Book 1886”, a dedication to his eldest child who married into the local Sedgwick family, and who cared for him in old age. The second volume is dedicated to his grandson, also called Thomas.
Thomas senior also left an unassuming-looking notebook with the inscription “A Record of Passing Events”. It covers the period from 1873 up to Thomas’s death in 1897 and delivers what one might expect from the title: births, christenings, marriages, and deaths in the local community; purchases and sales of land and stock; accidents and illnesses. There’s also some natural history, including a faithful record of the arrival and departure each year of swallows, swifts, martins, corncrakes and so forth.
One reason for studying history is to learn about the perspectives of those who lived in different times, and perhaps thereby to gain some insight into our own prejudices and preconceptions. The Record of Passing Events is almost entirely factual and devoid of opinion, self-reflection and emotion – qualities nowadays deemed essential in a diary. Thomas’s was a different age, however, with greater formality, and less room for sentiment (he does express disquiet one year at the premature departure of a family of swifts from the farm). The perception of geography is striking too: almost all recorded events happen in and near Husthwaite. There are occasional references to Easingwold and York; even more occasionally, national news intrudes its ugly head. No international events were considered worthy of record however – a stark contrast to our age of instant global headlines. Rural communities in the nineteenth century were self-contained and events that mattered were by and large local ones.
These and other items from Thomas’s pen have passed down to me, as the last surviving male of the family. The likely imminent extinction of the family surname has persuaded us that the documents would have a better home in the North Yorkshire County Record Office, where they will be more widely accessible, and that is where we are sending them later this year.
Christopher Woodward (March 2024)
[Note Woodward documents may be seen at The Records Office, Northallerton]