Thomas Johnes of Hafod - 1748 – 1816

This is a story of vision and enterprise in the very best tradition of the Royal Society of Arts. The central character, Thomas Johnes Esquire, was born in 1748 and died in 1816. In 1780 he inherited the Hafod Estate in Cardiganshire from his father, by which time he had become a country gentleman, having been educated at Edinburgh University and in Eighteenth Century fashion had travelled widely in Europe before settling in Cardiganshire.

On inheriting the Hafod estate, he found it in poor condition, half-ruined, encircled by 4000 ha (10000 acres) of Welsh upland, and populated by a hungry, ill-housed despairing tenancy. Whilst being short of money, he had both vision and a pragmatic approach to estate management.

The Hafod Estate

The Hafod Estate (Hafod: Welsh for a summer dwelling), lies in the valley of the Afon (river) Ystwyth, where lush pastures are surrounded by high hills.

Magnificent gardens were laid out around the Gothic mansion designed by Thomas Baldwin of Bath, with strong Nash influences. As innovators he and his tenants carried out cattle and sheep breeding experiments, the growing of new crops, with trees being planted on land deemed to be unsuitable for cropping.

The Encouragement of Agriculture and Industry

In true Eighteenth Century mould, Thomas Johnes offered prizes for good crops and tree planting, being one of the chief supporters of Cardiganshire Agricultural Society, which was founded in 1784. In the 1790s the Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Industry in the County of Cardiganshire were offering premiums which included the following: Class 1V: Premium 1: Planting of Forest Trees – Two guineas (£2.40). Premium 2: Planting by a Tenant – Two guineas. (£2.40). Premium 3: Planting Willows & for Hurdles – one acre Three guineas (£3.60) - half an acre Two guineas (£2.40). Premium 4: Forest Trees for Sale – Three guineas and Two guineas (£3.60 & £2.40). Premium 5: White Thorn for Sales – Not fewer that 10000 – Three guineas (£3.60), Not fewer that 8000 – Two guineas (£2.40). NB: White Thorn was the most popular species for hedge planting, during the major period of Enclosure from 1760 to 1830.

Good practice begins at home

In addition to his sheep and cattle breeding experiments and the growing of new crops, in a period of great changes in agriculture, Thomas Johnes found time to write a book which influenced not only his tenants, but a much wider audience, entitled ‘A Cardiganshire Landlord’s Advice to his Tenants’. The book was translated into Welsh by William Owen Pughe. As this part of Wales was predominantly a Welsh speaking area, the translation meant that his ideas and experiences reached a far wider public, than otherwise would have been the case. At Hafod he established a section of his library devoted to books on agriculture which included works by leading agriculturalists of the day such as Arthur Young.

Johnes consulted Sir John Smith, President of the Linnaean Society, regarding his agricultural improvements and discussed with him projects like the burning of furge (gorse), and the introduction of seeds from India and plants from Turkey.

Hard Times

Pioneer of Upland Afforestation in Wales

In celebrating the achievements of Thomas Johnes, we must not forget the times in which he was living. There was a revolution taking place in agriculture, including forestry. The Enclosure Movement was in full swing; the demand for timber was spurred on by our engagement in the Napolonic Wars. Indeed change was not only in the air, it was a reality.

Without doubt, Thomas Johnes was the pioneer of upland afforestation in Wales. However, the achievement was not his alone. Throughout his years at Hafod, Thomas Johnes employed some outstanding foresters and gardeners.

Between 1790 and 1810, golden years at Hafod, two Scottish men played key roles: John Greenshields, Estate Bailiff and James Todd, Head Gardener who had previously been a gardener at the Botanic Gardens at Edinburgh. These two men were in charge of the extensive plantations and forest-nursery activity.

Over the years following years, many more Scots foresters were to play key roles in the development of silviculture on estates throughout Wales. Of course it was the men and boys who did the actual planting thereby, playing a key role in making Hafod an outstanding experiment in land management. At Hafod planting rates were in the order of 1000 per team of one man and a boy per day.

Five Gold Medals or was it Six?

As part of the Society of Arts work to encourage good practice and innovation, Premiums: Gold and Silver Medals were awarded to mark significant achievements in the field of silviculture.

Following a visit to Hafod in 1798, by Charles, 11th Duke of Norfolk, the President of the Society of Arts, Johnes was encouraged to offer himself for the awards made by the Society for silviculture.

In the Transactions of the Society of Arts, Vol. 18 (1800), the following text appears: ‘Premiums for Planting and Husbandry – Class 1 – Acorns’. There were a further 15 Classes for planting and growing oaks. In addition there were Classes for Spanish Chestnuts, English Elm, European Elm, Silver Fir and more.

The Society’s records show that Johnes was awarded Gold Medals in 1800, 1801, 1802, 1805, 1810 and 1813 for his achievements. However, there is some confusion as to the actual number, was it five or six?

The citations for which read as follows:

1800 - The Gold Medal, being the Premium offered for planting Larch – Trees was this Session adjudged to Thomas Johnes MP of Hafod.

1801 – The Gold Medal, being the Premium offered for sowing, planting, and inclosing Timber-trees, was this Session adjudged to Thomas Johnes MP of Hafod.

1802 - The Gold Medal, being the Premium offered for sowing, planting, and enclosing Timber-trees was this session adjudged to Thomas Johnes MP of Hafod

1805 – The Gold Medal of the Society was this Session adjudged to Thomas Johnes MP of Hafod, in Cardiganshire, for his plantations of Oaks.

1810 - The Gold Medal of the Society was this Session adjudged to Thomas Johnes, Esq. MP of Hafod in Cardiganshire, for his Plantations of Larch and other trees.

According to the records of the Society, Johnes was awarded six gold medals. However, recent correspondence between this author and the Society’s Archivist & Record Manager indicates that evidence in the archives can only be found for five gold medals being awarded to Thomas Johnes.

Hafod after Thomas Johnes

Not all the subsequent owners allowed the property to decline. There was rebuilding following the 1807 fire. An Italianate tower was built at one end and a pagoda, reminiscent of Brighton pavilion at the other. However, more fires and other disasters reduced the place to a state of what John Piper, writing after a two week visit in 1939, called ‘decrepit glory’ which is reflected in a fine painting by the artist.

Yet we can still see something of Thomas Johnes work. Visitors can still see two old oaks from his day at the Upper Car Park. It is also still possible, in the words of Professor John Matthews, to see the outlines of the original plantings from the car park.

In the 1930s the land was purchased by the Forestry Commission. Prior to which there had been heavy felling of trees during the 1914-1918 war and again, not surprisingly between 1939 and 1945.

For a number of years the Forestry Commission has steadily been restoring the land, replanting trees and actively encouraging visitors to enjoy the Hafod Estate, which is located 12 miles south-east of Aberystwyth. Since 1994 a charitable trust, ‘The Hafod Trust’ manages the Estate, which covers an area of 200ha (492 acres), in partnership with Forest Enterprise. Today, as in Johnes day timber production, hill farming, wildlife conservation, recreation and tourism go hand in hand. Surely Thomas Johnes would be delighted to see his vision and works continuing to be a living example of Integrated Land Management.

Thomas Johnes Legacy

Today the Hafod Estate, continues to reflect the vision of Thomas Johnes’. In Welsh, this is captured in the portmanteau word ‘cynefin’ meaning ‘the landscape with everything in it’ - place, people and nature intertwined.

In the words of William Gibson, writing about Thomas Johnes of Hafod in the RSA Journal, for June 1990: ‘The achievement of Thomas Johnes has been clouded by the collapse of his endeavours at Hafod. But Johnes created there an estate which for three decades promoted innovation in agriculture and restored the tree to the hills. Encouraged by the Society of Arts, he made a garden from a wilderness and left woodland that can still be seen. Above all Johnes has a vision of paternal squirearchy creating prosperity for his tenants. In Wales this was a notable rarity in the eighteenth century.’

The ADAS (Wales) Research Centre based at Pwllpeiran, one and a half miles north-east of Hafod, continues the tradition of agricultural and land management research begun by Johnes. It manages two fields within the demesne and others to the north-east on what was formally Johnes experimental farm.

In 1998, the Hafod Estate received a grant of £330,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. A detailed Management Plan has been prepared and is now being implemented.

The Estate employs one full-time and two part-time management and administrative staff, a horse logger, various contract workers and has recently appointed two crafts-people. Their role being to ensure that the management plan is carried out to the highest standards.

The ‘Strategic Vision for Hafod’ produced by the Hafod Conservation Partnership, clearly nests well with Thomas Johnes’ vision. In summary the policy states:

Background: Hafod Uchdryd is one of the most important Picturesque landscapes in Europe. Having suffered damage and dereliction early in the twentieth century Hafod is currently a working forest, and home to a wide range of animals and plants, some of them rare. It is also a favoured place for walkers.

Balances: The conservation of the spirit and sense of place at Hafod for public benefit will entail sustainable balances between financial objectives; protection and access; growth and decay; upkeep and renewal; work and leisure; continuity and innovation. The Hafod Advisory Panel is an independent source of guidance on such issues.

Landscape: At the core of the estate, the Partnership aims to re-capture Johnes’ concept of a working wooded parkland, in the Picturesque style.

Ecology: The ecological value and diversity of Hafod will be safeguarded and enhanced, with particular regard to Schedule 1 birds, upland oak woodlands, lichens – Sir John Smith, President of the Linnaean Society who visited Hafod in 1796, described the range of lichens to be found at Hafod as affording a ‘rich harvest to the cryptoganic botanist.’ - bryophytes and fungi.

Built Heritage: Historic man-made structures, together with modified natural features, will be protected, and – where they contribute to the Picturesque experience – conserved.

Public Access: For walkers intent on relative solitude and quiet enjoyment of landscape and nature, access will be facilitated by reopening historic paths, where this can be done safely and in the light of later land-use.

Research and Education: On-going surveys, research, archaeology and evaluation will be the basis of planning, management and public information. A programme of education will be pursued.

Consultation and the Community: The Partnership will consult closely with landowners and other stakeholders. It will actively support the local economy and employment (including trainees and volunteers) and provide facilities for less-able people and the enhancement of traditional skills.

Funding: Implementing this strategic vision for Hafod will initially require extra funding, based on the grant-aid from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Financial self-sufficiency for the estate is a desirable long-term objective.

Surely Thomas Johnes would be delighted to see his vision and works continuing along the lines of the Hafod Trust and Partnership’s strategic vision, for after all, it’s a living example of Integrated Land Management.

Fact File 1 - Spirit of Place: Thomas Johnes of Hafod

Thomas Johnes of Hafod (1748 – 1816), landowner and man of letters, was MP for Radnorshire (1780 – 1796) and Cardiganshire (Ceredigion) (1796 – 1816), colonel of the Carmarthenshire militia (1779 – 98) and Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire from 1800 to 1816. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Art in 1801. In 1809, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a signal honour.

Thomas Johnes was a translator of Froissart and Monstrelet which he published from his own press at Hafod, he was also a friend and patron of many artists and writers.

In 1783 he began to build his Gothic mansion, surrounding it with a plantation of millions of trees. His architect was Thomas Baldwin of Bath, though Nash also had a hand in the designs and added a number of features, including a suspension bridge over the Afon Ystwyth and the walled Adam and Eve garden. The house was gutted by fire in 1807. Geoffrey Grigson writes, ‘the fire destroyed “Thetis dipping Achilles in the Styx” by Banks, the antique bust of Isis in red granite, furniture, tapestries, Welsh manuscripts of Edward Lhuyd, his unique collection of medieval romances and the press itself. The great octagonal library with its copper dome and its gallery carried on Doric pillars and variegated marble was also destroyed. The house was rebuilt with a number of additions, including an Italianate tower at one end and a pagoda, reminiscent of Brighton pavilion, at the other. Later, more fires and disasters reduced the place to a state of what John Piper called ‘decrepit glory’.

Following in the footsteps of artists such as John ‘Warwick’ Smith and Turner, and many eminent writers and poets, Myfanwy Piper described their two week visit to Hafod in 1939, thus: ‘On the terrace of the house which stood above the fast flowing amber Ystwyth (fishless at the time, being polluted by the lead mines further up) sheep detached themselves from the stonework. In the orangery a solitary geranium, rare and brilliant, was witness to the care of past years. The delicate octagonal Gothic library looked empty and dishevelled, flanked by a huge unfinished campanile by the fashionable Italian architect Anthony Salvin from whose parapet and open roof trees and ferns appeared. Upon the ground lay fruit from the ice blue conifers, pale pink and green inside, like unripe pomegranates.’

Fact File 2 - Tree Planting Details

Planted well over 3 million trees (between 405 and 485 ha – 1000 -1200 acres) at Hafod between 1782 and 1813. In 1801 alone he planted half a million trees.

European Larch and Scots Pine planted on the high ground and Oak and Beech on the lower, more fertile land.

Planting rates at Hafod: One man and a boy planted 1000 plants per day.

Planting season: At the end of the Eighteenth Century, the planting season extended from October to the 1st May. Today we plant barerooted stock from the nursery between November and the end of March.

Between 1798 and 1802 the Hafod Nursery produced nearly 1 million oak seedlings from acorns collected on the estate and in the locality.

In April 1796 his men planted 80000 larch on a very dry upland site, which had had little or no rain for nearly two months after planting, yet no more that 200 died.

A top tip: In an account of trees planted by Thomas Johnes on the Hafod Estate, written by James Todd Gardener at Hafod, dated 31st December 1801 to Charles Taylor, Secretary of the Society of Arts, we have the following tip: ‘If it be late in the spring season, and dry weather apprehended, I have found it of great service to drench the roots well in the following manner, viz: a hole is dug about two feet diameter, and the same in depth; it is then half-filled with water, and fine mold (mulch) is added, to make it like thin mud; a man then takes as many trees in both his hands as he can conveniently hold and drench in the mud: having prepared a heap of dry soil near the side of the hole, he alternately draws the roots of the plants through the above mud-hole and the dry soil, and thus the fibres of the roots are prevented from hardening or drying, as they would otherwise do. The was the reason James Todd gave for the successful planting of larch in 1796: 80000 planted, no more than 200 died.

Thomas Johnes preferred to plant two year old seedling Larches on high ground as from experience the winds made little or no impression upon their tops, before their roots got properly fixed in the ground

Planting Techniques: ‘For smaller plants, nicking-in or notching with a spade or mattock was the general method of planting. For example, at Hafod ‘A man with a spade, holding the edge towards him, makes a cut of about six inches deep if there is that depth of soil; he then turns the spade the right way and makes a cut across the end of the other thus -, he then works his spade backwards and forwards three or four times, to loosen the mold for the roots of the plants to grow therein. A boy attends with a bundle of trees, to assist every man: the boy puts one tree in each hole, and presses with his foot the turf hard about the roots, to make the tree firm’. Which is a technique still in use today. * Transactions of the Roy.Soc.Arts. 20 (1802), 182-90

Plant spacing varied with the species and size of the planting stock. In the earlier plantings on the Hafod estate, two-year seedling larch were planted at 2 x 2ft, one year transplants, transplants at 2½ x 2½ft, and larger plants at 3½ x 3½ft. With the youngest plants, this gave a planting density of about 10000 plants per acre, in the later years, larch was planted at 4000 plants per acre. Also at Hafod ash 1 – 3ft high were planted 6 – 8ft a part and oak at 1 – 2ft high at 4 – 5ft. Linnard W. ‘Thomas Johnes…. ‘Forestry, 44, (1971), 139-40.

At Hafod he employed a dry stone waller to enclose the woodland within walls five foot high and the services of a man who inspected the plantations every day.

Fact File 3 – Thomas Johnes’ Emblem

It is of more than a passing interest that the emblem of Thomas Johnes printing press at Hafod incorporates a tree-plant spade. The emblem, shows two shaking hands (friendship?), a planting spade, a ‘horn of plenty with flowers, a candle (representing learning?), an oak chaplet; trees and a depiction of the Hafod landscape. At the top is the motto: ‘Fide et Industria’ (Friendship and Hardwork).

Fact File 4

Hafod

Frail architecture, its fine lines razed
from the tangled pleasure grounds below the ridge,
where the idea of a house is stronger
than walls, a fallen roof, temple and bridge.
Even the waterfall, Laporte’s engraving
or the real thing after heavy rain, reflects
stonework and windows of a house
turned to a memory of the picturesque
young Turner painted; or Coleridge, passing this way
from Devil’s Bridge over the mountain track,
astonished, perhaps by a glimpse of Xanadu
one afternoon two hundred summers back.

Here Thomas Johnes’ dream grew tall,
the wilderness flowering in his mind………
driven by visions of a great estate
rising above the river under Pumlumon,
his mountains clothed in larch and oak and ash,
three million reddening in late November sun……..
All gone, but the idea of quiet rooms,
the octagon library under its cupola
where he worked late on manuscripts,
their words flickering under the candelabra.
The end of the line………..
His fortune spent, a house and a class
in ruins……..

Extracts from ‘Five Fields’ by Gillian Clarke
Carcanet Press Ltd
1998
Copyright: G. Clarke

References and Bibliography

The author of this text is indebted to Professor John Matthews CBE for providing the basic outline of Thomas Johnes life. Also to Simon Fordham OBE, Centre Director & Head of Environment RSA Wales and the West of England for inviting him to write the article. To Nicola Allen, Archivist & Records Manager at the Royal Society of Arts for providing information on Thomas Johnes from the Society’s archives. To Richard Crompton of Forest Enterprise/Hafod Trust for information about the Hafod Trust and Conservation Partnership.

All errors and opinions are however the author’s.

Bibliography

Grigson G (1949) Places of the Mind Routledge & Kegan Paul
Ingrams R & Piper J (1983) Piper’s Places, Chatto & Windus/Hogarth Press, ISBN 0 7011 2550 0
Linnard, W. (1971) Forestry 44 Journal of the Royal Forestry Society pp139-140
Linnard W. (2000) Welsh Woods and Forests – A History, Gomer Press, ISBN 1 85902 864 0
Gibson W. (1990) Thomas Johnes of Hafod Royal Society of Arts Journal (Study Group for the Society’s History) ISBN 0958-0433
The Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorian (1959) Ed. Sir J. E. Lloyd, Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940, B. H. Blackwood Ltd
Society of Arts (1800) Transactions Vol 18 pp81 – 83
Society of Arts (1800) Transactions Vol 18 pp134 139
Society of Arts (1801) Transactions Vol19 pp78 -81
Society of Arts (1802) Transactions Vol 20 pp182 -191
Society of Arts (1805) Transactions Vol 23 pp 26 -29
Society of Arts (1810) Transactions Vol 28 pp30 – 32

Source of illustrations

1. Thomas Johnes by W. Worthington after Stothard
2. The Woods of Hafod by John Warwick Smith 1795
3. The Hafod Estate Today – Forest Enterprise/Hafod Trust
4. Emblem of Thomas Johnes’ press in W. Linnard, Welsh Woods & Forests, Gomer Press, 2000