Cobbett was an English radical pamphleteer, journalist, author, politician and farmer born. in Farnham Surrey. This article is from the Parish Magazine, October 2023, where Jackie Rickenberg reveals the author's 'slight obsession with turnips'!
The following piece is from an article headlined “Delights on Thursley History”, date, author
and origin unknown
.
William Cobbett at Thursley
One of the best-known writers who have visited Thursley was William Cobbett, the author of “Rural Rides”. Cobbett was born in 1762 at The Jolly Farmer in Farnham, and this was, therefore, more or less his home county. He spent some time in America and on his return wrote many political and other pamphlets. He was an ardent reformer, and never hesitated to say exactly what he thought. Any cause he took up he championed with his whole soul.
At the beginning of the last century a mighty controversy was raging in farming circles as to whether seeds should be sown, broadcast (a method of seeding that involves scattering seed over a relatively large area) or drilled. Cobbett believed in drilling and recommended this method as he went up and down the country. In the course of his rides, he frequently came to Thursley, where he stayed with his friend Mr Knowles (at Heath Hall). He always mentions Thursley as “this beautiful village” and he describes the land as “some of the very best barley-land in the kingdom………finer barley and turnip land it is impossible to see”. But Thursley farmers would broadcast their turnips. On August 7th 1823, he writes “The turnips cannot fail to be good in such a season and on such land; yet the farmers are most dreadfully tormented with the weeds, and with the super-abundant turnips. They have sown their fields broadcast; they have no means of destroying the weeds by the plough”. Two days later he contrasts the crops here with those in Reigate, where they followed his advice and drilled their turnips. “At Thursley I left the turnip-hoers poking and pulling and mudding about the weeds, and wholly incapable, after all, of putting the turnips in anything like the state in which they ought to be…… In leaving Reigate this morning I saw a field of Swedish turnips, drilled upon ridges at about four feet distance, the whole field as clean as the cleanest of garden ground. A crop twice as large as any in the parish of Thursley. It seems strange, that men are not to be convinced of the advantage of the row-culture for turnips”.
Cobbett was also an enthusiastic admirer of the locust or acacia tree, and introduced it from America. This is a very hard wood and was valuable for making pins for ship building. He persuaded Mr Knowles to plant some, and he himself planted those which still stand opposite the Post Office at Thursley. Although Cobbett brought in these trees for patriotic reasons, they were never required, for iron had replaced wood for ship building before they were mature.
The William Cobbett pub in Farnham, Surrey