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The Travels of Joseph Woods, Architect and Botanist, in 1809 (Author: Joseph Woods)

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A Scientific Tour through Munster: The Travels of Joseph Woods, Architect and Botanist, in 1809

Joseph Woods (1776–1864) visited Ireland from July to October 1809. Two fellow naturalists, L. W. Dillwyn and W. E. Leach, accompanied him from Waterford to Killarney where he remained for a time before making his way northwards, through Limerick and Clare, for a brief visit to Connemara, returning by roughly the same route. Woods' narrative contains many interesting observations on local antiquities, topography and natural history together with occasional comments on social conditions.

On July 7, 1809, three British naturalists sailed from Swansea to Checkpoint in Co. Waterford, and, from a diary kept bygone of the group, Lewis Dillwyn,1 we know that it was their intention to travel on to Limerick. Though Dillwyn provides only the surnames of his companions, they have been identified as William Leach2 and Joseph Woods. That the latter also left a record of his visit did not become known until recently, when it was observed that the anonymous author of Bradshaw Add. MS 43 4233 refers to the friends who accompanied him to Ireland in the summer of 1809 as Dillwyn and Leach. The party reached Killarney on July 19 and a week later Woods, for reasons of health, decided to remain there for a time; as a result his companions cut short their visit and returned to Wales on July 31. Woods stayed in the Killarney area until August 23 and then travelled slowly northwards through Tralee and Tarbert to Limerick, where he remained for some ten days before moving into Co. Clare. From Ennis he continued to Lisdoonvarna, via Milltown Malbay, and traversed the Burren en route to Kinvara. Following a brief visit to Connemara his return journey, which was equally unhurried, brought him again through Galway, Limerick and Cork to Waterford where, in the latter half of October, he embarked for Milford Haven. (See map, Illus. 1) Joseph Woods (Illus. 2) was born of Quaker stock in Stoke Newington, London, on August 24, 1776. He attended a Friends' school in Tottenham where Dillwyn, whose family also belonged to the Society, was a fellow pupil. Woods' formal education appears to have ended at the age of thirteen when he was sent to Folkestone, in the company of Dillwyn, for the benefit of his health. Woods was to take an enduring interest in his physical condition and maintain a careful record of it until his death at the age of eighty-seven. In 1792 he joined a firm at Dover in order to gain commercial experience, with a view, presumably, to entering his father's export business. Woods proved to have little aptitude


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for trade, however, and soon relinquished the position in favour of Dillwyn. It was at this time that the two men began to pay particular attention to the study of plants. At the age of twenty-two Woods decided to pursue an interest in design and entered on a period of study with a London architect. He subsequently established his own practice but, in 1816, following an unfortunate structural failure which involved him in costly litigation, he left England. He spent the next three years on the continent where he gave his time to the study of botany and architecture. His observations in the latter regard were published in 1828 under the title Letters of an Architect from France, Italy and Greece.

On his return to England Woods did not resume practice; instead, being possessed of private means, he devoted himself to his interest in plants. In 1833 he took up residence with his sister in Lewes, and began work on a comprehensive manual of field botany. For this purpose, in addition to excursions in Britain, he revisited the continent in 1836, 1843 and 1844. His book, entitled The Tourist's Flora: A descriptive Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the British Islands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the Italian Islands, appeared in 1850; he was engaged in a revision of the work at the time of his death in 1864. During his years in London, Woods had assisted in the management of a number of schools and this led him to take an interest in the activities of the Irish Board of National Education, established in 1831. He crossed to Dublin on June 5, 1840, and between then and August 26 visited schools in counties Dublin, Down, 'Derry, Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Galway, Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, Kilkenny and Wicklow. The observations which he made in the course of this journey were published in the following year.4 At the age of seventy-nine Woods again travelled to Ireland, but on this occasion his energies were devoted to plant collecting in the south-west, and in the account subsequently published5 he refers to the visit of 1809. His narrative of that visit makes it clear that his principal aims were to provide a topographical account of the country travelled, record the occurence of interesting plants and comment on buildings of note.

In his observations on scenery, Woods emphasises the importance of woodland as a component of the visual environment, and in this regard his disenchantment with the Irish countryside is a recurrent theme. At Ennistymon, for example, he remarks ‘Nature has been favourable but the usual complaint occurs of want of wood’and of Connemara he comments ‘Here are rock, mountain and water in great perfection, what a pity that the fourth ingredient of natural landscape should be lacking’. Ideally, however, the landscape should also give evidence of human activity — writing of Kenmare he observes ‘Nature seems to have done everything possible to form some of her loveliest scenes in this valley, it wants nothing but what man can do, more wood and scattered trees and the lines of a more perfect cultivation’. Indeed, on another occasion, he gives it as his opinion that ‘it is not mere wood which gives richness to English landscape but the mixture of wood, cultivation and habitation — the hedge rows, and the trees in them, the sheltered villages and farm houses with their orchards, and the Spire embosomed in Elms or Eughs. There is nothing of all this in the generality of Irish scenery’. In the contemporary conflict of opinion concerning landscape aesthetics, it is clear that Woods had greater partiality for the perspective of Arthur Young's tours than for that of William Gilpin's.

Despite this preoccupation with paysage, Woods does offer some observations on the social conditions then obtaining in Ireland. His commentary is the more valuable because he does not appear to have shared the strong racist and sectarian prejudices of his travelling companion, Dillwyn. He was, for instance, sympathetically disposed towards Catholic emancipation and showed an interest in the material welfare of the population. The fact that his mother's people, a family named Hoare, had Irish connections may have influenced


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his attitude. His interest in architecture led him to devote considerable space to accounts of public buildings and gentlemen's seats, in addition to ecclesiastical and other antiquities; though these commentaries have been superseded to an extent, it has nonetheless been decided to retain them here. Further topics touched upon range from a local folk-tale to a description of keening at a funeral. He displays unusual appreciation of the social mechanisms that were already in operation prior to the Famine, and forecasts, albeit not quite accurately, that ‘when the annual produce of the country can increase no longer’ growth in numbers will result in ‘a vast population, starving, ignorant & extremely discontented’.

However, given Woods' opportunities to record his impressions of the people among whom he lived for upwards of three months, it has to be said that his narrative leaves a good deal to be desired. His curiosity in the realm of social customs and conditions is limited, his information is often derivative and his style generally pedestrian. In comparison with Dillwyn, who had an eye — clouded, sadly, by prejudice on occasion — for original detail, Woods appears earnest, well-meaning and rather colourless.

That Woods wrote the account of his visit with a view to publication may reasonably be concluded from the fact that, on a number of occasions, he addresses himself to ‘the reader’ and from his statement ‘I do not presume in this little essay founded on so short a stay in the country to give a complete account even of the small part of the Island which I visited. I only endeavour by my mite of information to add to the little knowledge we possess of the country’. From internal evidence it is clear that the manuscript is no more than a preliminary draft, and it would appear that Woods, for reasons unknown, left it as such.

It should be noted that, as presented here, Woods' manuscript has been pruned to about three-quarters of its original extent by omitting his lengthy scenic descriptions and geological observations together with derivative or inconsequential material; punctuation has been amended in a number of instances, but these nowhere merit editorial comment. The pagination of the manuscript is somewhat ambiguous because two numbering sequences have been employed, one referring apparently to folios, the other to individual pages. The latter system has been adopted here and the original page numbers are incorporated, in square brackets, within the text; the addition of the letter 'A' indicates the repetition of a page number in the original. Editorial deletions are reflected by hiatus of varying extent in the sequence of bracketed numbers. Supplementary notes which occur at the end of the manuscript are inserted at relevant points in the text, with their pagination also in square brackets.

Acknowledgements

For their kind assistance, we wish to express our sincere thanks to Mr. T. Collins, The Hardiman Library, University College, Galway; Dr P. De Brún, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies; Dr D. Dickson, Trinity College, Dublin; Miss G. Douglas, The Linnean Society of London; Mr F. Gillespie, National Library of Ireland; Dr J. T. D. Hall, Edinburgh University Library; Mr K. Hannan, Limerick; Mr M. Joyce, Bruree, Co. Limerick; Dr E. MacLysaght, Tuamgraney, Co. Clare; Mr P. Melvin, Oireachtas Library; Miss M. O'Dwyer, Cork County Library (Midleton Branch); Mr D. Ó Lúanaigh, National Library of Ireland; Mr D. Pyke, Clonmel, and Dr K. Whelan, National Library of Ireland.