Rutland Local History and Record Society on Richard Westbrook Baker’s silver plough

Richard Westbrook Baker was born in Baldock in Hertfordshire in 1797 and he came to Rutland to start work on the Exton Estate in November 1814, writes Rutland Local History and Record Society.

In spite of having been warned in a letter from his somewhat unpredictable employer, Sir Gerard Noel Noel, that he was never to be promoted further ’to prevent you from having the least expectation of such a thing’ on the retirement of the incumbent Mr Dollin, he was appointed estate steward in 1828.

In the 1830s with falling prices for agricultural products after the Napoleonic wars and widespread poverty in the countryside, improvements in farming methods were widely seen as the best way to increase the income on landed estates. In this respect the Noels could hardly have appointed a better agent.

Richard Westbrook Baker took on the challenge of agricultural and social reform on the Rutland estates with great enthusiasm and energy. His own farm between Cottesmore and Exton with its level fields and good soils was an ideal place to demonstrate improved methods of farming to the tenants on the estate.

In 1827 he had already set up a ploughing competition on his land, the beginnings of an annual event held in the autumn, where he could show his guests new cultivations, the advantages of good drainage and other advances in arable farming and stockbreeding.

Richard Baker himself entered the competitive ploughing matches and he was famous locally for developing the Rutland Plough, a new type of plough, which had a mechanism allowing it to be adapted to serve on both light soils and heavy clay.

In 1847 the event was wound up and Baker was presented with a silver replica of the Rutland Plough at the last meeting held in Oakham. However, ploughing meetings run by other societies carried on in Rutland and indeed, are still held today. Richard Westbrook Baker died in 1861.

‘Improving Agriculture in Nineteenth Century Rutland’ by Vanessa Doe, published by Rutland History Society, charts the life and achievements of Richard Westbrook Baker and is available to read free of charge on the society’s website at www.rutlandhistory.org

If you are interested to find out more about Rutland’s past or join its history society, go to: www.rutlandhistory.org.