Noteworthy naturalist
Thomas Walford (1752-1833) Antiquary, Geologist and Soldier
Thomas was born on 14th September 1752; baptised on 16th October 1752 in St. Augustine church Birdbrook, Essex and died on 6th August 1833 and buried in Birdbrook church.
The Walford family had purchased the moated Whitley House, dating from the 1200s, in 1657. His parents were Thomas Walford (1724-1756) and Elizabeth Spurgeon (1725- 1789) of Linton, Cambridgeshire who were married in Birdbrook in 1745. He had an older sister Elizabeth who was born in 1750 and married Allen Taylor of Wimbish Hall.
Thomas served in the Militia from 1777 and, following the threat of invasion as a result of the French Revolutionary Wars he became a captain in the provisional cavalry in 1797, and rapidly promoted to major. He was appointed deputy lieutenant of the county in 1778 He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (1788); a fellow of the Linnean Society (1797); a member of the Geological Society (1814), and a fellow of the Geological Society (1825).
Thomas published several papers in Archaeologia, Vetusta monumenta, and Transactions of the Linnean Society, including an account of a Roman tessellated pavement at Colchester; Roman antiquities discovered at Toppesfield; a Roman Military way in Essex and Roman antiquities found near it; a stone hammer found at Clare castle; the site of Camulodunum; and an account of nine copper vessels found near the Roman Road at Sturmer, Essex. He also published a note on an insect that destroys wheat, supposed to be wireworm, and penned a letter on using mud as a manure.
He left several manuscripts, including a history of Birdbrook in Essex and another of Clare in Suffolk. The Geological Society holds an 1811 manuscript on the mineralogy of Birdbrook and three paintings of fossils, executed by James Sowerby, from the drift there, by James Sowerby (1757-1822) with pencil notes by George Bellas Greenough (1778-1855).
His most important publication was probably the two volume The Scientific Tourist through England, Wales, and Scotland (1818). In this he very briefly described the antiquities, statistics, minerals, fossils and plants in Great Britain, arranged by county. Plate 13 naively depicts a Saxon Camp at Witham, Essex in 1775. He gives several useful collecting and travelling tips, such as 'A sportsman or ornithologist will not forget his gun' or 'If the tourist is fond of good living, a bottle of fish source put into his portmanteau will be very useful.' Walford's short account of his native county of Essex mentions the Danes Holes at Grays Thurrock; Purfleet chalk quarries and the Witham chalybeate spring. Thomas states the minerals of the county include flint, chalk, blue, red and white clay; and also found 'Upon the seashore between Little Holland and Harwich, copper pyrites, and selenite called here Frinton glass, from being most plentiful opposite that village.' Thomas believed the most valuable fossil found is the left-turned whelk found in the cliffs of Harwich and Walton and also gives a list of fossil shells found at these localities. He adds that the bones of stag, Irish elk, hippopotamus, rhinoceros and elephant are found in Walton cliffs; and that the chalk pits at Purfleet and adjoining villages produce a variety of sea-urchins. He refers, citing Sowerby's British Mineralogy, to striped flints at Woodford. He concludes his account of Essex with a two-page list of rare plants.
Thomas Walford greatly embellished and improved the Whitley estate by various ornamental plantations and a screen of firs and forest trees, combined with sycamores, chestnuts, larches extended from the house to a small hill, planted with cedars, cypresses, and laurels. An 1804 copper engraving shows his Hermitage in Whitley Garden, Birdbrook, Essex. Dugdale's The New British Traveller (1819) tells us 'the hermitage, agreeably situated amongst the trees, consists of three circular apartments. It is built with rag-stone, timber, and the bark of trees: the whole covered with thatch, paved with pebbles and tiles, and rusticated with moss, & c.'
Walford died, a bachelor, at Whitley, Birdbrook on 6th August 1833. In his will he left a life interest in his property to his sister and then his grandson Thomas Selby. He bequeathed £2,000 to Enoch Fitch, his manservant of 30 years, as well as beds, bed linen, chests, a looking glass and all beers and spirits. Thomas stipulated a hatchment was to be hung in the church, which is still there, and left precise details where he was to be buried and the exact wording for his monument as follows: Sacred to the Memory of Thomas Walford of Whitley in this Parish Esquire. One of His Majesty's Deputy Lieutenants for the County of Essex. Fellow of the Antiquarian, Linnean, and Geological Societies of London.
Sources
Anon. 1833. Obituary. Gentleman's Magazine Vol. 103 (1) p. 469.
Carlyle, E.I. revised by J. A. Marchand. 2004. Thomas Walford (1752'“1833). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Crouch, P (No date). St. Augustine Church Birdbrook, Essex Guidebook. 20 pages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Walford
http://www.birdbrook.net/21.html
Will and Codicil Public Record Office. PROB 11/1822, sig. 608