Situated on the
north bank of the River Rib is Youngsbury. This cache and others in this series
form a loop around Youngsbury.
Youngsbury late 18th century
Youngsbury consists of an 18th-century park and
woodland with 4 hectares of garden around the house, the front part
of which is dated 1745, the back early 19th century, with
18th-century stables. There are
extensive 16th to 18th-century walled kitchen gardens, an
arboretum, an icehouse and tumuli and Roman barrows within the
grounds, which extend to the river Rib. Capability Brown's
involvement included widening the river and creating two islands,
designing a ha-ha and placing small groups of trees in open
parkland. Nineteenth-century development of the kitchen garden was
re-created in the late 20th century, with notable mixed borders.
There is a moat and church in a bend of the river on the southern
edge of the parkland.
The meadows around
Youngsbury were captured in oils by
Alfred Augustus Glendenning.
There have been
several illustrious occupants of Youngsbury. In the 18th century David
Barclay, of the Quaker banking and brewing family, was resident at
Youngsbury. David Barclay had Thomas
Young as an educational companion to his grandson Hudson Gurney.
Thomas Young was a polymath who mastered greek, latin and
several middle eastern languages in his youth, and later went on to
be a physician. Thomas Young is more popularly known for his
contributions in physics in the areas of optics (Young’s fringes)
and materials science (Young’s modulus of elasticity). He is
reputed to have read over a thousand books in his lifetime on
diverse subjects.
Slavery was also
not far from the surface at Youngsbury
either. In the time of David Barclay, not only had Thomas Young
forsaken products from the West Indes,
but David Barclay spent £3000 on liberating 30 slaves from a
property in Jamaica that had fallen to him. Later, another occupant
of Youngsbury, Arthur Giles-Puller,
commissioned, at his own cost, the monument in nearby
Wadesmill to Thomas Clarkson, the
slavery abolitionist.
If you look
carefully at this picture, you can see that there are two almost
invisible figures hovering diffidently on the path in the left
background. It is believed, from a press article of the time, that
they are estate workers from Youngsbury. Interestingly, considering the
occasion, one of these gentlemen is black.
This cache can be
combined with other caches nearby to form a walk of
under 3 miles. The caches in the
loop are:-
Thundridge Old Church
Global Village (UK)
Youngsbury
Clarkson