The landscape of ‘Phinny Animals’: fish husbandry at Rufford Abbey 1700–1743

Elements of the eighteenth-century water management system at Rufford Abbey, a significant Nottinghamshire estate and once Cistercian monastery, are still visible in its landscape. From estate plans, accounts and correspondence it has been possible to reconstruct an extensive water system developed by Sir George Savile, 7th Baronet, and his estate servants during the baronet’s ownership (1700–1743). This landscape of water was part of a complex demesne landscape encompassing pleasure grounds, spring woods and parkland which fulfilled multiple functions. Central to these was the management of fish. The present paper looks at the many ways in which Sir George improved and extended the fish habitat he inherited and his motives for doing so, weighing them against practices promoted in agricultural treatises of the period. It draws attention to the collaborative nature of this enterprise, involving as it did successive stewards, gardeners, carpenters, at one stage a consultant, and the baronet himself, whose scientific and practical understanding fed into the design process. It concludes that carp husbandry was of enormous significance to the cultural geography and identity of the Rufford Estate in the first half of the eighteenth century and suggests, contrary to prevailing chronologies, that water continued to be managed for the supply of fish well into the eighteenth century.