During the seventeenth century, the British upper and middle classes began to tour Britain. Better roads and the availability of maps made travel easier and safer, but the main impetus seems to have been pride in the greatness of England and a curiosity about both the old and the new. It became a popular occupation among those who could afford it to travel for weeks or months, exploring their own country. The keeping of diaries and travel journals was fashionable, and many travellers kept records of their impressions, even if they did so only for their own future reference.
In 1695, Cassandra Willoughby, then aged 25, began a series of journeys with her younger brother. Belonging to a generation that was beginning to discover England, she travelled for pleasure, taking equal interest in a stately home one day and a manufacturing process the next, recording the details of her travels in a journal. An unusual independence created by a particular set of circumstances of birth, education, early loss of father, and late marriage may have enabled Willoughby to travel more widely than the majority of her contemporaries and a sharp intelligence, coupled with a wide-ranging and scientific education make her journal of particular interest to twentieth century readers.
Over the next 15 years Willoughby travelled extensively through England. Her trips took her through most of the south-east and central counties of England and as far north as Yorkshire; she never went to Scotland and only ventured into Wales as far as Monmouth.
The journals of Cassandra Willoughby and Celia Fiennes are, so far as I am aware, the only secular journals of travel in Britain by women to have survived from this period. Willoughby's journal has only recently come to light. As well as her travel writings, Willoughby also wrote a two-volume family history and left behind an extensive correspondence. I have recently edited a critical edition of Willoughby's travel journal covering the period 1695 - 1718.
Willoughby was a woman of firm opinions with clear ideas about what pleased or displeased her. Aware of current trends in building and architecture, she nevertheless had her own views and was not afraid to criticise or to express her own judgement on what she saw. The breathless enthusiasm and disarming directness with which she expressed herself draws the reader into an imaginative experience of participating in the writer's journeys, seeing the world through her eyes.
This paper will focus on Cassandra Willoughby's travel writings, setting them within the wider context of tourism and conditions of travel in Britain during the early eighteenth century.
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