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Domesday Book, England, 1086: Earliest record of 'county surveying' as an administrative function
Table of Surveying, from the 1728 Cyclopaedia, Volume 2.
George Washington Masonic National Memorial
King Aethelstan and Saint Cuthbert
John Smith 1624 map of Bermuda
The 'marvellous stone bow bridge' at Pontypridd
Construction of a macadam road, "Boonsborough Turnpike Road" between Hagerstown and Boonsboro, Maryland, 1823. Inspired by the work of John Loudon McAdam.

1. A county surveyor is a public official in many counties of the USA. At the bottom of this page are working "External Links" as at 4 November 2011 to websites of a selection of such County Surveyor's departments. Most of these officials are elected on the partisan ballot to four-year terms. They administer the county land survey records, establish and maintain the survey monuments, and review property boundaries surveys and subdivision plans. Other duties vary from state to state. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are nominated by the National Association of County Surveyors (NACS).[1]

2. NACS is part of the National Association of Counties of the USA (NACo).[2] The NACo website sets out the history of county government in the USA, tracing it back to Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Norman feudalism, and the increasingly "plural executive structure" commissioned by the Crown to defend the peace and enforce the complex of chivalric, common, and statutory laws of England up to the time of the first county government formed in America (County of James City, Virginia).[3] This triad of origins is fundamental to understanding the organisation role that county surveying plays in the administration and development of the real estate of many states and nations around the world, even though sometimes it goes by other names. It was the framework that the King of England applied to his colonies in America and sufficiently successful as to have since been adopted by states that were not former English or British colonies.[4]

3. In 1749, "an ambitious George Washington", aged 17, was appointed as the Surveyor-General for Virginia by the College of William and Mary, and became the first registered County Surveyor in America (Culpeper County, Virginia).[5] So, the composition of the duties and the required capacities expected by the King of both a 'state surveyor-general' and a 'county surveyor', and the means of qualifying, chartering and commissioning persons for them, were already tried and tested aspects of county governance by the English Crown. However there is very little available pertinant documentary evidence of any such established organisation in England attached to the Crown at this time.

4. A clue to this organisation may lie in the well-known fact that George Washington was not only one of the most famous colonial County Surveyors of America; but one of its most famous Freemasons.[6] According to Jessica Harland Jacobs' study of Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717-1927, freemasonry "had a strong presence in the official institutions of empire"; "simultaneously helping construct its architecture and constitute its ruling establishment"; and "the imperial state itself was obligated to Masonry for its influence upon the conduct of public servants".[7]

5. England, as we know it today, was born of imperialism and colonisation (by the Romans) and subjected to waves of further imperialism and colonisation (Angles), (Saxons) and (Normans), before the homogeneity necessary for what the NACo website calls the 'plural executive structure' of English county governance to flourish; and there is substantial evidence of freemasonry having become engrained in England long before the formation of the Grand Lodge in 1717. Indeed, Harland Jacobs picks up on some masons feeling so 'anciently justified' that, after the First World War of the 20th century, they envisaged English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry as "the guardian of the post-war world".[8]

6. The earliest known masonic document[9] (c.1390, and believed to cite (an) even earlier document(s)) refers to freemasonry in Anglo-Saxon England in the reign of Æthelstan (924/5 - 939). It refers to a confidential, 'counterfeit', guild of masons, called a 'craft', involving the entire hierarchy of Anglo-Saxon central and local government - the king, 'lords', 'dukes', 'earls', 'barons', 'knights', 'squires', 'burgesses' and 'aldermen' - maintained at county level by 'the sheriff of that country' (sic)[10] and at city level by 'the mayor of that city' (to this very day, the building representing the ceremonial and administrative seat of local government of the City of London in England is known by its ancient, Anglo-Saxon name, guildhall, as in many other such centres in England and Wales, e.g., Windsor Guildhall). This document's link to surveying is that it praises the Euclidian invention and promulgation of geometry (Ancient Greek: γεωμετρία; geo- "earth", -metria "measurement"). According to the Masonic Dictionary, "Geometry ... is the science upon which [freemasonry] is founded."[11]

7. That manuscript, together with some 37 other documents, overall collectively known as the Old Charges[12] reveal as explained in the Foreword of the January 1915 edition of the National Masonic Research Society journal, 'The Builder', "that the Craft-lodges of the olden time were in fact schools, in which young men studied not only the technical laws of building, but the Seven Sciences (namely, Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy)[11] and the history and symbolism of the Order...and such as betrayed no aptitude for the intellectual aims of the Craft were allowed to go back to the Guilds".[13]

8. Such organisation was probably deemed necessary for governance, defence, well-being, and improvement of the realm under the laws of chivalry and commons that applied then (particularly the trimoda necessitas in the history of English land law) and emerged more into the open in the late 16th century / early 17th due initially to the need of the Crown for additional 'royal' qualified surveyors arising from the Bridges Act 1530, Supremacy Act 1534, Dissolution of the Monasteries 1536-1541, Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, Tudor conquest of Ireland 1541-1607, Highways Acts 1555-1562 and the start of development of the British Empire abroad with Virginia (1583 charter of Elizabeth I to Sir Walter Raleigh and 1606 charter of James I to the Virginia Company), then increasingly as they 're-discovered' the Anglo-Saxon tastes for technical capacity building and chivalric trinoda necessitas.

9. The lack of written evidence about the influence of freemasonry in this era can be explained by the need to keep it confidential for the sake of the guild and for the sake of the nation's defence, but also, as John Fichen explains, "the 'gentlemen' of each era have traditionally shown their superiority by denigrating the artisan and relegating him to an inferior status in society ... What they did not understand they either ignored or belittled. This patronising attitude ... has prevailed everywhere, in almost all eras and civilized cultures ... between those who worked with their hands ... and those who talked and/or wrote." and he cites Leonardo da Vinci's outrage at this treatment as an example.[14] Such a consideration could not touch on the self-esteem of county surveyors as they were "esquires" of the crown and as such, higher in the social pecking order of medieval England than "gentlemen". In his Preface, Fichen explains thus how he has coped with the research difficulty of lack of written evidence - "Lacking ordinary types of documentation, authentication has had to rely to a large extent on inference and deduction, on reasoning and informed common sense."

10. The 'matter-of-factness'/'matter-of-necessariness' of the presence/utility of freemasonry comes out quite remarkably in Harland Jacobs' 'Builders of Empire'; as too does the apparently automatic membership of the Crown's local 'Surveyor-General' to the most respectable lodges of the colonies.[15] The defensive role of the trimoda necessitas is clearly apparent in the John Smith 1624 map of Bermuda showing its fortified and unfortified buildings, artillery emplacements, roads, bridges, waterways and watch tower. Noteworthily, the State House (bottom left detail of the map) has been "rented by the government to the local Freemasons for...one peppercorn annually" since state government business moved from St Georges to Hamilton in 1815.[16]

11. It would be wrong to suggest that there was much science behind the architecture and engineering of this era: 'design successes' often arose more by luck than judgement, as exemplified by the history of the Old Bridge, Pontypridd in Wales, which took over 100 years for the original commission to be fulfilled, including four unsuccessful attempts by the 'bridge-building mason', William Edwards (his final one, a 'marvellous stone bow bridge', is a single span and incapable of carrying vehicular traffic, so didn't do the job that was asked).[17] Perhaps it was this aspect of 'modern' freemasonry that justified the so-called 'antients' calling it 'speculative' as distinct from 'operative'. The early colonisation of the Americas had a similarly 'speculative' feel, which, perhaps, explains why it resulted in the 'thirteen colonies' going to war to win their independence from the Crown.

12. Chapter V 'The Development of an Extra-Legal Constitution', of 'English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act: The Parish and The County' by Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter Web, describes the increasing chaos that began to prevail within this same period on the 'county surveying' front in England and Wales. Eventually, the military defence component of county surveying in the UK began to separate from the civil in 1791, with the Crown's 'Board of Ordnance' being commissioned to carry out a comprehensive survey of the South Coast of England[18] which, as a result of 'the last invasion of Britain 1797', at Fishguard in South West Wales [19] ultimately extended to all of the UK. With that shift in emphasis, county surveying began to concentrate more on its civil engineering and civic architecture roles, producing the historically famous British county surveyors such as Thomas Telford, John Loudon McAdam and John Nash[20]; the expression, "County Surveyor", became a UK statutory title (Bridges Act 1803); and, in England and Wales, its incumbents began serving elected councils under the Local Government Act 1888 rather than the Justices of the Peace.

13. The advent of World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, required considerable liaison between UK county surveyors and the Ministry of Defence (throughout WWII, the Ministry of Transport was termed the Ministry of War Transport), with the result that the 20th century became noteworthy for a rash of Official Secrets Acts and virtually every local authority in the country founding its own Freemasonry Lodge;[21] creating so much public and parliamentary paranoia that the 21st century began with the Local Government Act 2000 requiring elected council officials to declare their personal interests and affiliations, which though not overtly directed at freemasonry, was reminiscent of the Unlawful Societies Act 1799. The UK equivalent of NACS, the County Surveyors Society founded in 1885, was subsumed into the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) in 2010.[22]

California

Colorado

Florida

Idaho

Indiana

Michigan

Minnesota

Nebraska

Oregon

Utah

Washington

Wisconsin

References

  1. ^ http://www.uscounties.org/nacs/index.htm
  2. ^ http://www.naco.org/Pages/default.aspx
  3. ^ for related references to early county surveyor arrangements in Virginia see "Kegley's Virginia Frontier" by F.B.Kegley, originally published Roanoke, Virginia, 1938; reprinted Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc. Baltimore, 2003; Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. 2002114477; ISBN 0-8063-1717-5 (limited e-version available on 10 Nov 2011 at http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Kegley_s_Virginia_frontier.html?id=Bp0nOrLrPlYC&redir_esc=y)
  4. ^ http://www.naco.org/Counties/Pages/HistoryofCountyGovernmentPartI.aspx
  5. ^ http://www.surveysinc.com/history/surveyors.html
  6. ^ http://www.reversespins.com/masons.html
  7. ^ 'Builders of Empire - Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717-1927': Harland Jacobs, Jessica: 2007: The University of North Carolina Press: ISBN 978-0-8078-3088-8: pps.4, 163, 262
  8. ^ 'Builders of Empire - Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717-1927': Harland Jacobs, Jessica: 2007: The University of North Carolina Press: ISBN 978-0-8078-3088-8: pps.287-296
  9. ^ http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/regius.html
  10. ^ see note attached to definition of "country, n.I.2.a." viz., "formerly often applied to a county, barony, or other part": country, n: Oxford English Dictionary; Second edition, 1989; online version September 2011. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/43085>; accessed 10 November 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1893.
  11. ^ a b http://www.masonicdictionary.com/arts.html
  12. ^ http://www.rgle.org.uk/RGLE_Old_Charges.htm
  13. ^ http://www.masonicdictionary.com/jan1915a.html
  14. ^ 'Building construction before mechanization'; Fitchen, John; 1996; MIT Press; pps.15-16
  15. ^ 'Builders of Empire - Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717-1927': Harland Jacobs, Jessica: 2007: The University of North Carolina Press: ISBN 978-0-8078-3088-8: p.195
  16. ^ http://www.bermuda4u.com/Attractions/bermuda_attractions_old_state_house.html
  17. ^ p.103; 'English Local Government: The Story of the King's Highway'; Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter Webb; 1913; Longmans, Green and Co; London: Reprinted 2010 General Books, Memphis, Tennessee, USA; p.75
  18. ^ http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/about-us/our-history/index.html
  19. ^ http://www.fishguardonline.com/last_inv.html
  20. ^ 'The Life and Work of John Nash Architect' Summerson, John: 1980: George Allen & Unwin Ltd: England; 'John Nash - A Complete Catalogue': Mansbridge, Michael: 1991: Phaidon Press: London and New York; and 'John Nash Architect-Pensaer': Suggett, Richard: 1995: The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Aberystwyth; and, The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
  21. ^ http://www.archive.org/details/StephenKnight-TheBrotherhood-TheSecretWorldOfTheFreemasons PDF Version p.196
  22. ^ http://www.adeptnet.org.uk/

Category:Surveying Category:Government occupations Category:Local government in the United States Category:Land management Category:Real estate


Etymology of County

William the Conqueror (William I of England)
"Domesday Book", from Historic Byways and Highways of Old England (1900) ed. Andrew Williams

The word 'county' is of Anglo-Norman origin, a derivation of 'counté' (in the laws of William I), meaning, "the domain or territory of a count".[1] Prior to the 'Norman Conquest', English local government was already based on geographical territories called 'shires' governed by 'earls'. William the Conqueror claimed allodial title to all the shires he conquered and called them counties. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definition includes a note that, in ordinary English, the word may have originally only referred to land belonging to a French or other foreign count. This probably explains why states in the USA other than those that were colonised by the British adopted the term 'county' for their local government divisions. (NB, the OED describes "count" as a title of nobility in some European countries, corresponding to the English title "earl".)

Hundreds

Despite this change in the title of 'shires' to 'counties', the subdivisions with them retained their Anglo-Saxon title, 'hundred', as reflected in the inventory of the real estate of William I (William the Conqueror) in England and Wales known as the Domesday Book, as did many other aspects of local government in them, such as the titles of their governors, Sheriffs and Mayors, although William naturally ensured that the Anglo-Saxon incumbents of those titles were replaced by Anglo-Normans that he appointed as his chivalric civilian squires and military equerries for the enforcement of the trinoda necessitas, to establish and entrench Anglo-Norman feudalism and fealty within the real estate of England and Wales that came into his lawful possession on the day of his coronation and to which the Domesday Book proved his allodial title.

Hides

'Hundreds' were composed of 'hides', these being awards following successful military conquest to individual soldiers of sufficient land to sustain them and their family in reward for their service in battle. Ten of these were called a 'tithing'. They were called 'hides' because they resembled in plan view the irregular animal hides that soldiers carried with them to battle to sleep on at night. This indicates that these parcels of land were not regular in shape, unlike the blocks of land with boundaries of geometrical straight lines and angles that USA counties are generally comprised, because they were formed by mutual agreement between the adjoining tenants, arbitrated by the shire Mayor (originally meaning "Any of various officers with delegated jurisdiction or executive functions under the monarch or under some judicial authority" (OED), the boundary being known as the 'mere', "a boundary, a border; ... an object indicating a boundary, a landmark" (OED), rather than being set out with instruments and marked with monuments by a surveyor. Another quirk of this early english fraternal land law system was that the boundaries were malleable, in the sense that if the tenant of one hide had less family to feed than his neighbour, they could negotiate a deal whereby the one with less family would permit the one with more family to take over a part of his hide, with the Mayor arranging for the respective land taxes to be adjusted accordingly. Thus, even the boundaries of the 'tithings' and also the 'hundreds' were malleable in this sense, and even the 'shires' and 'counties'; for example, "the Domesday Book contained a radically different set of hundreds than that which later became established in many parts of the country"[2]. The conclusion we can draw from this is that the art of county surveying was not at that time one of the use of surveying instruments and formal monuments, but of 'stock-taking', drawing up qualitative and quantitative lists or inventories describing "what or how much each landholder had in land and livestock, and what it was worth" to determine "national land-tax (geldum) paid on a fixed assessment; certain miscellaneous dues; and the proceeds of the crown lands"[3].

Etymology of Surveyor

Considering the etymology of 'county' was the easy part. The etymology of 'surveyor' is very much more complicated, not least because it drifts into the esoteric and mysterious world of the guild of masons and the craft of freemasonry.

In addition to "county", the word "surveyor" is also Anglo-Norman, but developed a broader church of uses since introduced into the language, including (inter alia)[4] "One who has oversight or superintendence of a person or thing; an overseer, supervisor"; "As a title of officials in various departments, offices, or works; e.g. one who superintends construction of a building, administration of an office or department, collection of taxes, keeping of a structure in good order or repair"; "One who has oversight of lands and boundaries of an estate and its appurtenances"; "One who designs, and superintends construction of, a building; a practical architect"; "One whose business it is to survey land, etc.; one who makes surveys, or practises surveying"; "One whose business it is to inspect and examine land, houses, or other property and to calculate and report upon its actual or prospective value or productiveness for certain purposes"; "One who takes a mental view of something; an examiner, contemplator"; and, "Surveyor-general: a principal or head surveyor; one who has control of a body of surveyors, or general oversight of some business. Hence surveyor-generalship".

The last but one of these, "One who takes a mental view of something; an examiner, contemplator", is where the meaning starts blurring into the esoteric and mysterious.

Greek
Latin
Capital Asset
Safeguarding
Land Uses
Potential
Improvement of Capital Asset

Etymology of County Surveyor

Domesday Book

Qualitative Description of Capital Asset
Quantitative Description of Capital Asset
Writing resources
Inventory
Diagrams
Maps
Monuments
In the sky
On the earth
GIS
eGIS

California

Colorado

Florida

Idaho

Indiana

Michigan

Minnesota

Nebraska

Oregon

Utah

Washington

Wisconsin

References

  1. ^ "county, n.1": Oxford English Dictionary; Second edition, 1989; Online version September 2011. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/43102>; accessed 31 October 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1893.
  2. ^ Hundred (county subdivision)#England and Wales
  3. ^ Domesday Book#Purpose
  4. ^ "surveyor, n: Oxford English Dictionary online: Accessed 18 October 2011

Category:Surveying Category:Government occupations Category:Local government in the United States Category:Land management Category:Real estate





Scribblings only from here onwards

Fact 1. An Advanced Google Search undertaken on 01 November 2011 for the complete phrase "county surveyor" revealed that 146 of the 238 internet regions included in the Advanced Google Search Region Table list at least one webpage containing that phrase.

Fact 2. Of those, 22 each listed in excess of 1000 'hits' for that phrase: namely, United States (c.572,000); United Kingdom (c.136,000); Germany (c.45,800); Canada (c.14,300); Ireland (c.7,010); India (c.6,070); Poland (c.5,220); France (c.4,380); Netherlands (c.3,750); Ukraine (c.3,720); Japan (c.2,990); Spain (c.2,800); Italy (c.2,770); New Zealand (c.2,390); Russia (c.2,310); Australia (c2,020); Indonesia (c.1,730); Sweden (c.1,680); Austria (c.1,580); Hong Kong (c.1,220); Romania (c.1,220); and Brazil (c.1,190).

Fact 3. An Advanced Google Search undertaken on 02 November 2001 for the complete phrase "county surveyor" listed 'About 1,140,000 results', the first three being from Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_surveyor; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DadrianT.../County_Surveyor_draft_pag...; and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search?search=County%20surveyor).

Fact 4. The other seven 'hits' on the first page of the Advanced Google Search results were -

No 4. http://surveying-mapping-gis.blogspot.com/2010/01/antiquated-county-surveyor.html
No 5. http://www.archiveswales.org.uk/anw/get_collection.php?inst_id=40&coll_id=12118&expand=
No 6. http://a-day-in-the-life.powys.org.uk/eng/civ/ec_williams.php
No 7. http://nobleco.squarespace.com/surveyor/
No 8. http://countysurveyor.com/
No 9. http://www.shiawassee.net/Government/County-Surveyor
No 10. http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?coll_id=14266&inst_id=118&nv1=browse&nv2=sub

Fact 5. There is a US National Association of County Surveyors (NACS). Its website address is http://www.uscounties.org/nacs/index.htm. It is part of the US National Association of Counties (NACo) whose website is http://www.naco.org/Pages/default.aspx. The NACS website lists 15 links to "some of the more interesting County Surveyor's Web Sites around the country". They are - · El Dorado County, California · Orange County, California · St. Johns County, Florida · Ada County, ID · Hamilton County, IN · Dakota County, Minnesota · Washington County, Minnesota · Clackamas County, Oregon · Polk County, Oregon · Washington County, Oregon · Yamhill County, Oregon · Salt Lake County, Utah · Weber County, Utah · Snohomish County, Washington · Washington Council of County Surveyors (WCCS)

Fact 6. The NACo website includes a page 'About Counties' which contains links to pages about 'Overview of County Government', 'History of County Government Part I', 'History of County Government Part II', and 'History of County Government Part III' which contain particularly interesting information relevant to the history of county surveying, dating the origins back to the shires of Anglo-Saxon England, and the first significant change being the introduction of the Anglo-Norman system following the Norman Conquest (1066). But, despite that, the Overview and those Histories do not mention the title 'county surveyor'. However, a very important piece of information they contain is -

"County Origins

Settlers in North America brought with them a strong memory of, and attachment to, their English roots. Yet almost immediately this English experience began to be altered to suit the quite different living conditions both between America and England and within the colonial region itself.

The colonists’ collective memory of English county organization had roots nearly a millennium deep. When years still had only three digits, English kings had divided the country into districts called shires, a nomenclature that survives today in such place names as Yorkshire and Hampshire.

The shire was simply a mechanism for maintaining royal power in places distant from the throne. At the head of the shire was an earl appointed by the king; usually he was a large landholder, and he also commanded the king’s military forces in the shire. At a minimum, the earl was responsible for organizing and leading an armed force in the king’s service when called on to do so.

In local matters the Crown delegated considerable discretion to the earl and other shire officials. Generally both legislative and judicial authority rested with a shire court composed of local landholders. A shire-reeve (today’s sheriff) served as president of the shire court, tax collector, and steward of the royal estates in the shire. When church-related matters were at issue, the local bishop replaced the shire-reeve as president of the shire court.

This essential dichotomy—an agency of central authority acting in practice as a unit of local government—created a tension that persists into the 21st century.

The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 brought both superficial and substantive changes to the shire system. The name itself disappeared, replaced by the French county. Bishops lost their role in county administration, and “earl” became a title of nobility rather than a position of power. With the earl’s authority severely curtailed, the sheriff arose as the chief county official.

This situation persisted for centuries, until King Edward III (1327-1377) began a process of dividing local authority among officers. Edward created a new officer, the justice of the peace; each county had at least one, and some had as many as 60. Justices of the peace assumed many of the executive powers of the sheriff. The later creation of such new officers as coroner and constable further divided local executive authority.

Counties in America

If it was natural for settlers in America to bring with them the familiar English forms of government, it was equally natural that these forms would begin to change almost as soon as they were planted in American soil. The colonies, after all, had almost none of the uniformity of the English population and customs. They extended over a vastly broader landscape. Their people clung to the edge of a wilderness whose true size and content was almost entirely unknown. And these residents faced, not very far away, a variety of other peoples whose attitudes toward the newcomers ranged from indifference to outright hostility.

So the settlers both preserved and altered the forms to which they were accustomed."

Fact 7. County surveyors were appointed by the British Crown or its representative officers in the colonies (Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln were such [1]). So, county surveying must have been a fairly commonplace governance concept in England at the time of the colonization.




A Google Search on the term "county surveyor" on 31 October 2011 produced about 1.13 million results. In the UK alone, a Google Search on the same day produced about 135,000 results.

In the UK, 'County Surveyor' is the title of "the Surveyor of Bridges and other publick Works, in each and every County respectively within that Part of the United Kingdom called England, appointed or to be appointed by the Justices at any General Quarter Sessions of the Peace to be holden for such County" (Bridges Act 1803 (43 George III, Ch.59)). Elected County Councils did not exist in the UK until they were created under the Local Government Act 1888; and responsibilities of the Justices of the Peace for the administration of County Roads and Bridges was transferred to them, including the appointment of County Surveyors. .of elected County Councils when many of the practical duties of the Justices of the Peace were transferred to these new type of County authorities under the Local Government Act 1888

Etymology

The words 'county' and 'surveyor' pre-date the American War of Independence. There is one piece of dictionary evidence that the compound term 'county surveyor' also pre-dates that War (1949 William & Mary Quarterly. Vol 6 Page 430 "... the court was ordered to direct the county surveyor and a jury to lay out and procession the lands in question ...")[1].

County

The word 'county' is of Anglo-Norman origin, a derivation of 'counté' (in the laws of William I), meaning, "the domain or territory of a count".[2] Prior to the 'Norman Conquest', English local government was already based on geographical territories called 'shires'. William the Conqueror claimed allodial title to all the shires he conquered and called them counties.

Surveyor

The word 'surveyor' is also of Anglo-Norman origin, and has a broad range of meanings applicable in the context of the history of the occupation of 'county surveyor'.[3]

These include, in particular, "One who surveys"; "One who has the oversight or superintendence of a person or thing; an overseer, supervisor"; "As a title of officials in various departments, offices, or works; e.g. one who superintends the construction of a building, the administration of an office or department, the collection of taxes, the keeping of a structure in good order or repair"; "One who had the oversight of the lands and boundaries of an estate and its appurtenances"; "The or a principal magistrate of a town or district"; "One who designs, and superintends the construction of, a building; a practical architect"; "One whose business it is to survey land, etc.; one who makes surveys, or practises surveying"; "One whose business it is to inspect and examine land, houses, or other property and to calculate and report upon its actual or prospective value or productiveness for certain purposes".[4]

Only research and development notes from here on

County Surveyor is the title of a type of government official that originated in England in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, chartered and commissioned by William the Conqueror, as of the day of his coronation as King of England, with the object of establishing and entrenching Anglo-Norman feudalism within the real estate of Anglo-Saxon England and Wales that came into his ownership and control on the day of his coronation.

The Book of Winchester / Doomsday / Domesday Book

The term was probably first used in the Royal Warrant issued to the Privy Counselors and Military Officers that he chartered and commissioned as his esquires and equerries for the purposes of surveying and managing his newly-acquired real estate, and the trimoda necessitas[5] of bridge-bote, burghe-bote, and fyrd; and who, upon the twentieth anniversary of his coronation, presented him with the Book of Winchester, otherwise now known as the Doomsday Book or Domesday Book, a very substantial archive and inventory proving his allodial title as its feudal tenant-in-chief.

This was such a successful strategy that it was expanded to the whole of the British Isles in the ensuing six centuries by successive monarchs and exported to the whole of the British Empire in the two centuries following; and it prevails to the present day in many parts of the world.

Vassals have human rights too

King John signs the Magna Carta

County Surveyors continued to play a vital part in governance and management of the real estate of England.

The real estate was enlarged by William's ninth successor, Edward I of England, in 1283, to include all of England; and the terms of what Kings and County Surveyors could and could not expect of vassals were qualified, by negotiation, and enshrined in a series of Magna Cartas between 1215 and 1423.

Defiance of religious dictatorship

Henry VIII King of England 1491-1547

Henry VIII introduced qualifications by, Bridges, Union of England and Wales, Supremacy and Suppression Acts.

So, too, did his daughter, Elizabeth I, by two Highways Acts, to cope with the additional highway repairing obligations on the inhabitants that arose from her father's schism with the Pope and confiscation of the Roman Catholic Church's estates in England and Wales.

Enlarging the real estate portfolio

John Cabot's ship The Matthew

None of these Acts referred to any officer of the Crown by the name of County Surveyor, so it was still only a common law construct. Becoming statutory had to wait until the Bridges Act 1803[6], by which time the title had already been exported widely, to a quarter of the World's land surface and population by 1922.

County surveyor production lines

Somewhere, sometime, in the second half of sixteenth century Britain, it occurred to someone, probably Queen Elizabeth I in counsel with her privy Welsh secretary, William Cecil, that God could not, on his own, produce enough County Surveyors the old way, to fulfil the number of open vacancies in England and Wales as a result of the aforementioned measures her father had put on the statute books, let alone in the Kingdoms of Ireland and Scotland, and in Crown Colonies that looked likely to spring up in the New World, all potentially additional real estate of the Crown Head of Britain.

There were two types of county surveyor. The first being officers that were appointed under contracts for life enabling them to plan projects far into the future and maintain continuity of direction and succession towards the fulfilment of those projects, such as building new castles and palaces. The second being artisans, generally called freemasons, workers in stone who were free to move around from place to place, in the course of fulfilling their callings from information obtained by them from their network of fellow freemasons, due to the improving road network of Britain, and in Continental Europe.

The first category were already governed by their being required to swear a chivalric oath of allegiance to God, King, and Country, and to do their chivalric duty for the remainder of their lives, and by being rewarded by given both security of tenure of their office and the noble title of Esquire to a Knight, that being their King, as a Knight of the Garter.

So, official lodges of freemasons were set up in Britain, initially one covering England and Wales by 1721, under the Duke of Montagu; then one covering Ireland, founded around 1725, under the first Earl of Ross as Grand Master; both in the reign of George I; and finally, one covering Scotland, in 1736, under William St Claire of Roslin, in the reign of George II who played an active role in Freemasonry, though perhaps not as much the six sons of George III, including, in particular, the Prince Regent, George IV, who founded the Prince of Wales Lodge[7], probably to promulgate what he learnt from his close personal friend and architectural guide and mentor, John Nash.

These lodges accepted members as brethren-masons, both first and second category surveyors, subject to vivid, bloodthirsty oaths of allegiance and secrecy.

These oaths were absolutely necessary for defence of the realm in the absence of any other form of coersion of the design and construction superintendents of the Monarch's defensive fortifications throughout the land, for an enemy would only need to know, for example, from one or other of these categories of masons, which buttress of a structure to blow up for the building it was supporting to collapse inwards on key personnel who thought they were safely protected within it.

Modern practice in the UK

In the UK, the title County Surveyor has been abandoned since the reorganisations of local government of 1996/7 as its functions were transferred in each new county to teams of directors. They belong to the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport.[8]

Modern practice in the USA

A County Surveyor is a public official in many counties of U.S. states, particularly in the Midwest and West. He/she is typically responsible for survey records, establishing and maintaining survey monuments at corners of sections or other land units, and reviewing property boundary surveys and subdivision plans. The specific duties vary from state to state. Most of these County Surveyor positions are elected on the partisan ballot to four-year terms.

Local Government Act 1888

There was a further impetus in the prominence of this title in the UK following the Local Government Act 1888[9], by which councils were elected for each of the counties and county boroughs of england and wales, and, to them, were transferred all the practical local government functions undertaken previously by the justices of the peace.

These councils appointed professionally qualified staff to the Chief Officer posts, for the day-to-day direction, management, and supervision of the various departments of the functions for which the crown had made them ultimately responsible.

They included posts designated County Surveyor, sometimes with an additional specialist nominal, such as and Bridgemaster, and Architect, and Land Agent, and Planning Officer, etc., sometimes even two extra nominals, such as County Engineer, Surveyor and Planning Officer and Deputy Chief Officers and Assistant Chief Officers, who perhaps only had one specialism, so all of them were statutory titles too, by virtue of the 1888 Act permitting the elected County Council to appoint, dismiss, and set salaries for, county officers.

Cardiff City Hall cropped

Generally, in keeping with the traditional role of their contracted predecessors for the Justices, they took on the tasks of maintaining and constructing County Buildings such as Shire Halls, County Halls, Court Houses, and Police Stations; repair of County Roads and Bridges; and, declaring a Main Road any non-County Road serving as a main Thoroughfare between great towns and major transport interchanges, and taking over its maintenance, and purchasing existing bridges or building new ones along it.

As the twentieth century developed, so did their functions, involving creation of ties with the Minister of Transport and his Department, with the Royal Mail, with the Royal Mint, with the Minister of Defence, with the Minister of Works, with the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, and with sea, river, canal, rail, and air transport interchange undertakings, and public utilities, such as ones providing potable water, gas, electricity, telecommunications, and waste removal.

Lift-off of Russian 'Dnepr' launch vehicle

They became closely engaged in town and country planning and economic development, were consulted on plans for an European Economic Community and Space Agency, including plans for the Galileo Global Satellite Array Navigation Monitoring System; and, during the Cold War between the USA and the USSR, liaised closely with commanders of the USA military depots in the UK; and became privy to information about the location of under-ground and above-ground telecommunications networks of the 'four minute warning' system, and the deployment of intercontinental ballistic missiles to retaliate against a first strike attempt by USSR to safeguard the USA. Few people appreciate that elected County Councillors and their appointed Officers were not subject to the same professional code of Crown Confidentiality as the Justices, but to the Official Secrets Acts, the first of which received Royal Assent only a few days more than a year after the passage of the 1888 Act Official Secrets Act 1889, creating offences of disclosure of information and breach of official trust.

Much of the knowledge to which they were made privy from the outset of the 1888 Act was Crown confidential at the very least, but as the years progressed some became Top secret. As a direct consequence of this, their reasoning for undertaking certain actions were not recorded in the County Council minutes of the meetings where these actions were decided upon. Therefore modern researchers as to those actions cannot see the logic in them; and sometimes seek their being overturned on the grounds that the absence of recorded reasoning amounted to maladministration, such as recording a road on the British ordnance survey map as a county road in the county roads register in the 1960s without any explanation why.

The post-1887 function of a county surveyor was abandoned on the reorganisations of local government in Wales in 1996, and England in 1997, due to its high status being resented by district council councillors and surveyors since the 1974 reorganisation of local government in England and Wales; so, on the 1996 and 1997 reorganisations, the former duties associated with it were subsumed by, multidisciplinary, local government, management teams[10]; and the uk county surveyors society was subsumed by the professional organisation, adept, the association of directors of environment, economy, planning and transport[11]. However, the term, County Surveyor, lingers on in many historical documents that remain of that era, kept on deposit in the County Records Offices and Archives; the National Libraries of the UK; and also in Newspaper Archives of the UK.

So, the primary object of this article is to map and highlight the long history of the County Surveyor in the UK, and its spread to the British Overseas Territories and the Commonwealth of Nations, including its links to Freemasonry, particularly the Holy Royal Arch and Chivalric degrees, which will be discussed further below.

Practice in USA

Regarding practice in the usa, a county surveyor is a public local government official in many counties of u.s. states, particularly in the midwest and west. They are, typically, responsible for survey records, establishing and maintaining survey monuments at corners of sections or other land units, and reviewing property boundary surveys and subdivision plans. Most county surveyor positions in the u.s. are elected on the partisan ballot to four-year terms. Their specific duties vary from state to state (see external links section, bottom of this page). However, in the USA also, some consider the title too antiquated[12].

Development into a statutory definition

King John signs the Magna Carta

County Surveyors continued to play a vital part in governance and management of the real estate of England.

The real estate was enlarged by William's ninth successor, Edward I of England, in 1283, to include all of England; and the terms of what Kings and County Surveyors could and could not expect of vassals were qualified, by negotiation, and enshrined in a series of Magna Cartas between 1215 and 1423.

Defiance of religious dictatorship

Henry VIII King of England 1491-1547

Henry VIII introduced qualifications by, Bridges, Union of England and Wales, Supremacy and Suppression Acts.

So, too, did his daughter, Elizabeth I, by two Highways Acts, to cope with the additional highway repairing obligations on the inhabitants that arose from her father's schism with the Pope and confiscation of the Roman Catholic Church's estates in England and Wales.

Enlarging the real estate portfolio

John Cabot's ship The Matthew

None of these Acts referred to any officer of the Crown by the name of County Surveyor, so it was still only a common law construct. Becoming statutory had to wait until the Bridges Act 1803[13], by which time the title had already been exported widely, to a quarter of the World's land surface and population by 1922.

Secret county surveyor production lines

Somewhere, sometime, in the second half of sixteenth century Britain, it occurred to someone, probably Queen Elizabeth I in counsel with her privy Welsh secretary, William Cecil, that God could not, on his own, produce enough County Surveyors the old way, to fulfil the number of open vacancies in the Principality of Wales, let alone in the Kingdoms of Ireland, and Scotland, and Crown Colonies throughout the New World, that were potentially real estate of the office of the British monarch.

  1. ^ "procession, v.": Oxford English Dictionary; Third edition, June 2007; online version September 2011. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/151801>; accessed 31 October 2011. An entry for this word was first included in New English Dictionary, 1908.
  2. ^ "county, n.1": Oxford English Dictionary; Second edition, 1989; Online version September 2011. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/43102>; accessed 31 October 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1893.
  3. ^ "surveyor, n.": Oxford English Dictionary; Second edition, 1989; online version September 2011. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/195097>; accessed 31 October 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1918.
  4. ^ "surveyor, n.": Oxford English Dictionary; Second edition, 1989; online version September 2011. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/195097>; accessed 31 October 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1918.
  5. ^ "trimoda necessitas" see Forms note: Oxford English Dictionary online: Accessed 15 Oct 2011
  6. ^ http://books.google.co.uk/ebooks?as_brr=5&q=The+statutes+of+the+United+Kingdom+of+Great+Britain+and+Ireland+%2C+Volume+19+&as_sub=
  7. ^ http://www.mqmagazine.co.uk/issue-12/p-18.php
  8. ^ "About ADEPT :: Adept". Adeptnet.org.uk. Retrieved 2011-10-09.
  9. ^ http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1888/pdf/ukpga_18880041_en.pdf
  10. ^ http://www.psi.org.uk/publications/archivepdfs/New%20dire/ND11.pdf
  11. ^ http://www.adeptnet.org.uk/about/history
  12. ^ http://surveying-mapping-gis.blogspot.com/2010/01/antiquated-county-surveyor.html
  13. ^ http://books.google.co.uk/ebooks?as_brr=5&q=The+statutes+of+the+United+Kingdom+of+Great+Britain+and+Ireland+%2C+Volume+19+&as_sub=

A list of external links to some county surveyor web-sites is included at the bottom of this page. A Google Search on "county surveyor" confined to the US produced about 441,000 hits on 23 October 2011, so there is plenty of source material for readers to access for further information, should they need it.

The title, and the range of functions that the incumbent engages in, originated in England as a result of the Norman Conquest in 1066, and migrated to North America in the course of the European colonization of the Americas following its discovery by Christopher Columbus; William the Conqueror having ably demonstrated how to govern a distant country as an absentee landlord, by employing trustworthy county surveyors to monitor, direct and supervise the real estate activities of his tenants on that land.

In the absence of technical colleges, the European guilds of free masons played a vital role in the selection, education, training, qualifying and employment of competent surveyors, architects, engineers and clerks of works to serve the rapid and expansive growth and development of counties of both Europe and the New World following the Norman Conquest.

Origin of term "county surveyor"

William I England

The word "county"

The word "county" is Anglo-Norman, meaning "The domain or territory of a count." Its Latin root, "comitātus", originally meant "'body of companions, a companionship', subsequently 'an escort or retinue.'" When used in designation of a state officer, comitātus was followed by the name of the officer's practical function, and "when the conte became a territorial lord, the conté became his territory. This was the stage at which the word first entered English", and meant, "The domain or territory of a count." After appearing thus in the Laws of William I of England, it developed the contextually broader meaning down through the history of England, and also Wales, Ireland and Scotland by the eighteenth century, "One of the territorial divisions of Great Britain and Ireland, formed as the result of a variety of historical events, and serving as the most important divisional unit in the country for administrative, judicial, and political purposes."[1]

The word "surveyor"

The word "surveyor" is also Anglo-Norman, but developed a broader church of uses since introduced into the language, including (inter alia)[2] "One who has oversight or superintendence of a person or thing; an overseer, supervisor"; "As a title of officials in various departments, offices, or works; e.g. one who superintends construction of a building, administration of an office or department, collection of taxes, keeping of a structure in good order or repair"; "One who has oversight of lands and boundaries of an estate and its appurtenances"; "One who designs, and superintends construction of, a building; a practical architect"; "One whose business it is to survey land, etc.; one who makes surveys, or practises surveying"; "One whose business it is to inspect and examine land, houses, or other property and to calculate and report upon its actual or prospective value or productiveness for certain purposes"; "One who takes a mental view of something; an examiner, contemplator"; and, "Surveyor-general: a principal or head surveyor; one who has control of a body of surveyors, or general oversight of some business. Hence surveyor-generalship".

The title "county surveyor"

As mentioned above, "county" became a statutory term in the Laws of William I. However, "surveyor" did not become a statutory term until the Bridges Act 1530; as there were so many other more familiar terms in use, such as Esquire, Equerry, Mayor, and Sheriff, that did the job equally well. Indeed, the full expression, with capitalised first letters, "County Surveyor", did not become a statutory title until the Bridges Act 1803, meaning, "the Surveyor of the Bridges and other publick Works, in each and every County respectively within that Part of the United Kingdom called England, appointed or to be appointed by the Justices at any General Quarter Sessions of the Peace to be holden for such County".[3][4] and to which were added a variety of additional titles with capitalised first letters following the election of county councils and the transfer to them of functions from the Justices by the Local Government Act 1888, e.g., 'Bridgemaster[5]'; 'Engineer[6]'; 'Architect[7]'; and, 'and Planning Officer[8]'.

Currency of title "County Surveyor" in UK as of 2011

Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio de Janeiro

The title "county surveyor" has fallen into disuse in the UK since the reorganisation of local government of 1996 in Wales and 1997 in England. Its functions were transferred to teams of directors. They formed the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport,[9] to subsume the former County Surveyors Society. The trend began in the 1960's by appointment of multi-disciplinary council chief officers called Director of Environment[10][11][12][13], following the Buchanan Report, Traffic in Towns, 1963, the first UK government report to use the term 'environment', and the Local Government Act 1972, which created 'super-counties' for structure planning and economic development control purposes, and super-districts for localised planning and economic development control purposes. Environmental development control had to take a back-seat under the Thatcher era of government in the UK until the UK signed up to Agenda 21 of UN Summit Conference on Development and the Environment held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. However, the titles 'County Surveyor' and 'county surveyor' appear in numerous historical documents relating to the land and events in the former 'Great Britain and British Empire', particularly newspapers, journals, periodicals, books and archived central and local government business papers; and on historical artefacts such as memorial stones and plaques on public buildings and bridges.

Origin of use – chivalric and common

The Book of Winchester / Doomsday / Domesday Book

The first county surveyors of England originated in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. They were Norman, civilian and military officers, especially chartered and commissioned by William the Conqueror, as esquires and equerries, one of each per county (that is, one civilian, and one military, respectively), as of the day of his coronation as King of England, to form his curia regis in place of the witan that had previously been the king-makers of Anglo-Saxon England. He tasked them with establishing and entrenching Anglo-Norman feudalism and fealty throughout the real estate of England and Wales that came into his ownership and control by virtue of his coronation, as William I of England, on Christmas Day 1066, at Westminster Abbey, by Archbishop Aldred. They did so by surveying and managing the lands and the tenancies on it, and, in particular, improving their performance of the trimoda necessitas[14] of bridge-bote, burghe-bote, and fyrd therein. On the twentieth anniversary of his coronation, they reported to him direct, and presented him with a substantial archival inventory proving his allodial title to all the real estate his army conquered, and proving a full 20 years' feudal Landlord and Tenant contract between its occupiers and him, with him thus having the status of legitimate feudal tenant-in-chief of it. This inventory, the Book of Winchester, now famously known as the Domesday Book, is held at The National Archives, Kew Gardens, Richmond upon Thames, London, England, UK. The 20-year rule continues to prevail to this very day as a standard of proof in Landlord and Tenant law in the UK.[15]

Role of Freemasonry

Square and compasses

Two distinctly different types of County Surveyor were employed by the Justices.

There were ones employed under long-term, salaried, contracts, usually for life or until age and / or infirmity disabled them from performing their requisite duties. They had strong interests in asserting and protecting the physical means of defence and economic development of their county, because they were resident in the county that employed them, as too were their close families and friends. Their loyalty to their 'callings' from God, King and Country was therefore 'wired' in their socio-cultural psyches.

The second category were designers and artisans employed to undertake short- to medium-term projects for the Justices, and were therefore peripatetic, with no or little vested interest in the county that employed them, apart from their professional and artisan reputations. One good strategic example of these is the series of Castles in Wales built by the Normans to quell the Welsh and install Anglo-Normans in them, for which designers and artisans were brought in from France. A better documented case, closer to the present day, is that of John Nash, the personal friend, guide, mentor, and favourite architect, of the Prince Regent. When Nash began realising he was running out of private funds whilst living the life of a squire in Carmarthenshire, long before becoming Architect to the Surveyor of Parks, Forests and Chases of George III, meeting the Prince, developing his own country retreat East Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight, and setting up practice in London, he became a partner in a timber supply firm and, to drum up business for his firm, undertook public and private building and works design commissions in the county of Carmarthen, and, also, in the counties of Caernarfon, Brecknock, Bristol, Cardigan, Cornwall, Devon, Flint, Glamorgan, Hereford, Lancaster, Monmouth, Pembroke, Radnor, Shrewsbury, Stafford, Wilton, Worcester, and, in Ireland, Tyrone.[16][17] accessible by sea and river shipping from the port of Carmarthen. However, one recorded commission outside his normal run-of-the-mill county surveying practice demonstrates how widespread was the freemasonry network in in his time Durham[18],

Masonic Certificate 1876

The problem that, all along, faced the Justices was, how could they assess the technical capabilities and ensure the loyalties of the second category of county surveyors – the peripatetic artisans and designers? Freemasonry offered an answer, entered apprentices, fellow craft, and master masons were qualified to work as integral teams with stone in the construction of mighty cathedrals, castles and fortifications, whilst the architect grades (York Rite and Scottish Rite) were qualified to work with them in stone in the construction of mighty arches, such as bridges[19]. The high orders of arch masons[20] (e.g., there are 29 grades of arch masons under the Scottish Rite) were qualified to design, direct, supervise and engineer multiple strategic installations and associated infrastructure for town planning purposes such as streets, roads, bridges, canals and water supply, by devising and manipulating complex building, land use, and transportation, models in their heads[21].

Additionally, Freemasons undergo bloodthirsty rituals and swear bloodthirsty oaths of allegiance to God, King and Country, and to whomsoever are their fellow masons, to keep the secrets of masonry confidential; and candidates for the 'architect' grades, 'Holy Royal Arch Masons', or 'Scottish Rite', swear never to reveal the secrets of arch masonry to any person of lesser degree than arch mason; and, to employ arch masons in preference to all other candidates even if of equal competence ('Entered Apprentice' and 'Fellow Craft' oaths[22]; 'Master Mason' oaths[23]; 'Architect' oaths[24]).

Consequently, that institution, by patronage of the crown and its central aad local government knights, esquires and equerries, became the fraternal organisation known today as freemasonry, "within a constitutional structure and a national legislative assembly where voting was by individual...identified with political parties and issues on both a local and national level ... read and debated, formed reading societies, clubs and lodges, where they exercised their talents as orators and commentators, or as devotees of philosophy and literature...in the lodges the men became legislators and constitution makers ... involved in government as well as in opposition...all things in the universe [being] renewed and reformed, order ... established, duty ... followed, reason listened to, wisdom comprehended; and mortals, without changing their essence, appear as new men ... self-disciplined, as well as charitable toward one another ... as embodied in their dedication to freemasonry ... who brave all hazard, including death, to defend their fellow citizens, to avenge the injuries of the nation, and thus to extend the boundaries of the empire...believe in God and are faithful to the prince. The true prince, is in turn, the father of his people."[25]. "Freemasonry was exported to the British Colonies in North America by the 1730s – with both the "Antients" and the "Moderns" (as well as the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland) chartering offspring, or "daughter," Lodges, and organising various Provincial Grand Lodges. After the American Revolution, independent U.S. Grand Lodges formed themselves within each state. Some thought was briefly given to organising an over-arching "Grand Lodge of the United States," with George Washington (who was a member of a Virginian lodge) as the first Grand Master, but the idea was short-lived. The various state Grand Lodges did not wish to diminish their own authority by agreeing to such a body."[26]

The Prince Regent by Thomas Lawrence

Although George III was not a Freemason, he was the son of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, the first Royal freemason; his brother Henry, Duke of Cumberland, was the Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge of England; and six of his sons were freemasons, in particular, the Prince Regent, George IV, who founded the Prince of Wales Lodge, and was elected Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge of England on the death of his uncle, Cumberland.[27]

Some might argue that perhaps this article attributes too much to the institution of freemasonry for the selection, education, training, qualifying and advancement of speculative and operative surveyors and architects. However, the Institution of Surveyors (forerunner of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) was not founded until 1868 and did not obtain its Royal Charter until 1881; the Institute of British Architects in London (forerunner of the Royal Institution of British Architects) was not founded until 1834 and did not obtain its Royal Charter until 1837; and the Institution of Civil Engineers was not founded until 1818, and did not receive its Royal Charter until 1828. What Freemasonry did was fill the educational void for the artisan classes, such as Surveyors, Architects and Civil Engineers, excluded from the high-minded Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge (founded 1660; granted Royal Charter 1662 and 1663): and such voids had been customarily filled by guilds. "The continental custom of guilds of merchants arrived after the Norman Conquest, with incorporated societies of merchants in each town or city holding exclusive rights of doing business there. In many cases they became the governing body of a town (for example, Guildhall became London city hall). Trade guilds arose in the 14th century as craftsmen united to protect their common interest."[28]

The book, "The Architects of London", by Alastair Service, begins with consideration of the work of Henry Yevele (c.1320–1400), Master Mason; and ends with a set of Appendices that include "Architect's appointments to the Royal Office of Works and other major London surveyorships, etc"; and, reminds us that, "The Royal Office of Works developed from the medieval office of the King's Mason, held by such dimly recorded individuals as Henry of Reyns in 1243–53, John of Gloucester in 1254–60 and Robert of Beverley in 1261–84...in 1615 Inigo Jones was appointed King's Surveyor and transformed the post's largely administrative duties into the direction of a considerable royal building programme for James I and Charles I. In 1663 King Charles II issued royal orders setting out a new organisation for the Office of Works. These orders established the post of Surveyor-General and below it those of Comptroller, Paymaster, Purveyor and Chief Clerk (or Engrosser) of the King's Works. The level below these officials consisted of Patent Artisans to the Office – Master Mason, Master Carpenter, Master Bricklayer, Master Plasterer, etc.[29]

Of the thirty-nine Architects of London that Service writes about, only three were fellows of the Royal Society, namely, Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Adam, and Sir John Soane. All three were Freemasons. Other Freemasons that were fellows of the Royal Society, and were also notable Architects, were Philip Hardwick (1792–1870), George Saunders (bapt. 1762–1839), Sir William Tite (1798–1873), Capt. Samuel Tufnell (1682–1758).[30] Bearing in mind the length of the list Fellows of the Royal Society that were Freemasons, this limited representation of practising Architects in the Royal Society reflected that practising Architects were generally regarded as 'artisans' rather than 'scientists', rather similar to the distinction made towards 'technicians' by the professional institutions of the built environment of the UK in the late 1960s and prevails to the present day.[31][32][33]

One undesirable consequence of the creation of such a tight-knit network of secrecy was that it was conducive to abuses, not by all members by any means, but it only takes one or two bad apples to make outsiders condemn the whole barrel, particularly during the age of egalitarianism that sprang from the World Wars of the 20th century and the era of investigative journalism that began in the aftermath of the Second World War. Probably the most widely-read exposé in the 20th century has been Darkness Visible, by Walton Hannah; and, probably the most widely-read rebuttal has been Light Invisible, by 'Vindex'. The problem with such attacks and rebuttals is that they give rise to entrenchment of the respective positions, and a closing of the ranks on both side. However, probably the most useful from the point of view of this history of the office of County Surveyor in the UK is, The Brotherhood, by Stephen Knight), which says, "Almost every local authority in the country has its own Freemasonic Lodge, the temple often situated actually within the Town or County Hall...In London alone there are no fewer than twenty-four...There are at least as many again in Greater London...In addition to these there are the Lodges based on the City of London Corporation...and the Greater London Council...In the provinces, most County Councils and district councils and many parish councils have their own Lodges."[34], described in the Introduction as "neither a commendation nor a condemnation of Freemasonry". The main group of quotes is from chapter 22 of the book, which is entitled, simply, 'Government' and it contains a fair description of efforts made by the Wilson government of the early 1970s to undertake a fair inquiry into corruption in the halls of government at all levels. However, the recommendations of the committee that undertook that inquiry, vis a vis local government, at least, had to wait until the policy calmly set out in the Local Government Act 2000, without any semblance of being a witch-hunt against Freemasonry, but part of a strategy of promotion of social, economic and environment well-being of the entire nation, and new arrangements with respect to executives, and to codes of conduct of members and officers, consequential upon the 1996/7 reorganisations of local government in England and Wales.

Re: the 'college' ethos of the guild/craft

From "The Builder January 1915"[2] "There is no need that any one make argument to prove that such a movement as this is Masonic; it is in accord with the oldest traditions of the Order we turn to the "Old Charges"--the title deeds of Masonry, and a part of its earliest ritual--we learn that the Craft-lodges of the olden time were in fact schools, in which young men studied not only the technical laws of building, but the Seven Sciences and the history and symbolism of the Order as well. Apprentices were selected as much for their mental capacity as for bodily agility, and such as betrayed no aptitude for the intellectual aims of the Craft were allowed to go back to the Guilds and work as "rough masons." No young man, during his term as an Apprentice, was permitted to keep late hours, unless he did so in study, "which shall be deemed a sufficient excuse," as an old Charge relates."

And, re: the 'Seven Sciences', the whole of the page [3] - as follows -

"The Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences

  • Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy
  • Trivium: Rhetoric, Logic, Grammar
    • - Source: MasonicDictionary.com

The Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences

By Stephen Dafoe

Every Fellowcraft Mason learns of the importance of the liberal arts and sciences, of which he is instructed they are seven; namely, Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy. Unfortunately few Freemasons today take this instruction with any degree of seriousness and make no further effort to examine the nature of these arts.

Like much of Freemasonry, the liberal arts and sciences come to us from the Medieval period, when they were believed to be the sum total of all knowledge that was worth while to a complete education. They were known as "artes liberales" from the Latin "liber" meaning Free. In this sense they were the subjects available to free men and were a contrast from the "artes illiberales", which were taught for purely economic reasons that a man may earn a living. These arts were the operative arts of the workmen and were considered less desirable educational pursuits. While we have adopted the seven liberal arts and sciences from the Medieval era, they were known in the Pythagorean and Platonic eras.

The seven liberal arts and sciences were broken into two groups. One concerning language and the other concerning mathematics.

The first was the "Trivium" or road of three paths and included grammar, rhetoric and logic. Grammar is that portion of language that allows us to fine tune our speech like the ashlars and remove all barbarous expressions. Rhetoric is the art, which allows us to persuade and have an effect upon the listener. The last and perhaps most important art of the Trivium is logic, which permits us the gift of reasoning. In a purely Masonic sense it allows us to understand our duties to God and towards each other.

The second was the "Quadrivium" or path of four roads and included arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Arithmetic is the process by which we are able to calculate all weights and measures, but in a speculative and philosophical sense can be best summed up by the following quotation:

"For the Freemason, the application of this science is that he is continually to add to his knowledge, never to subtract anything from the character of his neighbor, to multiply his benevolence to his fellow-creatures, and to divide his means with those in need."

From Mackey's Masonic Encyclopedia

Geometry is so fundamentally a part of Freemasonry as to almost require no explanation, suffice to say it is the science upon which our very fraternity is founded. It allows us to create right angled triangles, the symbol of our uprightness and square actions towards God, one another and our fellow creatures.

Music is a mystery to the Freemason and a mystery as to its connection to mathematics, but as anyone, who practices this art, the connection is apparent. Our ancient brother Pythagoras was perhaps the first to notice the mathematical correlation between music and numbers.

Astronomy is that art by which we can trace the great symmetry of the hand of the deity throughout the heavens. Many of our symbols, the sun, the moon the stars are borrowed from the science of astronomy.

While to our ancient brethren aimed at a blending of all knowledge, the modern freemason can apply to the seven liberal arts and sciences a special and appropriate metaphor for a life of self-improvement and mental growth. This goal is symbolized in our lodges by the rough and perfect ashlars and by the Masonic agenda of taking a good man and making him better.

-Source: Stephen Dafoe - Site Owner

LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

In the Ancient world the Liberal Arts and Sciences consisted of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy; at least, the standard histories of education thus list them, though it is doubtful if Greek and Roman Schools rigidly adhered to that list or to its nomenclature-the Athenian schools of a certainty did not, because Aristotle and his successors taught zoology; neither did the schools and universities which were built in Europe after Charlemagne for the university at Salerno specialized in botany; the one at Cologne, in stenography and bookkeeping; one at Paris in law; etc.

The Medieval Freemasons were so devoted to the Liberal Arts and Sciences that w hen the author of the first of the Old Charges east about among the pages of the polycronicons or histories of the world then being circulated in MS. form for the grounds on which a Charter had been given to the Fraternity, he gave prominence to an old legend about two pillars on which the "secrets" of the Arts and Sciences had been preserved through Noah's Flood. This close and boasted connection between Operative Freemasons and the Arts and Sciences has long been a puzzle. Masons did not teach their apprentices each of the seven subjects. Why should a Craft of workmen boast of possessing u hat belonged to a few universities?

Nevertheless they did boast, and because they did, they considered themselves apart and above the populace, which was illiterate. Even the clergy was uneducated? And among the prelates only a few could read and write. The majority of the kings, princes, and upper nobility knew so little about books or studies that they almost knew nothing; even as late as 1700 Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, the Grand Monarch, could only with great labor sign his name or spell out a few sentences. 

The answer to the puzzle is that the Gothic Freemasons who built the cathedrals, priories, abbeys, etc., practiced an art which of itself required an education; education was an integral part of it. To be such a Freemason was to be an educated man. Thus the connection between Freemasonry and the Arts and Sciences was not a factitious one, but a necessary one. In a period without schools an education could not be called schooling, college or university; it was called the Liberal Arts and Sciences. Since the Freemasons employed the phrase merely as a name for education, the fact that the classical curriculum had consisted of seven subjects is irrelevant to their history, and has no significance for interpretation of the Ritual.

After the system of Speculative Freemasonry was established in the Eighteenth Century the emphasis on education as not only retained but was magnified, and it was called by its old name. The two pillars mere retained; a prominent place was given to the Arts and Sciences in both the Esoteric and the Exoteric portions of the Second Degree. Twentieth Century Freemasons feel as by a kind of instinct that education inevitably and naturally is one of their concerns; they take the motto, "Let there be light," with seriousness and earnestness.

This is a striking fact, this continuous emphasis on education by the same Fraternity through eight or nine centuries of time! The memory of that long tradition, the sense of continuing now what has been practiced for so long, is alive in the Masonic consciousness. Masons have seen education persist through social, religious, political revolutions, from one language to another, from one country to another; they are therefore indifferent to the labels by which education is named (else they would substitute "education" for "Liberal Arts and Sciences"), and they are likely to believe, as against pedagogic experimentalists and innovators, that the imperishable identity and long-continued practice of education means that at bottom there is the curriculum, not countless possible curricula; and that it universally consists of the language, as it is written or spoken and is its structure, of mathematics, of history, of science, and of literature; an apprentice in life must begin with these; what else he learns in addition is determined by what art, trade, or vocation he is to enter.

The fact that education belongs essentially to the nature of Freemasonry and ever has, possesses a critical importance for the history of the Craft; is one of the facts by which the central problem of that history can be solved. There were hundreds of crafts gilds, fraternities, societies, skilled trades in the Middle Ages; a few of them were larger, more powerful, and far more wealthy than the Mason Craft, and they also had legends, traditions, officers, rules and regulations, possessed charters, took oaths, had ceremonies, admitted "non-operatives" to membership. Why then did Freemasonry stand aside and apart from the others? Why did it alone survive the others? Why did not they, as well as it, and long after the Middle Ages had passed, flower into world-wide fraternities? What unique secret did Freemasonry possess that they did not? It is because it had in itself, and from the beginning, had so much for the mind; so much of the arts and sciences; its members were compelled to think and to learn as well as to use tools.

It possessed what no other Craft possessed, and which can be described by no better name than philosophy, though it is a misnomer, for the Freemasons were not theorizers but found out a whole set of truths in the process of their work; and these truths were not discovered or even guessed at by church, state, or the populace. When after 1717 the Lodges were thrown open to men of every walk and vocation, these latter discovered in the ancient Craft such a wealth of thought and learning as must ever be inexhaustible; and they have since written some tens of thousands of books about it, and have expounded it among themselves in tens of thousands of speeches and lectures. Furthermore they found that from the beginning of Masonry, education had never been considered by it to be abstract, academic, or detached, a luxury for the few, a privilege for the rich, a necessity only for one or two professions, a monopoly of the learned, and something in books; they found that education belonged to work; this connecting of education with work, this insistence that work involves education, was not dreamed of in Greece and Rome, was not seen in the Middle Ages, and would have aroused a sense of horror if it had been, and even in modern times is only beginning to be seen.

The uniqueness of this discovery explains in part the uniqueness of Freemasonry then and thereafter.

- Source: Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry"

HOW AND WHEN DID FREEMASONRY BEGIN?

According to the legends which form part of the tradition of Freemasonry, the fraternity dates back to the time of the construction of King Solomon's Temple. This enormous structure required a highly organised workforce and led to stonemasons, architects and others being organised into various grades or guilds, each with its own responsibilities. Towards the end of the 19th Century, while excavating in the Libyan Desert, archaeologists unearthed papyrus records describing meetings around 2000 BC of such a guild. These records included not only matters such as working hours, wages and rules for their labour, but also the relief and assistance for workers in distress and for widows and orphans.

Of the many great buildings erected by masons in the Middle Ages attention has focused mainly on the great cathedrals of Europe and England. In order to build these vast structures, it was necessary for masons to gather in large groups which moved from one finished building to the next one under construction. Considerable knowledge of geometry, arithmetic and engineering was necessary and these craftsmen formed themselves into guilds to maintain a level of qualification for their membership and to protect the secrets of their trade. The resulting Guild of Stonemasons became a significant centre of learning, serving not only to protect its members but also to educate worthy apprentices and to increase the reputation of the craft. In those days, it was not possible to verify a craftsman's credentials by any means other than by signs and words, so appropriate ones were selected for this purpose.

Much of the work of those marvellous craftsmen survives to this day and from it we find a living inspiration to bring similar qualities to the creation, not of a material building, but of a brotherhood of men of good will.

The status and reputation of these Craft Guilds rose to such a height that it became common for leading citizens to become honorary members. They were known as ‘Speculative' or ‘Accepted' Masons, the qualified craft masons continued to be known as ‘Operative’ Masons. As the number of these ‘Speculative' Masons grew and as matters concerned with education and qualifications of craftsmen were formalised and controlled at national level, so the structure of the guilds changed over the years and lodges came to be formed exclusively of such members. They retained the Masons tools e.g. square, compasses, and rule, as symbols in their teaching and from this we find in general every day language such phrases as ‘on the level' and ‘a square deal'.

This development led to the formation of Grand Lodges, the Grand Lodge of England, the first Grand Lodge in the world, being formed in 1717, Ireland followed in 1725 and Scotland in 1736.

"FREEMASONRY Your Questions Answered" Provincial Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free & Accepted Masons of Antrim ROBERT J. THOMSON, Provincial Grand Master www.irish-freemasons.org/Pages.../Your_Questions_Answered.pdf

overt Crown acceptance of Freemasonry

References

  1. ^ "county, n.1, 1. and 2.a: Oxford English Dictionary online: Accessed 18 October 2011
  2. ^ "surveyor, n: Oxford English Dictionary online: Accessed 18 October 2011
  3. ^ Bridges Act 1803, 43 George III. C.59
  4. ^ History of local government in England#Origins of local government in England#Later changes in local government (1500-1832 AD)
  5. ^ http://www.ukmotorwayarchive.org/
  6. ^ http://www.rhyl.thewelshweb.co.uk/index.php?Rhyl_Town_Council:News_Archive:Foryd_Bridge_75th_Anniversary
  7. ^ http://www.legsreunited.org.uk/history.html
  8. ^ http://212.219.233.41/index.cfm?articleid=20105
  9. ^ "About ADEPT :: Adept". Adeptnet.org.uk. Retrieved 2011-10-09.
  10. ^ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/onlinelists/GB%200214%20D563_cld.pdf
  11. ^ http://www.rtpi.org.uk/item/2139/pg_dtl_art_news/238/pg_ftr_art
  12. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/8546047.stm
  13. ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/stewart-williams-noted-publisher-whose-books-brought-the-history-of-cardiff-to-life-2217081.html
  14. ^ "trimoda necessitas" see Forms note: Oxford English Dictionary online: Accessed 15 Oct 2011
  15. ^ http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/06/21135419/9
  16. ^ The Life and Work of John Nash Architect: John Summerson: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1980.
  17. ^ John Nash: Architect-Pensaer: Richard Suggett: The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Aberystwyth – and – The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: 1995.
  18. ^ http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=1131
  19. ^ http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=1131
  20. ^ http://www.burbanklodge.com/degrees.htm
  21. ^ Regent's Park#History
  22. ^ http://www.ephesians5-11.org/masonicritual/index.htm
  23. ^ http://www.sacred-texts.com/mas/dun/dun04.htm
  24. ^ http://www.sacred-texts.com/mas/dun/dun08.htm
  25. ^ Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth Century Europe: Margaret C. Jacob: New York: Oxford University Press: 1991: pp6-7.
  26. ^ Freemasonry#History
  27. ^ http://www.mqmagazine.co.uk/issue-12/p-18.php
  28. ^ Guild#European history
  29. ^ The Architects of London and their buildings from 1066 to the present day: Alastair Service: 1979: The Architectural Press, London: p.207.
  30. ^ http://www.freemasonry.london.museum/os/wp-content/resources/frs_freemasons_complete_jan2010.pdf
  31. ^ http://www.tsa-uk.org.uk/training.php
  32. ^ http://www.ciat.org.uk/en/careers/What_is_a_professional_Architectural_Technician.cfm
  33. ^ http://www.engc.org.uk/
  34. ^ The Brotherhood – The Secret World of Freemasons: Stephen Knight [with] Introduction by Martin Short: 2007: Harper Perennial: Amazon Kindle Version Location 2864 to 2874.

The words 'county' and 'surveyor' are both Anglo-Norman[1][2]

Survey Crew 1918
Surveying, 1728
  1. ^ "county, n.1": Oxford English Dictionary; Second edition, 1989; online version September 2011; <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/43102>; accessed 30 October 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1893.
  2. ^ "surveyor, n.": Oxford English Dictionary; Second edition, 1989; online version September 2011; <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/195097>; accessed 30 October 2011. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1918.
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