Journal entry – John Grey – 11 Nov 1834

Tuesday 11th November



       I attended today a meeting at Hexham, of the Alston Road Trustees, when much discussion took place in conference with the new Surveyor, upon the management of the roads and economising the Funds.   The bridge now in progress over the Tyne at Bellingham, has sustained no material injury from the late floods - but as the Trustees of the Roads declare against incurring any risk or loss by the erection, the Subscribers have prudently held the Undertaker responsible, under sureties for its maintenance for seven years.  I found several of the Tenants at Market today, anxious to know the determination of the Board respecting their Farms, which they hoped I might have been able now to communicate to them.  It has been a desideratum with me for some time, to have a Document, in form of a Lease or Agreement for a Lease, at once, so cheap as not to be rejected by the Miners, & so comprehensive & intelligible as fully & plainly to define the rights of the Lessors & the Covenants which the Lessees  are expected & bound to fulfil in the Mining Grants in Alstonmoor.  I need not remind the Commissioners of the difficulty that attended the obtaining the payment for Mining Leases, some time ago, & the many which after repeated ineffectual attempts to procure them by Mr Hooper, we’re eventually abandoned or compromized.  And it must be equally unnecessary to remark, that to require Leases to be entered into before trials have been made and proved successful, would be effectually to suppress the spirit of speculation, which is the ‘primum mobile’  of all Mining operations.   In nine cases out of ten, the trials of Veins are applied for and made by parties who have little beyond their hands & picks, to call their own; and a great majority of those trials prove abortive.

To require anything like a Lease on Stamp, in this case, is out of the question, & it is only when a trial turns out favorably, & attracts partners with Capital to join the original undertakers and imbark their money in the concern, that a more formal & valid document can be requisite.  I have brought this subject at different times under the consideration of the Solicitor & Moor Master at Alston, who are both fully conversant with the Customs of the District & the interests of the Parties.  And having decided upon the principle & general Heads of such Agreement, Mr Bainbridge has been kind enough to extend them in a form, which we conceive might be printed with blanks to be filled up according to circumstances, leaving it open to the Commissioners or the Lessees to have such Agreement extended upon Stamp when demanded.  Such a plan, would, I trust, prove equally secure for the Commissioners as satisfactory to the Miners.  At all events, it must be much more so, than the present system, where no document exists, but the simple form of a grant for Trial. I have now the honor to transmit for the consideration of the Board, the firm of Agreement drawn up by Bainbridge.  Should it be approved of, & ordered to be adopted, the Board will probably direct that it be returned & printed under Mr Bainbridge’s inspection.