Journal entry – John Grey – 21 Nov 1833

Thursday 21st November



Mr Dickinson having gone through the accounts and proved their agreement with the receipts & payments at the different rent days, I sent the balance in Cheques & Cash to the Bank, & directed them to pay £5000 to the Bank of England on the 21st Instant.  There is one arrear of rent, which stands in peculiar circumstances, as we can neither attack the person of the tenant, nor seize the stock on the premises & that is the £50 due, previous to the present season, by Mr Bell MP for the shooting on Henshaw Common, which including this season, as the Duke of Northumberland does not take the transfer till the 22nd Instant, makes the Debt £75. A letter was sent to me in August in Mr Hoopers writing to forward to Mr Bell, which I did - but no notice was taken of it. I have twice since made a similar application.  No attention was paid to the first.  On receiving the second Mr Bell referred me to the Revd Mr Brandling.   To him I then applied, three weeks ago, but he has not favoured me with a reply.  I think it right to state this proceeding to the Board, that they may adopt such measures as they may see fit.  



I went over the extensive plantation of Dipton examining the Grounds (about 12 Acres) cleared for planting anew, & the plots marked out by Parkin for Sale, crossing on my way the farms of Dilston Hall & Dilston South Farm. I am every day excessively provoked by the sight of hedges which might have been good and flourishing fences, totally ruined by egregious carelessness or mismanagement.  They are cut in the most injudicious manner, when cut at all, but commonly let to grow open at the bottom & full of holes to stop which they stuff in dead thorns till the living ones are suffocated, & the hedge spoilt past recovery.  This has been done to a great extent on the two farms just mentioned, if they had had a premium for destroying young hedges, it would hardly have been done more effectually.  This must have arisen, partly from extreme ignorance of the proper management of fences, partly from great inattention on the part of the Bailiff of the Districts, but  in a great measure from the idea which seems to prevail in the Hospitals Estates, that on Account of the high rents which the mode of letting induces the tenants to give, they ought to be absolved from the care of every thing but the working of their lands & securing & disposing of their crops, a system at once most injurious to the property & expensive to the Hospital.  To set an example in the mode of cutting hedges, I have got a man who had formerly the charge of hedges upon a property to the North of Tweed, whom I intend to send from farm to farm, for a day or two at a time, that those who will follow it, may see how - after which I intend to employ him more particularly on the plantation fences.  But probably the most forcible argument will be found in refusing to treat again with any tenant who has so notoriously neglected & spoiled his fences. It is mortifying to think that on account of such mismanagement the Hospitals outlay, in a new letting of Farms, will not, for a few years, be commensurate with the reduction which I apprehend the rents must sustain.