Journal entry – John Grey – 7 Jan 1834

Tuesday 7th January



A number of Accounts, belonging to the last year still coming in, delays the making up of the Books.  I heard to day from Mr Parker that he & Mr Crawhall had fixed the price of Lead for the bygone quarter at £14.16.0. I had two customers to day for the lot of Wood advertized at Capon’s Cleugh, the one offered £320 & the other £222 a most extraordinary difference of opinion as to its value.  It is an excellent Lot of Wood, though in a situation which makes it very expensive to get out. I hope to get £400 for it, at least I must try to do so, before coming much down. I rode to the Snokoe & Dipton Plantations to look at some which are in want of being thinned as well as those that have been gone through at the Park. Went to Snokoe  quarry to see that the men employed to get Stones for walling in the new piece of the Gateshead Road, were working the Quarry properly & not leaving it in confusion as has been sometimes done, and stopped them from leading the Stones, until I should receive from the Surveyor a written undertaking respecting the repair of the road to the Quarry, concerning which I have had too much trouble already to allow a repetition of the same damage, without knowing to whom I am to look for redress.  



I returned through the fields of Dilston Hall Farm to see if I could discover any arrangement to propose to Teasdale as to his crop by which the entry to the farm might be improved to the succeeding tenant; for all who have looked at it complain, as well they may, that grass seeds have not been sown & that every thing is out of course & order. In fact there is little to be seen upon it but couch & every thing indicative of poverty & slovenly management, nor can anything be expected of it till it has been gone through with a thorough fallowing & liming, which any tenant to do good in it, must set himself to in earnest without regard to the immediate outlay. But such proceeding is seldom, I fear, contemplated by the tenants in their quarter.  



I then returned by the embankments in Widehaugh, which have sustained no injury, although the constant repetition of floods lately has broken a good deal in to the shores of the river by the Tyneside Plantation  The industry however is but trifling as the foundation which was laid at the waters edge in summer & the weirs made for its protection are safe; the damage being only in parts which were too steep to allow of sufficient slope, but which will now be more easily effected, since the river has removed a load of sand from the top of the Banks.