Report – John Colpoys – 15 Sep 1805

The periodic visitation reports sent to the Greenwich Hospital Commissioners regarding their Northern Estate provide extensive detail on the current condition, value, and management of those estates, and usually accompanied by proposals and recommendations for changes. This particular report was submitted by Sir John Colpoys, Sir William Bellingham and John Harrison after their tour of the estate in early September 1805, a tour they claimed to be so thorough that ‘we believe there is scarce a building, of any description, (except the Mill at Wanthwaite in the Manor of Castlerigg and Derwentwater) or an acre of land that was not seen by some or one of us, and the greatest part by us all’. Their report is accompanied, in the final bound and printed volume, with reports from mineralogist William Sheffield on the lead and coal mines and their prospects. The original is held as part of the Greenwich Hospital records within the Admiralty collection at The National Archives.
The transcript given in Dukesfield Documents represent extracts, though extensive ones, relating to the lead mining, smelting and carriage country of the North Pennines, rather than the purely agricultural areas within the Northern estate, or those in the far north of Northumberland.