Doing the books

James Acland, the radical Hull publisher, took an interest in the Charterhouse, as we reported in a previous post.  At the end of a long article about it he published the full accounts for 1822.
Accounts are not everyone's idea of bedtime reading, but they can throw a great deal of light on what is going on.  We start with a list of the properties which were bringing in the funding of the hospital.  These were the lands gifted by the founder, Michael de la Pole, and his son, the 2nd Earl of Suffolk.

The Hessle lands were rented by just four people.  Mark Green had 63 acres, mainly of farmland, and paid £128 14s during the year.  Green also appears to have kept a public house.  Sarah Burn and Samuel Burstal had a few acres.  The only reference to the chalk quarry is the note that "The stone pit is in the lands rented by J.R. Pease, Esq. and J. Barkworth".  Pease had a total of more than 40 acres, part of which had been "converted into a ship-yard, but not found to answer, and, in consequence, reduced to its former state".  Pease paid more rent for his lucrative lands than Green did for his.
In Willerby, Richard Pickering paid £130 for more than 73 acres (c. 30 hectares) of "sundry fields", and about 140 acres in Cottingham were shared among four people.

The list of properties in Hull includes 5 public houses and a number of other shops and houses.  Thomas Temple ran a large pub chain, one of which he leased from the Charterhouse in Blue Bell Entry.  He died in 1822.  There were other lease-holders on the west side of High St, including builders George Jackson and Samuel Stubbs.  The Blue Bell Inn itself was part of this portfolio.  Charles Thompson was an Anlaby merchant who had a 20-year lease on a property on High St.  Thomas Wilson leased the De La Pole Arms public house on the corner of Charterhouse Lane and Wincolmlee, along with (in 1802) five houses and a malt kiln.

The accounts (or was it Acland himself?) then turn to an overview of the numbers of inmates since 1717 and the weekly allowances they received.

The numbers are not consistent but are mostly in the 20-30 range.  Until 1754 the weekly allowance was only 1s.4d. (around £7.74 in today's purchasing power), rising to 2s. (£10.25).  In 1780, with a new building, the allowance went up to 3s.6d, (£15) per week.  The number of inmates are recorded as no more than 42, although the new building had 44 rooms.  By 1803 the numbers had risen to 56 (in fact, the new wing was not finished until 1804) and by 1821 there were 57 inmates receiving 6s. (£17) per week.
A long list of the rents collected throughout the year follows.  Then we come to the "weekly disbursements".  There were, as we have seen, 57 "poor people" in the hospital, each receiving 6s. (c. £17) a week.  A sweeper (presumably a cleaner) got 5s. a week.  And then we read that £17.7s.0d was paid "extra on 19th July, by recommendation of the Bench".  This was in celebration of the wedding of King George IV; the residents had their allowances doubled for that week.

The £15 for "occasional relief" implies that additional small sums were sometimes paid out when needed.
All of this tells us little about daily life at the Charterhouse; but the next section, Incidental Charges, is more informative.  Thirty-one items are listed.  The largest single charge is for coals, at £121.13s.3d. (almost £7,000 in today's spending power).  In addition, turves cost £22.4s. (£1.275).  Together these two items were the fuel which formed a vital part of the inmates' weekly allowances.  Every room had a fireplace which provided the only means of cooking as well as heating, so fuel would have been necessary even in warm weather.  17s. was paid to a man called Neale for distributing the coals and turves.  Water also had to be bought in, at a cost of £10.10s, with another 15s. to Wilson for distributing it.
Some of the charges relate to building work, but it's not clear whether this is connected to work at the hospital or to properties elsewhere.  Two bricklayers were paid a total of £157 (c.£9,000) and a joiner and a painter also received their pay.  Sand cost £1.5s. - what was that for?  Nearly £8 was paid for work on the Cottingham and Hessle drains.  We can only guess what Webster the upholsterer did for his £8.15s.3d.  Perhaps Mr Miles, the whitesmith, got his 1/6d for repairing a kettle.  Mr Kay, the plumber, clearly did some substantial work, but what Mr Young did for his £51.2s. (nearly £3,000) is not stated.  The chimney sweeper got 12/-.  But who was "Bennison" (he doesn't merit even a "Mr") who got £1.4s.?
We have two favourite items; £1.5s. was paid for lamp-lighting; and then, last in the list, is 2/- for "surplice washing".  We know from other sources that in the first year of his tenure the Master, Kingsman Baskett, had his surplice laundered twice, at a cost of 4/-.  Thereafter, it was an annual event.
Under Constant Expences [sic] we have the Master's salary of £200.  That is the equivalent of about £11,500 in today's values, but he also got the house; and perhaps the £1 for water was also the Master's expense.  Other staff costs appear in the previous section; the clerk and the porter get £1.1s. each.  There is no matron at this stage in the hospital's life.  Curiously, £1.1s. is paid to the Town's-husband.  This was a term almost unique to Hull, an officer of the Bench or Corporation who looked after the town's money and kept the accounts, among other duties.  It's not clear what services he supplied to the Charterhouse.
Among the last items in the accounts, mainly details of arrears of rents, are Sundries Received.

 

The first two of these sundries defy explanation.  The third is easier.  Consols were government bonds; for some years the Charterhouse had invested income in these bonds, and clearly the interest was useful.

And finally, the summary of the audited accounts.

The Hessle lands

Through its long history the Charterhouse has derived a large part of its income from the endowment of lands by the de la Pole family.  Michael, the 1st Earl of Suffolk, gave land in Hull and Cottingham.  His son increased the gift.  On 6 June 1408 King Henry IV gave a licence to Michael de la Pole, 2nd Earl of Suffolk, to give "four tofts, one garden, three oxgangs and eighteen acres of land, seven acres of meadow, six acres of pasture, six acres of wood and thirty-five shillings of rent with the appurtenances in Hesill" to the Maison Dieu or hospital which his father, the 1st Earl, had built.  Michael followed this on 1 September that year with a deed granting those lands to the "Master and poor persons" of the hospital.  The grant differed slightly from the original licence and specified that the lands were in "Hesill, Westelvele, Miton, Willardeby, Feriby and Traneby" (Hessle, West Ella, Myton, Willerby, Ferriby and Tranby).  Both these gifts were conferred by "license in mortmain", which meant that they were a permanent transfer of property.  They could not be confiscated by the crown if the other de la Pole lands were seized.  This was to be vital in our history.
There are no early maps to show the exact boundaries of these lands.  The first we have is a sketch of the enclosure map of Hesslewood made in 1793.  The name "Charterhouse Wood" had stuck.

In 1822 a set of accounts, published by James Acland, shows the use of the land.  

A large acreage was rented by Mark Green as farmland.  Green was also a publican.  The other large lease-holder was Joseph Pease, whose land included the stone-pit i.e. the chalk quarry.

Chalk appears to have been quarried from early medieval times, and through the centuries the operation was developed into a thriving industry.  A windmill was built to grind the chalk into powder known as whiting, which was used in processes such as paint-making.  According to the Humber Bridge Country Park's records, over 5,000 tons of our chalk was shipped to San Francisco, California every year in the early 1900s for processing into paint and putty.  No doubt a great deal was also shipped to other parts of the world.  The quarrying went on until around 1964.  The area was sold for the building of the Humber Bridge. 

 The workforce in 1905.

The chalk mill.

In the early days the collection of rents and other property transactions were left to the Master, presumably overseen by the agents of the de la Pole family.  When they were no longer in the picture, and certainly after the dissolution of the Priory, it was all down to him.  He had to handle all the income and expenses of the hospital, and it proved too much to expect of either his honesty or competence.  By 1571 the Aldermen of the Bench decided to take an interest; the Mayor, after all, was supposed to be the ultimate authority, according to the founding document.  An enquiry determined that the Master, Thomas Turner, had been guilty of all kinds of neglect and of what amounted to embezzlement, and he was made to agree to a long list of regulations.  These included having to get the agreement of the Bench to any property transactions and an annual audit.  All the rents and leases of the lands which supplied the hospital's income were re-negotiated.  

A scattering of houses on the lands throughout the centuries became the start of real development in the mid 19th century.  The grandest was West Hill House, which was the home of businessman (and owner of the Hull Daily Mail) Frederick Grotrian.  He moved in in the 1860s, and although he moved away, by 1901 he still rented or leased three large properties in the Hessle lands from the Charterhouse.  

In 1840 a slice of the Hessle land was sold to the Hull and Selby Railway Company for over £506.  

The Charterhouse lands in Willerby saw little development until the 20th century, mainly bringing in rents from farmland.

In 1850 a "farmstead" was built "the Charter-House Estate at Willerby".  The architects were the firm of the famous Cuthbert Brodrick.  The first tenant or lease-holder was John Dixon.  Some early records refer to this farm as De La Pole Farm, but it later became known as Low Farm.  Like other Charterhouse property the building carried the badge of the charity.  It's scruffy now but it's the same coat of arms as appears in mosaic in our portico.

The Charterhouse's first major venture into property development came in 1867, with a plan to build 8 villas for lease on the Hessle lands.  These were on West Hill off Woodfield Lane, and the leases were signed before the houses had even been built.  They went to:

• James Reckitt (apparently two leases)
• John Lumsden
• Francis Reckitt
• Martin Samuelson
• Richard Wilbe
• William Maxwell Johnson
• Anthony Bannister

All of these were substantial businessmen, and for some the villa was an investment rather than a place to live.  James Reckitt, founder of Hull's most famous company but then on the census as a biscuit and starch manufacturer, did live at what was known as Mentone House.  This still stands, but most of the others are gone.

A schedule of Charterhouse properties in 1901 shows that the most lucrative one in Hessle was the farm of 58 acres held by Thomas Henry Richardson, which brought in £140 p.a.  Frederick Grotrian's three holdings were worth, together, more than £76 p.a., and there was also a cricket club paying £18.14.10 a year.

1890s map

While the nature of the Hessle lands has changed vastly in over 600 years, they remain a source of income for the Charterhouse, thanks to the foresight of the de la Pole family.

1948 map

(Thanks to Michael Free and the excellent Hessle Local History Society for a great deal of this information.)