Estate accounts: Rufford

DD/SR/235

Estate accounts: Rufford

1837-1845

During the period when these accounts were kept Rufford was owned by John Lumley - Savile, 8th earl of Scarborough etc. He took his M.A. at Cambridge in 1811, was M.P. (Whig) for Nottinghamshire 1826-32 and North Nottinghamshire 1832-35 and Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire 1839-1856. He never married but raised a family of illegitimate children with Agnes Lumley (described as a lady of French origin); Rufford passed to his second son Henry (who owned the racehorse Cremorne which won the Derby in 1872, The Ascot Cup in 1873 and the Grand Prix de Paris in 1872, another horse the Ranger won the Grand Prix in 1863 the first English horse to achieve this), then to his fourth son Augustus William who was succeeded by the eldest son John Savile, first Baron Savile of Rufford, at the end of a distinguished diplomatic career.

See DNB and Complete Peerage. E.W. Wilmot was the earl's agent and received £500. as his salary in 1838; Joseph Andrew Brackenbury who resided at Wellow House took over as agent in 1839 and received the same salary. Leaf Townsend is variously described as clerk to the agent, Rufford clerk, and is also listed as office clerk, Rufford Abbey, in White's Nottinghamshire Directory 1844.

Brackenbury as the agent and Townsend as the clerk were probably responsible for the compilation of these accounts. The accounts are kept under specific headings but the contents often overlap. Rufford and Sandbeck were closely linked at this period under the earl of Scarborough. These accounts provide a detailed statement of the working of a great estate from 1837-1845. There is a brisk trade in wool (a Bradford customer is noted here), hops, timber, hop poles, bark etc. from commodities produced on the estate. Livestock and other items are purchased and sold at Lincoln, Nottingham, Bawtry, Brough Hill and Retford Fairs. The estate and household is seen at work and its personnel -- the agent Brackenbury with £500. per annum salary, the Rev. James Cox chaplin to the earl with £40. salary doing duty at Rufford Abbey chapel, James Haywood paid £2. for attending the fire engine and the whole hierarchy of household and estate officials and servants. It is interesting that wages were paid fortnightly. Anthony Salvin the architect reponsible for the interior alteration of Rufford Hall appears to have been active there from at least 1837-1843 revising Colvin's estimate 1839-1842. At the peak of the work £5,599. 16s. 4d. was expended in 1837 and £4,409. 13s. 3½d. in 1840. Particular tradesmen and companies can be identified with specific work -- James Drabble for upholstery, Lindley for stone, Messrs. Barkwith and Spalding for timber, Wm. Wilson for plumbing and glazier's work, Messrs. G. and J. Earles for cement freighted from Hull, John Wolstenholme for carving in the Brick Hall, mouldings by Hasleden and Co., plastering by Rob. Armstrong, etc.

Material gutted from Worksop Manor was purchased from the duke of Newcastle and utilized in the alterations. Walks were laid out in the pleasure gardens and Coldwell drained for water for Rufford Lake. Emphasis is on improvement - draining plough, steam engine etc.; the Rev. G.F. Holcombe of Brinkley (Ca.) provides South Down rams for tupping South Down ewes. Subscriptions to local charities shows the estate involved with the hinterland of local communities -- providing a school master and mistress at Ollerton, support for Sunday Schools, a fat beast for the poor at Christmas weighing 52 stones, contributing to the repairs of Eakring church chancel and subscribing towards an organ for Ollerton church. Rufford Liberty was surveyed, Wellow enclosed and Ollerton and Edwinstowe tithes apportioned. George Sanderson, the cartographer, produced a map concerned with the earl of Scarborough's election campaign in 1832. The earl was a considerate employer, providing for and continuing his employees wages when they were sick or injured and paying out pensions when they retired from work; surgeons' bills show that the household and estate workers received free treatment paid by the earl out of the profits of the estate.

Contrasted with this paternal benevolence are the vigilant measures taken to combat the incidence of poaching at Rufford - it would be interesting to establish whether the poachers were local or alien intruders.

English