Barmasters Payment Book

Introduction

The Barmasters' Payment book is the record of royalties paid out between 1859 and 1873 to the Hebden Trust Lords, as the result of the Hebden Moor Mining Company's endeavours extracting lead ore from the township's lands. The amount of royalty due on the extracted lead ore was specified in the lease granted to the company by the trust lords in 1856. The volume has been in the safe-keeping of the Joy family for many years, but will shortly be deposited in the North Yorkshire County Records Office in Northallerton.

The book is an impressive hardbound volume, with 81 leaves of heavy-weight paper, 270mm by 415mm in size. It is stitched bound, and the red cover is made of covered thick cardboard or wood, with a tooled leather title label inscribed "MANOR HEBDEN / DIVISION OF ROYALTY".

The pages have been preprinted for the purpose. At the top of the page is a title "MANOR OF HEBDEN", and then there are columns for the name of the trust lord, their place of residence, the royalty due, the income tax to be paid, and their overall share of the manorial rights.

The volume was first used when the Hebden Moor mines were experiencing a boom, with the first distribution of royalties recorded in the book being in June 1859 when £900 shared between the trust lords. Thirteen distributions are recorded, one per page. From the seventh distribution in August 1865, royalties were becoming scarce and distributions were made as multiples of the royalty rent. The final was in December 1873 when just £28 8s  was shared out between 41 recipients.

There still seems to have been some confidence, albeit misplaced, in the future of the mines, as William Chadwick, the Chairman of the Hebden Moor Mining Company, started to buy up shares in the manorial rights from 1867, and even James Ray Eddy, the Grassington Moor mining agent, purchased a ten shilling stake in 1870. There is an analysis of the changes in the distribution of the manorial rights during the period covered below.

The trust lord rents reduced by 1s 4d between 1868 and 1870. This seems to be related to a 1s 4d shared owned by Ellis Birch of Linton Mill which was in dispute.

Transcription

In the following transcriptions, one per royalty description, the columns are shewn as in the original, except an additional one has been added for notes. This column contains any annotations that the original may had had associated with that entry. These are often used to record transfer of manorial rights.

No. 1: June 1859

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £900 ROYALTY made the 20th day of June 1859

No. 2: February 1861

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £600 ROYALTY made the 16th day of February 1861

No. 3: November 1861

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £200 ROYALTY made the 23rd day of February 1861

No. 4: November 1862

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £400 ROYALTY made the 24th day of November 1862

No. 5: November 1863

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £500 ROYALTY made the 26th day of November 1863

No. 6: August 1864

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £256 12s 7½d ROYALTY made the 11th day of August 1864

No. 7: August 1865

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £114 1s 2d ROYALTY made the 3rd day of August 1865

No. 8: August 1866

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £114 1s 2d ROYALTY being 4 times the amount of royalty rents made the 9th day of August 1866.

No. 9: August 1867

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £85 10s 10½d ROYALTY being 3 times the amount of royalty rents made the 15th day of August 1867.

No. 10: September 1868

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £85 10s 10½d ROYALTY being 3 times the amount of royalty rent made the 11th day of September 1868.

No. 11: August 1870

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £113 15s 10d ROYALTY made the 18th day of August 1870 being 4 times the amount of royalty rents.

No. 12: August 1872

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £28 8s 11½d ROYALTY being 1 rent made the 15th day of August 1872.

No. 13: December 1873

List of LORDS, ROYALT RENTS, and DIVISION of £28 8s 11d ROYALTY being the amount of one rent made the 2nd day of December 1873.

Changes in the Manorial Rights Holders during the Period 1859-1873

Traditionally, the manorial rights were associated with specific plots of land in the township. The manor was purchased from a mortgagee of Tempest lands in 1590 by three individuals, together with the manorial rights. When the manor was split up into freehold plots, the purchases also bought a proportional share of the manorial rights. The manorial rents at that time totalled £28 10s 3½d. By way of an example, if someone had bought a tenth share of the land, they would have also bought a tenth share of the manorial rights, with a notional value of £2 17s 0¾d. This is referred to as the Royal Rent in the Barmasters' book. B.J. Harker claimed that the original value of the manorial rents was £28 6s 8d, but without providing supporting evidence. Similarly, Arthur Raistrick claims it was £26 17s 11d.

Over time, the land was sold by the freeholders, and consolidated into estates. By the preparation of the 1846 Tithe Map, most of the township land was owned by absentee landlords. In fact, only five of the forty one owners of land of more than one acre, farmed their own land.

Typically, when the land was sold, the manorial rights were transferred to the purchaser. Thus in 1816 an advertisement for the sale of an estate included the paragraph:

"The Owners of Estates within Hebden aforesaid are Joint Lords of the Manor or Lordship of Hebden aforesaid, and as such are entitled to all the Mines and Minerals (which at present are very productive) and other Manorial Rights within the Manor or Lordship of Hebden aforesaid, and the Owner of the Estate will be entitled to a very considerable Proportion (In Case of Inclosure) of the Ground and Soil of Hebden Pasture, and all the Common and Out-Moors, Heaths, and Waste Grounds within Hebden aforesaid."

The manorial rights basically consisted of the ownership of the manorial waste (mainly the vast area of moorland), together with its mineral rights. For the first couple of hundred of years, the manorial rights had little value. In about 1600 some of the moor was enclosed, and the grazing rights shared between the trust lords. Some mining leases were granted, mainly in Gate Up Gill and where the mineral veins continued from Grassington Moor into Hebden, and for some coal veins, but despite the claims of the above advertisement, these were not particularly profitable, and the money coming to the trust lords was a proportion of the lead ore and coal extracted. Some rent was also forthcoming from fields created by the ad hoc enclosure of parts of the moor by individuals.

In 1796, however, the Duke of Devonshire purchased some 34 acres of unenclosed land, together with the associated mineral rights, from the trust lords for about £400 to allow him to drive the Duke's Level from Hebden Gill to drain the mines of Yarnbury and Grassington Moor. The equivalent of about £54,000 were distributed to the trust lords.

In 1856 the manorial waste of Hebden enclosed, and distributed (mainly) to the owners of the land in those townships. However, the mineral rights were retained by the trust lords.

In 1853 the mineral rights were leased to the Hebden Moor Mining Company, and for about ten years the mines were very productive, with some £3,000 in royalties distributed to the trust lords. This was the equivalent to over £450,000 at today's values. The manorial rights become a valuable asset in their own right, and instead of being associated with the land and passed on by purchase or inheritance, they seem to have been sold separately. Hence William Chadwick, the Chairman of the Hebden Moor Mining Company, had acquired almost 25% of the manorial rights by the end of 1873. When Mathew Wilson of Eshton Hall sold that part of the village which includes what is now Green Terrace and Angle House to Francis Hammond, he retained the manorial rights, as did the Duke of Devonshire when he sold the Hole Bottom estate in 1886.

The total royal rent up to the August 1870 was the expected £28 10s 3½d. But after that it was reduced by 1s 4d to £28 8s 11½d. This was because Ellis Birch of Linton Mill Cottages was up to then claiming the royalties for a disputed share of the royalty rent. He died in 1870, and his disputed 1s 4d was not allocated elsewhere. Interestingly, the 1s 4d disappeared from the barmasters' book two months before he died. It is likely that the preparation and distribution of the August 1870 royalty payments took place after his death.

Today, the manorial rights have next to no value. There are few minerals left in the township suitable for exploitation, and it is unlikely that if there were, permission to do so would be forthcoming. It would also be very difficult to establish the identity of many of the current trust lords.