Catalogue description HOUNDSTREET AND NYLAND ESTATES stewards' accounts and vouchers

Yearly account, 1649-50; half-yearly accounts, 1673, 1705-71 (incomplete, but fairly good series); vouchers in half-yearly bundles, 1706-94 (incomplete), and as odd documents to 1817. The separate paper accounts are usually endorsed 'Houndstreet Audit'.

Receipts. Fines, heriots, rents, coal shares, benefits from fairs, and monies from sale of corn, timber, beasts, milk, bark and hay, etc. In 1673, manor rents are shown as received from Marksbury and Houndstreet, Compton Dando, Sewardswick, Pensford and Publow, Chew Magna and North Elm, East Chelworth, West Chelworth, Farmborough Grevill and Rosewell, Burrough Hill, Timsbury, Cheddar Berkeley and Nyland, and Badcombe. Cadoxton East Barry (Wales), 1705-36, and Queen Charlton, 1757-66, also appear under the head of manor rents.

Disbursements. Payments for labour and service, court expenses, and rates and taxes, occur throughout, but the following items, noted at random, will indicate the additional interest of the entries: travelling expenses to Wales, quartering of soldiers, carriage of stones and coal, purchase of paper, hops, and horsemeat for dogs, 1649-50; repair of Marksbury Church, expenses 'at Chepstow Faire in Wales', 1673; 'Thomas Sheward for doeing the office of tythingman on yr. honors, acct.', repairs in the 'iremills', 1710; building the park wall, timber for mending the brewing furnace, 1714; window tax at Houndstreet House, 'for 1000 of plants of white thorne to severall poore persons in the neighbour hood', 1721; leather for the 'charriott', thatching the toll house at Pensford, 1729; charity to Farmborough and Pensford schools, 1744; a 'partridge tunnell', 1746; and '156 apple trees planted at Nyland Decoy Pool', 1760.

The collectors were in account with: Alexander Popham, 1649-50; Sir Francis Popham, 1673; Alexander Popham, 1705-19; Francis Popham, esq., 1720-35; and Edward Popham, esq., 1736-71.

A bundle of correspondence, etc., on estate and general affairs, addressed to Charles Andrew at Houndstreet House, 1845-56, (For letter books, see no. DD/PO/109.) was found wrapped in the account for Michaelmas, 1764.