June 17, 1899.
THE ESTATES GAZETTE
1056
to be the great bugbear of the future in South Africa.
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Presiding oyer the meeting of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company, Sir Thomas Sutherland, M.P., was forteed׳ to admit that the company’s business in the transport of specie was not so good as׳ formerly, and that the export business from China and Japan was disappointing. They also stood face to face with another serious matter, the Indian plague having attacked Egypt. This had thrown! their Mediterranean business irato confusion. Then, there was the enhanced price of coal to contend with. He estimated that it would cost the company this year £100,000 more than last year, and £150,000 more than in !the preceding year, for this article.. They had, moreover, suffered׳ considerably from the great delay of their vessels, owing to the non-delivery and slow progress of work, which was amounted for by the fact that tire working men of (Treat Britain did not think it good policy to overwork themselves in prosperous times. Altogether a cheerless kind of speech.
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A good year’s work has been accomplished by the shipbuilding firm of John Brown and Co., Limited. The accounts, which are made up to March 31, show a gross profit of nearly £140,000. After deducting debenture interest, and adding the balance brought forward from last year, a sum, of £159,000 is left available for distribution. The directors propose to place £25,000 to the equipment of the armour-plate department, while the shareholders will receive 10 per cent., and £33,600 will be carried forward. The company has bought the Clydebank Engineering and Shipbuilding Company, Ltd., in order to get near the sea and to be able to compete more׳ favourably with other similar companies. The directors, therefore, propose to increase the capital to £2,500,000 by the issue of 48,000 new £10 preferred shares, and 500,000 new ordinary, with 15s. paid.
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Mr. George Livesey, chairman of the !South Metropolitan Gas Company, has been giving evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, which is at present engaged׳ in considering the question of the price of gas in London. Mr. Livesey is a man of wide and varied, experience, and the company over the fortunes of which he presides is the most up-to-date undertaking of its kind in the Metropolis. What he said is, therefore, at least, worth reading. Continuing his criticism of the management of the Gas Light and Coke Company, which at the last sitting he had spoken of as being characterised by incompe-tency, he said that one penny per thousand feet of the extra price of gas on the north side of the Thames was due !to selling at 2s. 2d. per 1,000ft., or less in the south. Coal might have been obtained at lower cost, and something could׳ have been saved in lighterage, while residual products might have been sold better. This is not a bad case׳ against the Gas Light and Coke Company, and it will doubtless have proper weight in influencing the report of the Select Committee.
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In order to introduce the taxameter cab to the London ׳streets, a private syndicate was originally formed with a nominal capital of £20,000. It is now proposed to bring the undertaking out as a public company, increasing the capital by the issue of 30,000 £1 shares, the whole of which will be devoted to the furtherance of the concern. The new issue will raise the capital to £50,000, and the syndicate has acquired 27 British patents and half-a-dozen American in connection with the cabs, and the rights Of this country, the British Colonies, and •the United States.
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The St. John del Hey may be described as a very prosperous mine. For the past year the value of gold extracted was the highest in the history of the mine, amount-ting to £294,574, against £170,488 in the previous year. Besides declaring a balance dividend at the rate of 12j per cent, per annum, tire sum of £41,700 has been set aside to wipe out interest paid during the construction of the works. £30,000 has been charged to plant extensions and renewals, and £10,000 placed' to reserve. Mr. Chalmers will be presented with a thousand guineas at the forthcoming meeting, as a small tribute to his energy and talent in׳ putting the company on so solid a basis.
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! from thence into an outer court, after the manner of the ancient manorial residences. Evidently the buildings were of different dates, and in various styles, some portions, “traditionally said to have belonged׳ to the Norman period.” Several traces׳ of Roman occupation have been found at Lackham, so that altogether it forms a fitting subject for an interesting paper. Mr. Kite traces its ¡history i!n this number down to the beginning o׳f the reign of Edward II., with many interesting records relating to the chapel.
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Old Caveuham Hall, Suffolk, the seat of the Waddingtons, is about to be demolished, a fine new mansion in the Tudor style having been erecte־d, some three hundred yards to the southwest of the old site, on higher ground. The house has been built of dark red narrow bricks, averaging five courses to the foot■, supplied by Messrs. Allen and Co., of Sudbury, and the stone facings are of Casterton stone; the main cornices are of deal lined with lead to form the ■gutters, and the roofs have been covered with Brosely tiles. Mr. Andrew N. Prentice is the architect.
CitÇ ®opics
[SPECIALLY CONTRIBUTED.]
Bank Rate 3 per cent (oh&nged Feb. 2,1899)
Probably most of the readers of this pa-per who have reached mature age remember a time when every morning the first׳ thing they did was to open׳ their newspapers to see whether war had been anywhere declared. The very air in those days—■we will not say how long ago— seemed charged with war, and as we were then blessed (or the reverse) with a most militant Government, storms burst forth every now and then that were not got over without the expenditure of much life and treasure. A good deal of water has flowed under London Bridge since those days, and we do seem to be at last drawing perceptibly nearer the era of universal peace and goodwill. But, with regard to one comer of this inhabitable globe, the experience of our youth is being repeated. For the past week or more we have gone to bed each night wondering what news we should hear in the morning. Had Mr. Kruger climbed down! Had Sir Alfred Milner climbed up] Had a course of common-sense been decided on by the Boers] Had the British Government decided to ■take action. Had.-- The queries rise
too quickly to put them to paper. Let us sum them all up! in one terse question, “Had the Transvaal difficulties been adjusted]” This is the question we have asked every morning, and which every evening, has left unanswered * * *
In the Stock Exchange, as in most other departments of life, there is nothing worse than suspense. It can be easily imagined, therefore, that the effect of all this uncertainty upon the prices of stocks and shares, and especially upon South African securities, has been disastrous. The only wonder is that the general results have not been worse. That a heavy fail should have taken place was natural'; that the market has in some sense regained׳ its equanimity is due solely to the faith that dealers have in the firmness of the Government and to the hope and belief that the questions at issue will be amicably adjusted. It need hardly be asserted that the great financial houses having vast interests at stake in the Transvaal, Rhodesia, and the Cape do not want war. War spells ruin. Only, they say, the Outlander must get his rights. How is he to get them,] The puzzle has yet to be solved.
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If any reader of these pages happens to possess public securities just now, he will find winds blowing against him from all parts of the compass, and—notwithstanding the apparent impossibility of the feat from a meteorological point of view—׳the wind's will seem to come from every conceivable point at one and the same time. If he holds Kaffirs, is he to sell them 1 The answer is, No! The chances are that the Outlander will get his rights, and that the prices of gold mining shares will rise. If he holds English railways, what then] Well׳, the securities are subject to many and varied influences, each line being affected by circumstances peculiar to itself. District stock, for instance, has adopted a kind of pendulum movement, just as rumour is favourable or otherwise. The best advice to give is to buy them when they are low, and sell them when they rise. This may sound oracular, but it is true.
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A telegram has been received from Bulawayo stating that the total output of gold from Rhodesia for May was 4,938 ounces. This compares with 5,755 ounces for April, and 6,614 for March. The Bonsor Company’s yield for the month was 800 ounces, against 711 ounces for April, and that of the Dunraven 1,153 ounces, against 1,182. These results can hardly be considered satisfactory. The shortage has been officially stated to be due to a temporary scarci ty of native labour. This difficulty seems likely
I chairman, have submitted to the council the I annual list of county improvements in respect of I which they recommend that Parliamentary powers should1 b׳e sought next session. The most important of the proposed improvements relates to the extension of the Thames Emtoank-I ment between the Houses of Parliament and Lambeto-bridg© and the improvement of the I district near Millbank. It is proposed that the course of Abingdon-street and Millbank-I street shall be altered, that the new street 70ft.
wide shall start from a point which will involve I the demolition of the corner house of Old Palace-yard and run thence diagonally to a point much nearer the end; of Lambeth-bridge than a-t present. It is proposed further to pur-chase_ all the property between this line and I the river on the one side and between it and I the west of St. John’s Church on !the other I side, to lay out the land between Millbank-street and the river as an addition to ■the Victoria Tower-garden, and to lay out in a manner suitable for offices and residential houses and with widened streets the land between MiU-bank-street and St. John’s Church. By the recoupment resulting from the alteration of the line of Millbank-sibreet and from the acquisition ■of the property between the street and St. John’s Church, it will, in the opinion of the committee, be possible to effect this great improvement—to embank the river, to lay out the garden, to widen Millbank-street, and to widen the other streets up to St. John’s Church, including a portion of Horseferry-road—at a cost of £530,000, as compared with £306,000 for the imperfect and unsatisfactory scheme of toerely wudtettiing ,the existing Millibank-street, and £498,000 for both widening find straightening the street.
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This estimate of £530,000 does not include the cost of altering ,the Abingdon-street block. This, the committee point out, is not absolutely essential to ■the main part of the schema It. would be a great public improvement in itself and greatly improve the approach to the Victoria Tower and the Houses of Parliament, but in their opinion it is a matter which concerns the Government more than the Council. If carried out by the Council, it is estimated that the net cost would׳ b׳a £130,300. The committee propose, therefore, to leave this part of the scheme to be undertaken by the Government, and to confine their specific proposals to the widening of Millbank-street and the embanking of the river. It is estimated that tile purchase of property would involve an expenditure of £1,329,000 and (the value of the recoupment would be £873,000, leaving the net ■cost £456,000, to׳ which must be added about £74,000 for the■ cost of the works, making a total I of £530,000. With regard to the question of contributions the committee think that the Westminster Vestry should contribute no less than £100,000. They accordingly recommend the Council to sanction application being made to Parliament for power to carry out the scheme, subject to the Government’s agreeing to undertake the Abingdoo-street portion of the scheme and to a contribution of £100,000 from the Westminster Vestry. The cost of rehousing the persons who would be displaced by this scheme is estimated at £50,000. There is no suggestion for an extensive levying of an improvement charge. Another scheme is for ihe widening of Maresstreet, Hackney, to 70ft. between the North London Railway and the Triangle. The total net cost of this scheme is £577,100, and it is׳ recommended, subject to a contribution from the Hackney Vestry of rot more than £125,000.
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The perusal of an article on “ Old Lackham House and its Owners,” in “ Wiltshire Notes and Queries,” reminds us of the valuable historical information about our ancient families and their homes, that may be gathered from past records by the diligent student. The first instalment of Mr. E. Kite’s work is unusually interesting, not only on account of its historical, architectural, and heraldic detail, but more especially for the two׳ antique pictures which accompany it. The first shows us Lackham House as it existed in 1684, this sketch being taken from Dingley’s “History from Marble,” a manuscript in the possession o׳f Sir Thomas E. Winnington, of which a facsimile was published by the Camden Society about thirty years ago. The second sketch, which more fully illustrates the details of the central portion of the building, is from a drawing by Grimm, taken in August, 1790, and now amongst the additional manuscripts in the British Museum. Both sketches are excellently reproduced, and the result is due in no small degree to ithe careful copies made for the purpose by Mr. Kite, who is׳ well-known as an unusually accurate and painstaking draughtsman.
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Lackham House was a far more imposing place in those days than it is now, for soon after the second sketch was taken the remnant of the old buildings was׳ pulled down, wholly or partially, and “a plain modem edifice'” erected. The first sketch, which forms the frontispiece of the present number, shows an irregular pile of buildings completely embowered in trees at the back, and in front leading into an inner rectangular court, and
ilotts b|j tiji Mag,
We understand ■that the Duke of Norfolk has taken up his residence at The Grange, West Heath-road, Hampstead.
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A Property Owners' Protection Association has just been formed at Doncaster. Mr. F. J. Littlewood is acting as■ secretary pro tern.
The subject of the essay for the Oobden Prize for 1902 will be upon the taxation of ground values׳. The text is “Is it expedient that a special rate should be imposed on ground values, account being ׳taken both of ■the abstract theory of the incidence of taxation and1 of concrete circumstances affecting local taxation in this country]”
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An “ Old Harrovian” appeals in the columns of the “ Bury Guardian ” for steps to be taken to preserve Chamber Hall, Bury, the early home of Sir Robert Peel, from ruin and decay. The house, which is׳ built of red brick and stone:, and dates from early in the last century, stands^ in the shadow of the Peel mills, and is, according to this correspondent, in a state of decay.
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Lord Calthorpe has ׳taken the׳ Cliff House, Felixstowe, for the summer, the letting having been effected through Messrs. E. Durrant and Co. _ Lord Calthorpe’s steam yacht Foam arrived in Felixstowe dock on Wednesday evening with the Hon. W. Calthorpe on board. Lord and Lady Calthorpe are expected at the Cliff House next week.
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The Marquis of Headfort came of age on Monday. He succeeded his father in the title live years ago, his elder step-brother, the Earl of Bective, having predeceased the late peer by six or !seven! months. Lord Headfort’s mother, the Marchioness of Headfort, is the daughter of the late׳ Rev. Lord׳ John Thynne, D.D., third son of !the second Marquis of Bath. The late Earl of Beotive’s only child, Lady Henry Bentinck, inherited the Westmorland property, Underl'ey Hal. The present Marquis has the Irish estates in Meath and Cavan.
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The castle of Duntroon, belonging to Lord Malcolm, of Poltalloeh, which was last week destroyed by fire, was one of the oldest inhabited castles in the West of Scotland. Tradition asserts that the older portion of the castle dates back to !the Scandinavian occupation cf the West of Scotland ; that the castle was given as a marriage dowry to a princess named Troine, a daughter of the King of Lapland. In later times the castle figured very prominently in the victory of the West in Bruce’s memorable march from Lochain after defeating the M’Dougalls of Lome. Duntroon Castle was stormed by him while on his way to T'arbert.
It was also besieged by Sir Alexander MacDonald in Jacobite times, and it came prominently to the front after the rebellion of 1715.
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The estate of Duntroon was confiscated by the Government. The rental at the׳ time, it is interesting to note, was £52. It is of interest as showing ׳the wonderful advance in prices of dairy produce since 1715, to find that while the estate was attainted butter was׳ valued at 3d. per lb., while, on the other hand, wethers were valued at 4d. The Grahams were proprietors of Duntroon at this period. The estate subsequently passed: into the hands of the Campbells, from whom it was purchased: by the Malcolms of Poltalloeh. The castle has for many years been the residence of the Episcopal clergyman who officiated at the beautiful church at Pol-talloch, known as St. Columba’s׳. The present incumbent is the Rev. Mr. Calvert, who, along with his family, have resided in the castle.
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Henley-on-Thames (place of pleasant memory) seems to be in danger of having its quiet and homely air disturbed by greatness !thrust upon it. The old: Bed Lion Inn, that every river man and many another beside knows so well, has fallen into the hands of a company, and is being boomed accordingly. Some of the pleasant old private houses׳ have disappeared, shops, the weather-worn exteriors of which were as landmarks in the place, have been dressed out in brand new fronts, and now the old Tbwn Hall, which for more than a century faced the quaint thoroughfare, Hartistreet, has to give place to a new structure. The new buildings, which are in! the Renaissance style, will contain in the basement a hsrge drill hall and a borough surveyor’s office. On toe ground floor there will be two committee rooms and! a council chamber, and upstairs will be a large hall, 60ft. by 40ff., with seating accommodation for 450 people. The whole cost will be a little over £10,000. The ceremony of laying toe stone was performed one day last week by the Hon.
W. E. D. Smith, M.P., whilst toe comer stone was laid by the Earl of Jersey, the Lord-Lieutenant׳ of the County, with full Masonic cere-monv.
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The Improvements Cbmmittee of the London County Council, of which Mr. Shaw Lefevre is (