Add MS 89290/4/6

Bills paid by the Earl of Hardwicke 1787-1788, originally folded and grouped in bundles, usually inscribed on the verso panel with the name and/or labour/goods supplied, and total sum, often with an abbreviation at the foot of the verso panel to denote expenditure category (house, park, garden, cottages, etc., as detailed below):

• Wimpole house (marked ‘H’), bills for labour and supplies. Items include butter, milk, eggs, meat and other supplies for the annual Audit, brandy, rum, hire of cows, soap, sand, lime, charcoal, leather, ironmongery (Rebecca Phillips), baskets; labour includes care of letters, carriage, kitchen garden, cleaning, plumbing, glazing, repair of ice house (William French), work done about the house (Thomas Leete), painting (John Favell), and clocks (William Warren).
• Garden (marked ‘Garden’, ‘G’ etc.)
• Park (most marked ‘P’), payments to Thomas Leete, John Easy, and John Ratford, and others, for work and supplies including labour, provision of game, care of deer, fishing net repairs, lambs, stones for the roads, smith work, carpentry, carting hay, destruction of wasp and hornets’ nests, and painting
• Carters and stables (one or two marked ‘C. & S.’)
• Woods (‘Woods’ and ‘W’)
• New Work (‘N.W’)
• Arrington repairs
• Kingston & Malton
• Whaddon farm repairs
• Various cottages repairs
• Thatching bills for labour and materials at John Pollard’s (Wickham), Thomas Chigwell’s, and at Robert Symonds
• Wimpole tax and rates, including land tax, house and window duty, North Road rate, overseer and poor levies
• Whaddon tax and rates, etc.
• Woods in Hand land tax and rates, etc.
• Various rents and dues to Cambridge colleges, the Diocese of Ely and others, including rent paid to Cambridge colleges, ecclesiastical payments, rectory dues, poor relief, Addenbrooke’s Hospital subscription, annuity to Martha Sandford, the former housemaid at Wimpole, annuity to Ann Moses, housemaid’s wages to Peggy Boulton, and a bookbinding bill from John Merrill of Cambridge, etc.