Monthly Rent Book- Sutton Estate – December 1918 to September 1924The book contains the names and locations of people living in Sutton Estate property. It shows the rents charged and the arrears sometimes accrued by the tenants.
The first entries are for the 4 months from December 1918 to 25th March 1919, thereafter the periods are for six months. In this first period there are 11 men from Stockcross, 3 men from Marsh Benham and 2 men from Wickham Heath still serving in the forces and they are not being charged rent. It would appear that the men were trickling back to the village gradually as the rents restart at different times over the next few months with the majority in August and September 1919.
The estate gave property rent free to some people. Looking at the pages for 1924, as an example, there were 8 estate workers, 13 Farm workers, 4 pensioners 2 pensioners widows and an invalid who were living rent free. Mrs John Willis, property (number 42), already had rent arrears of £6.10.0 in March 1919 and this built up over the years until the Estate wrote off the debt of £26.0.0 in March 1924 after that she began paying rent in July 1924. Mrs Kate Willis’s son William Willis was killed in France on 16th December 1915 and is one of the men who is remembered on the Stockcross Memorial Tablet. Kate’s husband John was killed in an timber yard accident in 1917 and she had five other children to bring up so life must have been a struggle.
There are notes of properties vacant for repair, some are noted as pulled down or damaged by fire. The rents charged for the various properties vary a lot and it would be interesting to identify the individual properties and so, perhaps, work out the reasons for the different charges. The cheapest property was in Pound Lane Hoe Benham where Mrs Herbert, the widow of an old farm hand, paid 1/- per year. The most expensive rents were £6.5.0 every 2 months, there were three of these one being the village shop.
Some of the men whose names are on the WW1 Memorial Tablet in St John’s church Stockcross come from families who were tenants of Sutton Estate. These were Harry & Cyril Calkin, James Fuller, George Haines, Albert Harper, Albert Johnson, Alfred Kemp, Frank Martin, Frederick Palmer, James Joseph & Sydney Pocock, William Willis and Robert Winter.
A comparison of the names and rents paid in the 5 years between September 1919 to 1924 shows that of the 176 properties,82 have the same tenants paying the same rent and 29 had the same tenants but they paid a different rent. The total amount of rent paid by tenants in September 1919 was £403-18-0 and 5 years later the income from rental had increased to £577-10-7. The details can be seen in one of the PDF below.
In 1919 there are 173 numbered properties listed and by 1924 6 more properties have been purchased. There does not appear to be any correlation between the Sutton Estate property numbering and the numbers of the house in Stockcross. The 1921 census is not yet available but a comparison with the 1911 census shows that, although a few house numbers do coincide with the rent book property numbers, most of them don’t. Once the 1921 census becomes available a further comparison can be made.
