Welsh Journals

demonstrate a singular determination not only to protect but also to enhance that inheritance. In 1794, when the account book begins, the estate finances show a healthy credit balance of over £ 393. It is clear that Knight had chased up rent arrears, there had been the cordwood sales to swell further the estate's income that year, while outgoings had totalled a modest £ 116 14s. lOMd. Most of the latter sum comprised annuity payments and such routine expenses of estate management as fencing, land clearing and tree-planting, with small items of expenditure for repairs to Duffryn house and Duffryn mill also recorded. Even before the death of the Reverend Thomas Bruce, John Knight and his family were living at Great House, Llanblethian, and this remained their home until 1797 when they moved to Bath. It was from these properties, and from a town house in Cardiff, that John Knight supervised the management of the Duffryn estate, making only occasional visits to the property. When on such visits, he stayed at the old house at Duffryn, where rooms were reserved for his use, the house and farm then being tenanted by the Miles family. Estate accounts record payments to a Mary Thomas for looking after those rooms and their contents, and to Thomas David Miles for digging coal and delivering it to Duffryn in the winter months to keep the rooms aired. There are clear indications that the entire house was kept in a reasonable state of repair, the accounts recording small, regular payments to tilers and painters, carpenters and sawyers, and occasional purchases of sheet lead for the roof, and of paper and 'bordering' for Knight's bedchamber. But it was not until John Bruce Knight (later John Bruce Pryce) came of age that an extensive programme of refurbishment was put in hand at Duffryn and the old house became the Bruce family residence. With no thoughts of permanent residence at Duffryn, John Knight entrusted the day to day management of the estate to local agents and concentrated upon the management of the estate's finances. The estate account for the year 1795- 96 showed an apparently healthy credit balance, with income totalling just over £ 573 and expenditure just under £ 240. But those figures masked a far less secure economy. Over £ 390 of the 'income' had been carried over into the account from previous years when cordwood sales and other exceptional transactions had taken place. The only real income generated by the estate during 1795-6 had been £ 166 from tenants' rents, £ 3s. 7d. for pitwood sold to Crawshay of Cyfarthfa and a few shillings for the sale of a piece of storm- damaged pear wood. The figures could not disguise the mean economy of the estate, but on the pattern of previous years, with routine expenditure barely exceeding £ 100, the veneer of profitability might well have been maintained.