HC Deb 07 May 1907 vol 174 c71
MR. BRIDGEMAN

I beg to ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, if he will state the proportions of the £1,800 spent on the adaptation of Burwell farm to small holdings under the heads of fencing, farm buildings, and housing.

MR. HICKS BEACH (Gloucestershire, Tewkesbury)

I beg also to ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, how many cottages for housing eighty-two small holders on the Burwell farm were provided out of the sum of £1,800 which has been invested by the Crown in equipping these holdings.

THE TREASURER OF THE HOUSEHOLD (Sir EDWARD STRACHEY,) Somersetshire, S.

The £1,800 has been spent approximately as follows:—£190 on fencing, £880 in providing one new small homestead and in altering and adding five other homesteads, £730 in altering and adding to nine cottages, and providing dairies, extra bedrooms, and outbuildings to adapt them as cottage farmhouses. No new cottages have been erected. The farm, as taken over, included a farmhouse and seventeen cottages and the majority of the tenants continue to live in the adjoining village of Burwell. The total number of holdings is seventy-five, made up as follows: forty-eight allotments under 5 acres, fourteen small holdings between 5 and 15 acres, and thirteen small holdings over 15 acres.