After the reorganisation of the estate in 1856, accurate acreage, incorporating the various land sales, purchases, and exchanges, is given in the leases.
Rent Analysis
Before the 19th century this property on the rural-urban fringe was let at an agricultural rate, although the rent assessed consistently ran slightly above the Turner-Beckett-Afton agricultural index (TBA) and the Kent agricultural average due to the commercial advantage accruing from the wharf. In the 1805 lease, however, the annual rent made a step change from £40 to £90, and in his surveyor's report that year Bridge Engineer Daniel Alexander valued the wharf and buildings at £60 and the agricultural land at £30. The assessed rent continued to rise well above TBA and the Kent average to £126 in 1827, £185 in 1841, and £200 in 1848, until the lease was divided between industrial and agricultural usage in 1856. In that year the principal wharf, buildings, and premises comprising 3a.1r.36p. were let to papermaker Thomas Saunders at £50 (£14 7s. 9d./acre), and the remaining arable and marsh land, along with a second wharf, messuage, cottages, and buildings, comprising 33a.2r.0p., was let at £170 (£5 1s. 6d./acre).
During the second half of the 19th century the industrial rents of the Dartford estate far outstripped the agricultural rents. Assessed rent for the papermaking premises rose in 1863 to £65 (£18 14s. 1d./acre) and in 1883 to £130 (£37 8s. 2d./acre), before the London Paper Mills was granted a 75-year lease in 1889 at £155 (£46 17s. 8d./acre). A small wharf and commercial premises containing 0a.0r.18p., separated from the papermaking premises in 1890, generated additional rental income of £7 10s. (£66 13s. 4d./acre) until their sale in 1898. In that year a further 4a.3r.17p. of former marshland were added to the London Paper Mills lease at a rent of £96 (£19 15s. 4d./acre). In 1896, the second wharf and buildings, then known as Steam Crane Wharf, were separated from most of the agricultural land and let for £160 (£24 1s. 2d./acre), a separation completed in 1899, when the remaining marshland was removed from the wharf lease, leaving industrial premises containing 1a.1r.20p. let at £150 rent (£109 1s. 10d./acre) rising in 1902 to £185 (£134 10s. 11d./acre). Altogether, the industrial rents rose from £14 6s. 9d. per acre in 1856 to a high of £47 10s. 8d. per acre in 1890 and averaged £31 2s. 4d. per acre between 1856 and 1914. In contrast, during the same period the agricultural land, let in various configurations to various tenants, averaged £5 17s. 6d. per acre from 1856 to 1895 before dropping to an average of £1 10s. 3d. per acre after the separation of Steam Crane Wharf from the agricultural land in 1896, a figure once again just slightly above the TBA and Kent agricultural average.
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