File 81. - Affidavit of David Stewart, who had been employed as surveyor of the Marquis of Bute and as surveyor and manager ...,

Affidavit of David Stewart, who had been employed as surveyor of the Marquis of Bute and as surveyor and manager of 700 acres of land extending two or three miles along the right bank of the river Romney on both sides of the turnpike roads leading from Merthyr Tydvil to Abergavenny, part of which are called the Carno tenement, which were leased by the Marquis of Bute to Thomas Seaton Forman, in a Chancery cause in which the said Bute and Forman, the Earl of Bristol and Henry Lewis, clerk, are plaintiffs and Josiah John Guest, Wyndham Lewis, William Price Lewis and Thomas Revel Guest are defendants. The deponent states that the roads on such farms and lands were very narrow and inconvenient and had been rendered impassable by the mining works of the Dowlais Company, which had, by depositing rubbish, nearly prevented communication between lands on the opposite side of the Carno brook, which were formerly part of the same tenement. He states further that Forman intended constructing a road over the aforesaid farms and lands to communicate with the turnpike road, without which the said farms and lands could not be occupied to advantage, nor could coal be conveyed thereform except on the backs of horses. He believes that the Dowlais Company had obstructed the formation of such a road to impede the proceedings of the newly formed Bute Company, threatening to obtain iron under the area by the wasteful method of 'patchwork' mining. He also states that the Dowlais Company had been till 1 Oct. 1823 in possession of the Carno tenement, that the new road was nearly at the eastern extremity of the said tenement and that the furnaces of the Dowlais Company were situated nearly three miles to the west of the said new road and that the new road was situated as far as possible from the said furnaces.