510 Report on the Liverpool Prize-Farm Competition, 1877 — 
of the market it is made for are consulted : and a cheese of 
closer texture would not, we were assured, have suited the Man- 
chester taste. Good prices had indeed been made. Two lots 
of this year's cheese had been sold at 78s. ; 71s., 77s., and 75s. 
were realised, for early, principal, and late makes, in 1875 ; and 
67s., 71s. and 73s. for the corresponding makes of 1876 — these 
being the prices per cwt. of 121 lbs. 
It is to the credit of Mr. Lea's management that he has eradi- 
cated a couple of miles of ragged and crooked fences during his 
tenancy, and made more than a mile of new fences ; quicks and 
posts and rails being supplied by the landowner. He has also 
spent 200/. in draining, — 120,000 three-inch tiles, given by the 
landlord, having been placed in drains 3 to 4 feet deep ; and he 
has also done a good deal, by embankment and by straightening a 
crooked watercourse, to protect the lower lands from inundation. 
Of the workmen on this farm, three have cow-plots attached 
to their cottages — fields of from 2i to 4 acres of land in grass — 
besides good and large gardens around the houses. A cottage 
and 4 acres let for 16/. a year ; two others, with 2^ acres each,, 
let for 8/. a year each. On the larger of the plots two cows aie 
kept, and a calf is reared, and one is fattened, a yearling heifer 
being put out to tack, costing 35s. from May 12 till October 10. 
The receipts are derived from milk for the family and butter for 
sale, and the calf fattened, and the heifer reared ; and the produce 
and the industry alike are a wholesome thing both for the 
rearing of a healthy family and for the attachment of the famil/ 
to the place. 
The instructions to the Judges of the farms appeared to 
them to give a preference to the dairy style of farming, and 
they would have awarded the first-prize exclusively to the Staple- 
ford Hall Farm ; but its management — good and profitable is 
it undoubtedly is — beautiful, indeed, from the rose-blossoming 
lawn in front of the house, and the fruitful garden behind it, to 
the very utmost of its neatly-fenced and well-managed fields — 
was not without its imperfections, as our Report has shown ; anl 
the management of the Well House Farm, Saltney, in Chester, 
with its enormous yield of beef and mutton and wheat, was also 
so good and profitable, that it appeared to us to deserve an equal 
place. 
The Well House Farms, close to the Broughton Hall Station, 
on the Chester and Mold Railway, are in the occupation of Mr. 
John Roberts, as the yearly tenant partly of the Right Hon. 
W. E. Gladstone, M.P., and partly of Mr. S. K. Mainwaring of 
Otley Park, Ellesmere, Salop. They include close on 400 
acres of alluvial land, of which 300 are arable, and 100 per- 
manent pasture. There is an agreement between the landlord 
