Unique personal collection piece: 1968 Redmire lease

A couple of years ago we posted a quite unusual find – tbh, most probably the sickest thing in our collection over at Monkey Climber – in a Facebook group for old school afishionado’s: the original 1968 lease document for Redmire Pool between Jack Hilton and the owners of the property. Truly unique and a proper piece of carp fishing history. The post quite literally went red hot in no time, but since not everyone can see posts in this group we thought of sharing some images with you over here.

Lots of people were curious as to how we came across this. The answer simply is ‘by eBay accident’. We think it was ten years ago when our editor couldn’t find his original copy of Quest for Carp, so we had a look on eBay uk searching for ‘Jack Hilton’. Couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw this listed for a couple of quid in the general Book section of eBay (not in the angling listings). Waited until the last seconds of the auction, put 50 quid on it and won it for 45 lol. We’ve been offered a good month’s wage for it since, but will never leave the Monkey Climber HQ, sorry!

Note that Jack could lease the infamous syndicate for 500 quid back then, which must have been a lot of money in those days. For your interest, we did a Jack Hilton tribute for MC#5 couple of years ago, with this amazing cover by Stannart. Interviewed Jack’s son back then, truly inspiring stuff. This issue is long sold out though.