On an examination into the account of the country letters, it had increased £7,835 2s. 7d., which Mr. Allen would have been entitled to if the 'explanatory contract' had only been executed. The country letters increased to £17,464 4s. 11d. per annum at the end of fourteen years. He now appointed surveyors, and stated his plans for suppressing irregularities. Lord Lovell and Mr. Carteret having expressed their approval of these plans, etc., he agreed to another contract for seven years, and proposed an extension and quickening of the correspondence in 1741 by an 'every-day post' to several places; this contract was renewed in 1748, 1755, and 1760. It details the communications by cross-roads, etc.; and it was found that the revenue, by computation, had increased one and a half millions. Some fine quarries on Combe Down, from which most of the best houses in Bath were built, having become his property, Allen invented an ingenious contrivance for conveying the huge blocks of stone from the quarries on the hill down to the canal which runs by the city. In his capacity of quarry-owner he amassed still more wealth, became a large employer of labour, and a man of such influence in Bath, that although he was mayor once only (in 1742), he practically guided the affairs of that city as it pleased him best, a circumstance which gave rise to a caricature, long popular at Bath, entitled 'The One-headed Corporation.' It need hardly be added whose head that was. A bust of him in the Drawing-room or Council Chamber of the Guildhall commemorates the year of his mayoralty, and there is also a portrait of him in the Mayor's Room.