Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 2 (2010), p. 284

This is the sixth volume in this series, three of which have been of northern counties, County Durham, the West Riding and now Westmorland. We may have to wait a long time for the volume for Cumberland, because it is reported here that the county’s returns are not only incomplete but also in poor condition, and so for the time being this volume will have to serve to illustrate the economy of the far North.

The volume proceeds on lines that are well established and familiar. It prints the return to the Exchequer of the Michaelmas 1670 tax and a rather exceptional survival, a survey made by the farmers of the tax for Westmorland in 1674–5 for the Westmorland JP, Sir Daniel Fleming, which remains amongst his papers. A shorter survey for Kendal is also included. Rather alarmingly, the surveys show how much more assiduous the farmers were in finding taxable hearths than the parish constables. The total number of households found in 1670 was 5131, the total in 1674/5, 6833, and, for hearths, 7110 and 10,446 respectively (Table two). Such is the efficiency of seventeenth-century private enterprise over parochial administration! Table three shows just how volatile from return to return the number of households was, as well as the difficulties of comparing differing returns for neighbouring counties. All of this is explained and tabulated with clarity. The centrepiece of the volume for those uninterested in the micro-topography of the county are the two essays by Colin Phillips, one on the economy and society of the county about 1670 and the other on ‘Westmorland in the Hearth Tax documents’ in which he deploys a career-long interest in the county (and Kendal in particular) to good effect.

This was an extremely poor county. In the county as whole, 83 per cent of all households were one-hearth households in 1670 and 73 per cent in 1674/5. The proportion was higher in the north of the county (‘The Bottom’) than in the south (‘The Barony’), 89.9 per cent and 67.5 per cent respectively in 1674/5. Phillips is adamant that individual poverty should not be inferred from the possession of a single-hearth property and shows that some of those living in apparently poor conditions had high levels of wealth at probate. In general, the use of probate documents in his contributions is very attractive, and Phillips integrates recent work in vernacular architecture. He contributes a couple of pages of discussion on the problem of fuel in the county – no local coal, little woodland and a reliance on peat and turf. In the end, though, the problem of fuel supply, and the difficulties it posed for housing, were probably greater than he allowed. He draws attention to the significance of the ‘grate’ in inventories but does not draw on the architectural evidence of chimneys at this point. Others might want to take this up. Phillips’s discussion of the shifting occupancy of houses in Kendal is of great interest.

Like its predecessors, the book is a delight to handle. Being a much smaller county, the single page maps (by Mike Shand) work much better than in the West Riding volume. It is also well illustrated with pictures of representative buildings and pictures reproduced from manuscripts. Amongst the latter are two splendid drawings by the herald (and later political arithmetician), Gregory King, of Appleby and Kendal seen from the west. The latter, shows a very significant (and modern for its time) house on the east side of Highgate close to Kendal church. Whose house was it? Phillips does not tell us, but it would be interesting to know.

In assessing the earlier West Riding volume, this reviewer made some sharp comments on the index. It is doubtless not the power of my pen that has made the Hearth Tax team prepare a proper index of persons on this occasion, but it is extremely welcome. So, all in all, this is a job well done. One hopes that the series can maintain the momentum – and the funding – to make the appearance of further volumes a regular event even if some of them will have to be of southern counties.