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AUSTREY VILLAGERS

Later changes

Changes in the village social order

After the Civil War there was a slowing down or reversal of population growth in Appleby, part of a general demographic malaise affecting towns and villages throughout the country at this time.  Late marriages and smaller families suggest a more cautious approach to family responsibilities, or fewer opportunities for household formation, after 1640. The demographic fortunes of midland parishes began to diverge after the Civil War.  Recovery depended to a large extent upon economic factors, particularly opportunities for employment in subsiduary occupations.  Migration thus appears in the final analysis as a major determinant of population recovery after 1660, with increases in the numbers of the cottaging poor an unwanted legacy of earlier growth.

The fragmentary evidence that survives also suggests a trend towards economic and social polarization over the course of the seventeenth century.  This is exemplified in the increasing number of labourers and poor people, the economic decline of the smallholders and the increased wealth of some of the gentry families after 1660.  The period from 1660-1700 saw a broadening of the economic base within the parish as a result of migration.  The establishment of cottage craft industries in Appleby also helped to create a new social order, since the craftworkers, who lacked kinship connections within the parish, were set apart from the traditional agricultural workers and tradesmen.  This process was well advanced by 1670 when assessments were made for the hearth tax, providing a crude reflection of the wealth structure of the parish.

      (Source: WCR Hearth Tax Returns I, 2-10)

Margaret Spufford defines a 'polarised community' as one in which twenty per cent of households occupied houses of three or more hearths while forty per cent of the labourers occupied houses of one hearth. The register reveals that labourers and cottage craftworkers occupied more than forty per cent of the single hearth households in Austrey . On the other hand fewer than one in ten householders occupied houses with three or more hearths. Although the social order had not yet been polarised to the extent of places like Orwell and Chippenham in Cambridgeshire, the increasing number of poor householders had changed the social structure of the parish, causing some of the conflicts and divisions which were beginning to surface.

                                                                                    © Alan Roberts, November 2000