This one is the Land Tax Redemption for 1798, which was a tax based on the value of someone’s home. So here we have the names of the people who lived in Chorlton in 1798 with whether they owned or rented the property and how much each house was worth.
It is a remarkable document, because it takes us back into the 18th century. Now there are the parish records detailing the births, deaths and marriages for the township as well as the Egerton and Lloyd estate papers but here we have some of the financial details of our people a full 40 years or more before the 1841 census and the rate books and tithe survey.
There are many of the familiar names that crop up throughout the 19th century and a few new ones. Some are quite clearly on the cusp of doing better while others will fare much the same four decades later.
And of course it is their economic standing which will be so revealing as well as their relationship with the Egerton’s and Lloyds who between them owned most of our land.
It should be possible to locate some of the properties and compare values with the rate books and tithe records for the 1840s onwards and compare the township with other nearby communities.
All of which I think is pretty neat.
Picture; the township just twenty or so years after the 1798 tax record, from Greenwood’s map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
No comments:
Post a Comment