Canwick (Lincolnshire) and Melbourn (Cambridgeshire) in comparative perspective within the open-closed village model

Rural History

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-22

  Mills, Dennis ^a  

^a NONE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPARATIVE STUDY; VILLAGE;

CAMBRIDGESHIRE; ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; LINCOLNSHIRE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33644933793     PISSN: 09567933     EISSN: 14740656     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0956793305001573     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. This section is based loosely on D. R. Mills, Lord and Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1980), but especially on Table 6.1, p. 117.
2. For trades/craftsmen and dual occupations see D. R. Mills, Rural Community History from Trade Directories (Oxford, 2001).
3. See also B. Short (ed.), The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis (Cambridge, 1992), chapters 2 and 3.
4. The proportion of the employed population engaged in trades and crafts ranged between nil and about twenty per cent in closed villages, but about ten to forty per cent in open villages. See, for example, C. Rawding, 'Village Type and Employment Structure: An Analysis in the Nineteenth-Century Lincolnshire Wolds', in D. R. Mills and K. Schürer (eds.), Local Communities in the Victorian Census Enumerators' Books (Oxford, 1996), p. 415.
5. At Melbourn, an open village discussed below, the 1841 census listed twenty-eight per cent of the employed population as working in trades and crafts: D. R. Mills, 'The Quality of Life in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, in the Period 1800-50', International Review of Social History 23 (1978), 382-404 (Table 3).
6. A. Howkins, 'Types of Rural Communities', in E. J. T. Collins (ed.), Agrarian History of England and Wales, VII, 1850-1914 (Cambridge, 2000), pt. II, p. 1303
7. D. R. Mills, 'The Poor Laws and the Distribution of Population, c. 1600-1860, with special reference to Lincolnshire', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26 (1959), 185-95
8. and Dennis R. Mills, Lord and Peasant - see the brevity of the section on poor laws, pp. 119-20
9. S. Banks, 'Nineteenth-Century Scandal or Twentieth-Century Model? A New Look at "open" and "close" Parishes', Economic History Review 41 (1988), 51-73, was especially keen to pin the model down to poor law policy.
10. In 1992 Short, English Rural Community, p. 29, accepted that 'the "close" parish, according to Dennis Mills' formulation, hinged around rather more than the character of the vestry'
11. and Howkins, 'Types of Rural Communities', pp. 1304-05, expressed a similar view.
12. Snell's remark that 'The right to live somewhere was not largely dictated by settlement' is interestingly pithy - K. D. M. Snell, 'Pauper settlement and the right to poor relief in England and Wales', Continuity and Change, 6 (1991), 400.
13. The list includes studies of Leicestershire; Nottinghamshire; Oxfordshire; parts of Lincolnshire; Berkshire and west Norfolk; Sussex, Kent and Surrey; and Staffordshire: D. R. Mills, Landownership and Rural Population with Special Reference to Leicestershire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Leicester, 1963)
14. D. R. Mills, 'The Geographical Effects of the Laws of Settlement in Nottinghamshire: An Analysis of Francis Howell's Report, 1848', East Midland Geographer 5 (1970), 31-38
15. B. K. Song, 'Parish Typology and the Operation of the Poor Laws in Early Nineteenth-Century Oxfordshire', Agricultural History Review 50 (2002), 203-24
16. D. R. Mills, 'Distribution of Population'
17. J. Obelkevich, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey 1825-1875 (Oxford, 1976)
18. S. A. G. Bennett, Landownership and Rural Society in Kesteven, c. 1820-50, unpublished PhD thesis (CNAA, Nottingham Polytechnic, 1991)
19. and 'Landownership and Parish Type, c. 1830'
20. in S. Bennett and N. Bennett (eds.), An Historical Atlas of Lincolnshire (Hull 1993, Chichester 2001), pp. 94-95 (map of the whole of Lincolnshire)
21. Rawding, 'Village type' and The Lincolnshire Wolds in the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln, 2001)
22. S. Banks, Open and Close Parishes in Nineteenth-Century England, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Reading, 1982), and 'Scandal or model?', referring to Berkshire and west Norfolk
23. K. Leslie and B. Short (eds.), A Historical Atlas of Sussex (Chichester, 1999)
24. D. Mills and B. Short, 'Social Change and Social Conflict in Nineteenth-Century England: The Use of the Open-Closed Village Model', in M. Reed and R. Wells (eds.), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700-1880 (London, 1990), pp. 90-99 (Sussex, Kent and Surrey)
25. D. J. Bell, Open and Close Parishes in Nineteenth Century Staffordshire: Testing the Causal Thesis, Staffordshire Polytechnic Occasional Papers in Geography 14 (1990)
26. and The Geography of Landownership in Staffordshire 1840-1910, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Birmingham, 1998)
27. M. J. Kitchener, The Rural Community: A Case Study of two Regions in Staffordshire, 1750-1900, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Keele, 1987).
28. The open-closed model is also part of the central argument in K. D. M. Snell and P. S. Ell, Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion (Cambridge, 2000). In 1990 Bell found that the open-closed model did not apply to his Staffordshire data, which is not surprising as that county was essentially pastoral in its agriculture. Banks rejected the model, but in fact the results of her main statistical tests (tables 2 and 3) provide support for it. Like Banks in table 3, Song, in 'Parish Typology', used cluster analysis but concluded that the model has a significant level of validity.
29. Mills, Lord and Peasant, p. 70, table 4.3.
30. D. R. Mills, 'The Nineteenth Century Peasantry of Melbourn, Cambridgeshire', in R. M. Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Lifecycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 481-519.
31. Mills, 'Quality of Life'.
32. P. Hudson and D. Mills, 'English Emigration, Kinship and the Recruitment Process: Migration from Melbourn in Cambridgeshire to Melbourne in Victoria in the Mid-Nineteenth Century', Rural History 10 (1999), 55-74, see p. 59.
33. D. R. Mills, 'The Christening Custom at Melbourn, Cambs', Local Population Studies no. 11 (1973), 11-22, republished in M. Drake (ed.), Population Studies from the Parish Registers (Matlock, 1983), pp. 36-47.
34. D. R. Mills, 'The Court of Arches and Church Rates Disputes as Sources of Social History', Bulletin of Local History East Midland Region 14 (1979), 1-11.
35. Bell, Staffordshire, p. 11
36. Banks, 'Scandal or Model', 69
37. Mills, thesis, app. 4
38. Lincolnshire Archives Office, North Scarle Tithe Award, 1839
39. Mills, Lord and Peasant, p. 92. These examples relate to a variety of dates and to a range of township acreages.
40. Banks, 'Scandal or Model', 68
41. R. J. Olney, Labouring Life on the Lincolnshire Wolds: A Study of Binbrook in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology Occasional Paper 2 (Sleaford, 1975), p. 12
42. Bell, Staffordshire, p. 15.
43. This point is elaborated in Mills, Lord and Peasant, especially chapters 2 and 3.
44. J. Broad, Transforming English Rural Society. The Verneys and the Claydons, 1600-1820 (Cambridge, 2004), p. 4.
45. Mills, Lord and Peasant, p. 77
46. and D. R. Mills, 'Country Seats of the Gentry', in Bennett and Bennett (eds.), Atlas of Lincolnshire, p. 106.
47. Rawding, Lincolnshire Wolds, pp. 62-65 and 170-73.
48. F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963), Tables II and IV. These follow Bateman in defining the estates of the greater gentry as those with 3,000 to 10,000 acres and the greater estates (mostly belonging to aristocrats) as over 10,000 acres. Many English lowland parishes had acreages of only 1,500 to 3,000.
49. Space does not permit the full referencing of this section, but the most important documentary sources in the Lincolnshire Archives Office are in SIB, 2SIB and BS, especially BS1, BS3, BS16
50. also the Canwick Parish Deposit, but this lacks overseers' accounts. Secondary sources include A. R. Maddison, An Account of the Sibthorp Family (Lincoln, 1896)
51. Joan and Dennis Mills, 'A Case Study at Canwick of the Enduring Influence of Monastic Houses', Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 33 (1998), 47-54
52. M. Trott, 'Political Assassination in Lincoln? The Strange Death of Coningsby Sibthorp', Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 34 (1999), 38-40
53. and Joan and Dennis Mills and Michael Trott, 'New light on Charles De Laet Waldo-Sibthorp, 1783-1855', Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 36 (2001), 25-37. I would like to thank an audience in the Centre for English Local History at Leicester University for listening to my paper on the Sibthorps (November 1999) and for helping me to refine the material.
54. Paying above general market prices for land to extend an estate was probably not unusual. See, for example, the case of Earl Cowper who 'overpaid' for two blocks of land at Panshanger, which completed his undisputed control of three contiguous parishes: H. Prince, 'The Changing Landscape of Panshanger', East Hertfordshire Archaeological Society Transactions, 14 (1959), 46.
55. Canwick Hall was let by Charles to Sir Mark Wood for the hunting season in 1831: Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 14th October 1831, p. 3
56. my thanks to Mrs Jean Towers for this reference.
57. This priority was typical of the period: T. Williamson and L. Bellamy, Property and Landscape: A Social History of Landownership and the English Countryside (London, 1987), p. 170.
58. P. Smith and D. Mills, 'Lindum - a Lincolnshire house in Norway', Lincolnshire Life (March 2001), pp. 22-3.
59. Jesus College, Oxford, LN1/1; my thanks to Dr Brigid Allen for this reference.
60. On villages see, for example, G. Darley, Villages of Vision (London, 1975)
61. and M. Havinden, 'The Model Village', in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Victorian Countryside (London, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 414-27.
62. One of the problems of studying the Sibthorp estates is the fact that surviving records are heavily biased towards the legal side of estate business, whilst data on the day-to-day business are scarce. Theobald has pointed out for part of Suffolk that the appointment of effective stewards or agents was at least as important as the residence or otherwise of the estate owner: J. Theobald, '"Distant lands": The Management of Absentee Estates in Woodland High Suffolk, 1660-1800', Rural History 12 (2001), 1-18
63. see pp. 15-16. The Sibthorps probably compared unfavourably with estates in east Yorkshire: B. English, 'Patterns of Estate Management in East Yorkshire, c. 1840-c.1880', Agricultural History Review 32 (1984), 29-48.
64. Short (ed.), English Rural Community, p. 40.
65. C. Harrison (ed.), Essays on the History of Keele (University of Keele, 1986)
66. and M. Sharples, The Fawkes Family and their Estates in Wharfedale, 1819-1936, Thoresby Society, second series 6 (for 1995) (Leeds, 1999).
67. By this date the Sibthorps had sold the Oxfordshire estate and extensive but scattered land holdings in the Lincolnshire Marsh, which in acreage terms were greater than their acquisitions in Hertfordshire and at Sudbrooke, near Lincoln; consequently their total acreage no longer added up to over 10,000 as it had in the earlier part of the century.
68. Sharples, Fawkes Family, p. 45
69. Harrison, Keele, p. 104
70. J. Bateman, Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1883, reprinted Leicester, 1971).
71. Sharples, Fawkes Family, pp. 17, 27-28.
72. Ibid., pp. 16, 21, 23, 26, 119.
73. The Sibthorps sold relatively small amounts of land on the fringes of Lincoln for urban and industrial purposes: D. Mills, 'An Edge-Land: The Development of the Witham Valley East of Canwick Road', in A. Walker (ed.), Aspects of Lincoln. Discovering Local History (Barnsley, 2001), pp. 134-46.
74. Sharples, Fawkes Family, especially pp. 21, 34-36, 44-54, 100-01.
75. Harrison, Keele, especially pp. 41-42, 68, 87-89, 103-19.
76. H. A. Clemenson, English Country Houses and Landed Estates (London, 1982), pp. 35-6. Broad's description of changes made by the Verneys shows how a concentration around Claydon House was pursued when the estate ran into financial difficulties and outlying properties were sold: The Verneys and the Claydon, passim. His work is a very important addition to the literature, but direct and detailed comparison with Canwick has not been undertaken, as the Verneys, with an earldom, were of superior status to the Sibthorps, and the period of study is rather earlier than this study of Canwick.
77. J. Throsby, Select Views in Leicestershire (Leicester and London, 1791), vol. 2, p. 132. The Ashbys lived about a mile from Hungarton village at Quenby Hall, which occupied a deserted medieval village site in a large park.
78. Williamson and Bellamy, Property and Landscape, especially p. 150.
79. A. H. J. Baines, 'The Vestry of Cholesbury 1820-1894', Records of Buckinghamshire, 17 (1961-5), 57-71
80. and 'The Select Vestry of Hawridge', Records of Buckinghamshire, 18 (1966-70), 34-42
81. Bennett, thesis, p. 224: The parishes were Bassingham and Billinghay;
82. Cambridgeshire Record Office, P117/Town book, vol. 2, pp. 71, 146, 158, 170 and pp. 65, 77, 83, 114, 125, 135, 148.
83. Petty sessional divisions have been neglected by poor law historians, but those interested in the development of local government have been more industrious in this respect. A good introduction is to be found in B. K. Song, 'Landed Interest, Local Government, and the Labour Market in England, 1750-1850', Economic History Review, 51 (1998), 465-88
84. Song, 'Agrarian Policies on Pauper Settlement and Migration, Oxfordshire, 1750-1834', Continuity and Change, 13 (1998), 363-89
85. and Song, 'Continuity and Change in English Rural Society: The Formation of the Poor Law Unions in Oxfordshire', English Historical Review, 114 (1999), 314-38.