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  1. Published on: 26/05/2020 07:51 AMReported by: rogerblaxall
    By Kate Hurst, ODFHS

    My golden rule about family history is that you should research in any way (and using any resources) you like.

    It’s your family, so you might as well ask the questions that you want the answers to; in 2018, that was how I ended up at the Lancashire Archives, taking hundreds of photos of some documents that were all about Ormskirk and the people who lived there in the time of George III and George IV.

    So what exactly were they?

    Put simply, they were known as Land Tax Assessments, and the earliest was dated 1781, when people were taxed at 4 shillings in the £, based on what seemed to be the rent they paid every year - but would we have recognised Ormskirk as it was then?

    A year earlier, the ducking-stool had been removed from the Mere Brook; Ormskirk was a town without the Savings Bank, a railway, a newspaper, and the Clock Tower. There was no Board of Health, no urban district council, and the town wouldn’t be supplied with gas until 1833 ... so what was it like?

    The first returns are just lists of names and sums of money; sometimes it was the property rather than the tenant that was named, and they were organised by street. It’s not clear whether there were only four streets in Ormskirk - Moor Street, Church Street, Burscough Street and Aughton Street - or whether they were the major ones - whatever, they were the only ones listed.

    The 1782 records mentions a “Mr. Broaster” (or his tenants) on Burscough Street, which instantly reminded me of hearing my dad talk about how he was forbidden to go near Broster’s Wood as a child. I can’t help but wonder whether there is a link between the wood and the man who lived on Burscough Street...

    The Ormskirk of 1782 boasted a malt kiln, a bowling green, Cranes fields, Caunce's Croft, Wickliff's Croft and (of course) the workhouse; it seems almost unrecognisable to the town we know today, but by 1784 one vaguely familiar feature was mentioned - the “Mass House”- Roman Catholics weren’t allowed to have formal chapels until 1791, so this building (owned by Robert Entwistle Esq.) was an acknowledgment that a Catholic community existed in Ormskirk, with a designated (if unofficial) place of worship.

    Elsewhere, the Earl of Derby owned land that was used as a “slutch hole”; the best explanation I have found is that “slutch” is a northern English dialect word for “mud”, but perhaps it was an informal rubbish dump?

    By the turn of the nineteenth century, the records paint a good picture of Regency Ormskirk.

    Mrs. Shaw’s various properties were used as a school, stable and hayloft. Miss Rigby owned a couple of cottages. The mysterious “Mr. Clark” owned fifty-one properties, including various crofts, a “new barn”, the “Little Meadow”, and something that was sure to be useful in a town which boasted sixteen inns and taverns by 1791 - a “malt kiln and brewhouse”. It took me some time to realise that the numbers in the first column of every page represented the annual rent due on each property - no one bothered to include the £ sign!

    Even in those few short years, Ormskirk had changed; in 1799, a “J. Hankin” had a nursery, and - surely enough - when Holden’s Directory of 1811 was released - it made a reference to “Hankin James, nursery-man, Burscough Street”.

    The records offer an excellent idea of who the major property holders of the town were. In the case of “Mr. Smith”, his tenants proved to be just as interesting; out of twelve pieces of land (with a levy of between 9d and 9s 3d being due for each), seven were leased by George Prescott. The 1811 trade directory suggests that George was a miller, living on Moor Street; his holdings did indeed include the “mill field”, and a couple of fields at “T. Hill”, which might be Tinkers Hill (or Tower Hill, as we call it today).

    By 1801, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Elsewhere in Lancashire, 11,000 people lived in Blackburn (sometimes known as “Cotton Town”) and seventeen years later, the town had an Opera House. In Preston, a stagecoach route connected the town to Wigan and Warrington by 1792, gas street lighting followed in 1816, and in 1835 the town had forty cotton mills (with the consequent strikes and lock-outs that came when the factory hands demanded better working conditions).

    Ormskirk, by contrast, is not somewhere we associate with heavy industry . . . yet the 1799 land tax records clearly show that there was a “manufactory”, a mill, a kiln and a brickfield in town. That brickfield was occupied by a John Walsh, and I’d seen his name somewhere before. In 1745, Ormskirk bricklayer John “Welsh” and his wife Ellen had a baby boy named Valentine, baptised at the old Mass House. We cannot be sure whether this John and the man mentioned in the 1799 land taxes were the same man, or whether they were simply related, but it seems that bricks were in the Walsh (or Welsh) blood.

    Mr. Brandreth leased a “hemp shop” and a croft to a T. Tilsley, stables to Peter Berry and Richard Brig-house, besides having three properties for himself, including a “machine”. It is impossible to be sure whether it was some kind of factory equipment, a medical device or just a curious invention, but Holden’s 1811 Directory suggests that Thomas Brandreth was a tanner from Burscough Street, and the mysterious “machine” is referenced in several subsequent land tax assessments. Perhaps the gadget was useful to the leather making industry?

    The assessments continued until 1831, and Ormskirk and District Family History Society have published the transcriptions covering the last five years (1827 onwards), which turned out to be an excellent choice of records, because in 1828, Pigot’s Directory was published . . . complete with a list of Ormskirk traders! It is sometimes said that to verify any historical fact beyond doubt, you should look for three independent sources that confirm those details, but even with just the 1828 land tax list and Pigot’s Directory to hand, matching information quickly became obvious.

    John Lolli, for instance, rented a shop; since he was a cabinet maker on Burscough Street, maybe it served as a workshop and retail outlet? George Harriot rented houses to five separate tenants; as a brewer based on Aughton Street, we might guess that he funded the purchase of the properties with his business profits.

    Thomas Fearns had four houses, three being out. His tenant William Smith seemed as though he might be hard to trace, yet Pigot’s Directory suggests that he was one of four hairdressers in town. Unlike his rivals, William also kept a library - perhaps it was the Georgian equivalent of flicking through the magazines while we wait to have our hair done?

    Like William Smith, Peter Woods had a fairly common surname, yet he, too, was simple enough to find, and (with three houses and a factory) seems to have been a successful man, perhaps because he made his money in a famous local industry. In 1828, Peter was one of nine rope makers in Ormskirk.

    Now and then, the assessments include a familiar name; if you’ve ever been inside St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church, you may have seen the memorial plaque for former organist Michael Heathcote. Whether he had this role because he was a competent musician, in acknowledgement of his service in the community or just because someone felt obliged to involve him in parish life is impossible to say, but in 1828, Michael (along with James Fletcher, a land agent) was responsible for drawing up the land tax assessments.

    As with anything in historical research, some information in the returns is a bit puzzling. It is widely known that Ormskirk once boasted something like sixteen pubs, and although the records are quite clear that William Bibby leased a brewery to William Welsby in 1828, nowhere is there a specific reference to an inn. Once again, the assessments must be compared with other resources.

    That year, Lawrence Almond rented land from Miss Brandreth and Miss Watson; Pigot’s Directory suggests that it was probably the Roe Buck on Burscough Street. Margaret Allen simply occupied a “house” - was she the same Margaret Allen who ran the Talbot Inn on Aughton Street, or Margaret Allen the maltster from Moor Street?

    Although the land tax assessments will never provide much information about a family group as a census record, they are still a valuable and unusual resource to help you build up an impression of the different features and buildings in towns like Ormskirk during the later Georgian era. But I still want to know more about that “machine”...

    ODFHS have published three sets of indexed, transcribed Ormskirk Land Taxes (1781-1790, 1799-1805 and 1827-1831) on CD or USB stick. Each set includes photos of original documents, and variable bonus features, including trade directories and expenses for building the Town Hall (1779). They can be purchased via our newly-updated online shop at https://www.parishchest.com/ormskirk...t-fhs-3508.php


    References:
    Census information about Blackburn from http://www.localhistories.org/blackburn.html, general information on Preston from http://www.localhistories.org/preston.html
     
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