by Michael Wright

One of the objectives of the Mourholme Society nineteenth century research group is to try to trace the changes in land ownership that occurred in Warton parish. The most useful source on land ownership is the series of tithe commutation awards prepared for each township in the middle of the century. The awards for all seven townships in Warton parish were prepared in 1846. Each tells us, field by field, who owned the land, and what the land was used for – arable, pasture, meadow, coppice.

More difficult is to find information about land ownership at the start of the nineteenth century, to provide comparison with the Tithe Award. Changes at the level of an individual farm, or a local family can be traced through painstaking work on the details of family history and property deeds. But this approach requires enormous resources of time. What the research group requires is a summary of land ownership around the start of the nineteenth century. There are three useful sources for such information: the enclosure awards, land tax assessments, and manor court records. Not all of these sources are available for each township. The enclosure award for Yealand (1778) is too early, and the award for Carnforth (1864) is too late to be useful. The most suitable enclosure awards are those for Silverdale and for Warton- with-Lindeth, both of which date from 1811 (though the process was not completed until 1817). There are land tax assessments for all the townships for the period 1781 -1832, though the use of these is a little complicated. Finally, manor court records survive only for Silverdale and Warton-with-Lindeth. The research group is therefore intending to concentrate its efforts, in the first place at least, on these two latter townships.

If we consider first of all the enclosure awards, and use Silverdale as an example, we know that when the commonland was divided up it was allocated to those who had rights to use the commons. The size of the allocation of commonland to each individual was proportional to that individual’s common rights, which was in turn proportional to their landholdings in the anciently enclosed lands. It follows that the pattern of landholdings in the anciently enclosed lands is reflected in the pattern of commonland allocations. The major landholders before enclosure received the largest shares of the newly enclosed land.

The information derived from the enclosure award is probably the closest we can get to an overall view of the landholdings in Silverdale at the start of the nineteenth century. It is valid to make comparisons with the landholdings given in the 1846 Tithe Award, and it also tells us quite a lot about some owners, such as the Inmans, for whom we already have information from other sources. What the enclosure award information does not tell us is who was tenanting the land, or what crops were being grown.

The Land Tax Assessments have frequently been used to provide information about land ownership around the start of the nineteenth century. Assessments for each of the years 1781 to 1832 are available for each township in Warton at the Lancashire Records Office. The Iand Tax was in fact not simply a tax on land but was a real estate and property tax, so that buildings and moveable goods also came within its ambit. It was authorised by an Act of 1692. From 1697 the amount charged to each county was fixed, and county authorities were charged with distributing the amount between townships. Since the amount charged to each county was not related to the area of cultivated land in that county, or to the amount of property, there is no direct relationship between the size of the tax and acreage of land. The amount of tax an individual paid depended partly on the acreage owned, but also on which county he lived in. There are even variations in the ‘tax rate per acre’ from township to township. However, the amount paid by individuals within the same township can be used as a measure of the relative size of their landholdings, especially when the township is not urban or industrialised. Other complications such as the double assessment of catholics may be relevant to our parish. Land tax records for the period 1781 -1832 have survived because they were used by the county authorities as evidence of qualification to vote until the Reform Act was passed. The tax itself continued until it was abolished in 1963. Since the amounts paid by each county remained the same for over 250 years, while government expenditure increased, the proportion of the tax burden raised from the Land Tax steadily declined. In the 1820s it formed about eleven percent of the total tax revenue.

The Mourholme Society archive now has copies of the Land Tax Assessments for Silverdale for the years 1800 and 1810. The latter can be compared with information from the enclosure award of 1811. Once the last-minute land sales before enclosure are taken into account, there is a close correlation between the two lists of landowners. But there is much less close agreement on who were the six largest landowners, as can be seen from the table below, which results from preliminary investigations. In the table the six largest landowners (of the anciently enclosed land) according to the enclosure award have been determined by finding the six largest allocations of commonland (excluding the allocation to Daniel Wilson, whose award compensated him for loss of the commons as Lord of the Manor of Silverdale). The six largest land owners prior to enclosure, according to the Land Tax for 1810 have been determined by calculating the proportion of the total township land tax paid by each individual. Again Daniel Wilson is excluded.

The six largest landowners in Silverdale 1810/1811

Using the 1810 Land Tax	% of total Township tax		Using the 1810 Enclosure Award	% of total land allocated
John Bisbrowne	9		Robert Inman	22
Robert Inman	8		James Hoggart	12
James Hoggart	7		Christopher Walker	7
James Kellet	6		William Maychell	5
Thomas Mackrall	6		Heirs of John Bisbrown	4.5
John Walling	4.6		Heirs of Thos Mashiter	4.5
Total	40.6		Total	55

1. John Bisbrowne 9 1. 22 2. Robert Inman 8 2. t 12 3. James Hoggart 7 3. 7 4. 6 4. 5 5. 6 5. 4.5 6. 4.6 6. 4.5 40.6 55

Turning to the third source of information on land ownership, the Manor Court records, we are again limited to data from Silverdale and from Warton-with-Lindeth, since the manor court records from other townships have either not survived or are very incomplete. The value of the manor court records arises because of the local system of copyhold land ownership. Tenants of the manor of Silverdale, for example, could sell or exchange their land, but at each transaction a ‘fine’ had to be paid to the Lord of the Manor. The fines are listed at the meetings of the manor court (usually twice a year), and these records provide a quick method of tracing changes in land ownership.

There are two problems with manor court records. In the first place not everyone in Silverdale Township was a tenant of the Lord of the Manor, so the list of landholding transactions is not complete. And it is necessary to work through many decades of records to build up a picture of the total manorial landholdings. Even then we are not sure whether all the manor court proceedings have been preserved. The full list of tenants of the same manor only appears in the records when the Lord of the Manor dies, and a ‘general fine’ becomes payable.

The nineteenth century research group is currently working on these various records. So far as can be judged at present, the enclosure award information on land holdings is likely to be the most reliable source, and may be backed up by Land Tax Assessments. Meanwhile the land transactions recorded by the manor court are being summarised for whatever information they can give for the nineteenth century and for earlier times.

Reference

Land and Property: English Land Tax 1693-1832. Edited by Michael Turner and Dennis Mills. Alan Sutton, 1986.

Published in Mourholme Local History Society Magazine Issue 37 1999