By J. D. Marshall

Near the end of his reign, King James government caused a stabling and accommodation survey to be made for military purposes. The lengthy file of entries is entitled (1686), the “Abstract of a Particular Account of all the Inns, Alehouses &c in England with their Stable Rooms and Bedding”. It is in the Lancashire Public Record Office (WO/30/48), with sections for counties.

This remarkable survey has two sets of figures, for “Guest Beds” and “Stabling Places”, and of course it is meant to indicate how much accommodation a visiting army might expect to find, principally for officers. The surveyors do not appear to have had very good or detailed maps, with the result that townships in North Lancashire and Westmorland were either visited twice by accident, or were put in the wrong county, especially if they were near a joint boundary.

The references are principally to inns and alehouses, as the title shows, and can work out roughly

a) how big the local inn was likely to be, and
b) how many inns or alehouses there were likely to be.

If we take 4-6 visitor beds for a village inn, and the same number of stabling places, any left over can be taken to account for another inn or alehouse or two. So, the village or township of Warton had 17 guest beds and 12 stabling places, and so we can guess it had three inns or alehouses at that time. But it was no more of a metropolis than was Hest Bank, which had 11 and 23 respectively, and which plainly catered for oversands travellers.

In order to keep a sense of proportion, we should first of all look at Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale and their figures:

Guest BedsStabling Places
Lancaster308532
Kirkby Lonsdale15390
Warton Area
Priest Hutton00
“Carneforth”44
Warton1712
“Yeallon”36
Silverdale22
“Borrwick”35
Kellet1712
Hest Bank1123
“Arneside”13
Beetham1217
Heversham1729

At this time, Kendal had 279 guest beds and 439 stabling places, and it is hard to guess why Kirkby Lonsdale had so few stalls for horses by comparison – unless many of its visitors travelled in for market days only. Lancaster and Kendal were greater regional market centres which had to cater for long-distance travellers.

Although Warton pales into insignificance compared with such centres, it was simply off the beaten track, with oversands traffic missing it at Hest Bank. Other northern traffic evidently went via Burton-in-Kendal and Sedgwick to Kendal, although it is worth noticing that “Millthray” (Milnthorpe) had 25 guest beds and 37 stabling places, perhaps because it was even then the port and outlet for Kendal. By contrast Silverdale and Arnside really were remote places. In 1691 Silverdale and Warton really were badly cut off one from the other, and Dr. Fenton, the Vicar of Lancaster complained that:

“The way is plain & open from the sides of two great hills to all the severity of the weather Seawards. In the midst lies a deep Mosse where I thought we must have left our horses & were once in despair of making our way. .. “

This quotation was kindly supplied by Dr John Addy, whose talk will be well remembered by our members. We are so accustomed to asphalt roads and rapid transport that such struggles are now hard to imagine.

Warton was really a mini-metroplis as the head township of its large parish. Taking 124 Lancashire villages and townships, the average for guest beds throughout the sample was a mere 1.6, with 3.6 stabling places, and for 90 of the smaller Cumbrian villages or townships, 2.9 and 4.1 respectively. So our Warton townships were, with the exception of Silverdale and “Hutton”, not too badly off by the standards of the time.

One important point remains. When we write the history of Warton parish, we must remember that for much of the time its townships were cut off from one another, save by poor tracks and lanes. Of course people came to church services or visited relatives; but much of their work in farms and fields kept them in their immediate localities. These smaller places were “communities” in their own right.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 17 1991