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James Tusoniv of Longton (1778 – 1845)
Introduction
In a previous article I looked at the origins of the Tuson family and its development in the part of west Lancashire where my own ancestors lived – Penwortham and Hutton, just south of Preston. This meant, in fact, six generations called alternately James and George, the last three (at least) of which had leased land from the manor of Hutton and appear to have become increasingly well-to-do, culminating in Georgeiii who was a yeoman and innkeeper[1].
Expansion of the cotton industry
Georgeiii died in 1793, the year England went to war with France. France might have been in the throes of a Political Revolution, but England was experiencing the first years of its Industrial Revolution as the cotton industry expanded rapidly to become England’s greatest, and sustained, export earner. Along the River Darwen, south of Preston, from about 1784 several water mills converted to drive  carding and spinning machinery (based on Arkwright’s water frame and Crompton’s mule)[2]. [Click here for a description of cotton processing]. But the event that was to transform Preston took place when John Horrocks moved there in 1791. Horrocks, a Quaker, was from Edgeworth near Bolton where he initially worked for his father in a quarry that produced millstones. He became interested in cotton and obtained a few spinning frames which he operated to produce high-quality yarn that he then sold throughout the area. On his move to Preston he set up a spinning operation and soon after succeeded in the remarkable achievement of obtaining an exclusive contract from the East India Company to supply them with cottons and muslins for the Indian market[2a]. He then proceeded, with partners and backers, to open a new spinning factory each year up to 1798, and a further mill in 1801, which were quickly to transform both Preston and the economy of the whole district.
At first Horrocks used horse-driven gins to power his machinery but he soon adopted the steam engine that had been perfected by James Watt. Horrocks’ first mill built specifically to be driven by steam was that at Canal Street in 1798[3].
Until this time Preston had been at a serious disadvantage with respect to most other Lancashire cotton towns in that it neither had running water to power the new spinning mills, nor was it situated on a coalfield. However there was plenty of coal in Wigan, fifteen miles to the south, and some had been arriving at Preston from the middle of the eighteenth century in flat-bottomed barges following improvement of navigation on the River Douglas. Better transport was needed though and in 1792 work began on a canal from Wigan to Preston. By 1803 the canal was in operation, complete with a substantial tunnel at Whittle le Woods. A canal crossing of the Ribble Valley proved too expensive however so, instead, a six-mile tramway was built from Walton Summit to carry the coal down into Preston. Along this, horse-drawn trains of six wagons, each carrying two-ton loads, passed on a double-track plate-way[4].
Besides Horrocks, others were also seizing the opportunities presented by Preston, leading to the construction of other large cotton mills, such as Swainson & Birley’s ‘Big Factory’ at Fishwick, and in the end the town was to have over 40 mills and became one of the major centres for cotton manufacture. Its character as a genteel market town was completely and irrevocably changed. Other cotton mills were built south of the River Ribble, notably at Walton-le-Dale and Bamber Bridge[5].
The new large spinning mills produced vast quantities of yarn and presented the mill owners of Preston with the opportunity to create  further wealth by expanding the weaving industry of the area. Surprisingly, the great advances in cotton spinning were not at first accompanied by any significant mechanization of the weaving process. Power looms had been tried in the 1780s but it was not until about 1806 that a power loom capable of practical application was developed, and even so, for various reasons, the power loom was able to displace the handloom weaver only gradually. Slightly surprisingly, I have been unable to find any estimate for the number of handloom weavers in the cotton districts of Lancashire before the advent of mechanized spinning, but it is clear that there was rapid growth from that time. To give some idea, the annual consumption of cotton in Britain in the 1780s was 14.8 million pounds, rising to 96.6 million in the 1810s[6], a more than six-fold increase at a time when virtually all weaving was still being done by hand[7]. Although machine weaving began thereafter to increase rapidly, the number of handloom weavers continued to rise to around 170,000 in the early 1820s before declining gradually to perhaps 55,000 by the 1850s and to virtual extinction in the 1880s[8].
The Workforce
The burgeoning demand for handloom weavers from the 1790s was satisfied from various sources. For one thing, the population of the country in general rose persistently from about 1740, more rapidly from about 1785, and continued to rise throughout the nineteenth century. For another, northwest England was the locus of the highest rates of growth[9].
Several factors contributed to the increase in population, important among which were earlier marriages and higher birth rates. Food prices had remained fairly stable since the 1670s and there was a run of low food prices from 1730 to 1755[10]. It may have been this fall in the cost of living that permitted the earlier marriages and therefore produced higher birth rates that set off the population growth. Lower food prices also meant there was a little more money available for other purchases, including better clothing, and so helped develop the domestic market for cotton goods. In the rural area of Penwortham, Hutton and Longton it would have been relatively easy to set up new looms and train up new cotton weavers, based on the traditional skills that already existed there in linen weaving, as previously explained. This pattern of working is very clear in the 1841 census data, discussed below.
Some, however, of the rising rural population chose to migrate to the nearby towns where there was a greater demand for labour and the prospect of higher wages[11]. Besides cotton-working there was much employment to be had in building the new spinning mills and the rows of brick houses needed for the workers, and in the associated trades that grew up to support cotton working – engineering, transport and other services.
Besides the increase in population, other factors also contributed to the rising industrial labour force. For example, the mechanisation of spinning made the hand spinners, generally women and children, redundant, freeing some of them up to work on the loom. In passing, however, we may note that there was still a need for some women and children to work as ‘bobbin winders’, a tedious activity essential to keep the weaver supplied with weft for his fly shuttle. Ben Brierley, a notable Lancashire writer, was only one of innumerable young boys who felt enslaved by this device, and often mentions how his father would hurl empty bobbins at his head when he fell behind in replenishing them. One of the terms of endearment used by his character Ab o’ th’ Yate to describe his wife is ‘my owd bobbin winder’, and the expression ‘stopped for bobbins’ was widely used in Lancashire to indicate a hold up in some job or other.
A further source of new handloom weavers was the demobilised Lancashire soldiers returning from the Napoleonic wars after 1815 who were desperate to find employment. As evidenced in a parliamentary paper they commonly ‘exchanged the musket for the shuttle’[12]. Finally, from about 1800 the influx of Irish workers, that was to turn to a flood by the time of the potato famine of the 1840s, had already begun[12a].
 The Preston area was as short of handloom weavers as many others in Lancashire. Initially most of the weavers were ‘outworkers’, that is they worked on traditional four-post looms at home or for a neighbour where they were provided with yarn for warp and weft either direct from the spinning mills or via middlemen, and wove lengths of cloth called ‘pieces’ for which they were paid. A large number of the outworkers lived in the towns and were closely attached to particular spinning mills that might provide housing. Rows of purpose-built weavers’ houses, which included a special loom-room partly below ground level, sprang up in Preston, often crammed as courts into the old medieval town property boundaries. These houses were small and primitive and later came to constitute fearful urban slums[13].
Other outworkers, however, lived outside the towns in rural or village locations and were serviced from warehouses. Quite a few village communities expanded as a result of this activity, such as Brindle, near Preston. Often existing houses or farm buildings were adapted for weaving, but new cottages were also built specially for the purpose. These might have had a loom-room either on the ground-floor or as a semi-basement with windows at ground level to provide light to weave by (see photo). The purpose-built cottages sometimes had space for several looms, typically four, so that several members of the family, or neighbours, could find useful employment, and they often had earth floors to help maintain the high humidity that kept the cotton fibres soft and pliable. The 1790s were boom times when the so-called modern idea of ‘working from home’ was actually widely achieved across Lancashire.
By 1816 the impact of the Horrocks mills on the villages was huge – they employed 'a whole countryside of weavers, 7,000 in all'[14] and other local spinning firms must also have employed outwork handloom weavers. Thus the scattered country weavers in villages such as Penwortham, Hutton and Longton were integrated via putters-out into the weaving network, and indeed by 1791 John Horrocks himself had established a warehouse in Longton supplying weavers with yarn and receiving the finished cloth[14a]. Jospeh Livesey (born at Walton-Le-Dale in 1794) was to say in his autobiography that ‘in the country around Preston all the small farms in Walton, Penwortham and the adjoining country places were ‘weaving farms’, having a ‘shop’ attached to hold a certain number of looms’[15].
The Farmers Industrialisation of the towns produced other changes to the country besides creating an army of handloom weavers. The new urban concentrations required feeding and this provided a stimulus to agricultural production in which the Tusons of the area were very much involved.
Most historians identify a revolution in agriculture that not only preceded but was an essential precondition of the industrial revolution. Had not the farmer been able to produce enough food to provide for the burgeoning population of the eighteenth century then England may well have experienced the Malthusian famines that occurred so tragically in Ireland in the 1840s[16]. Some of the important developments underlying increased agricultural production were the invention of the seed drill and horse-hoeing by Jethro Tull, investment in land improvements such as drainage, the discovery that turnips and swedes could help maintain livestock over the winter, and selective animal breeding leading to larger and better stock. As mentioned, it may be that it was the greater productivity that allowed the price of food to come down, especially in the period 1730 to 1755, creating improved well-being and leading to earlier marriage and increased population. Although we cannot know just how, the developments in agriculture must have affected in some degree the Tuson farmers from the time of Jamesiii onwards.
I have been unable to find any well-researched study ot the agriculture carried on in the lands south of Preston during the period around the end of the eighteenth century and have had to try to piece together a picture based on fragments. As described previously, most of the land was probably used to rear animals and the arable crops probably included oats, wheat, barley, potatoes and perhaps beans. Crosby[16a] suggests that cheese and butter were important local products, and indeed Joseph Livesely, the Preston temperance reformer, was a successful cheese merchant. In 1777 one local Tuson farmer (not known to be related to our branch of the family) was definitely growing ‘corn, grain, pulse, hemp, flax and patatoes (sic)’ in the area. A better source of information for the end of our period is the tithe maps and schedules for Hutton and Longton prepared in the late 1830s and 1840s. For Hutton the schedule shows that 29 percent of the area farmed was arable, 69 percent was meadow or pasture and 2 percent was plantations and willow beds. Almost identical figures can be derived from three reasonably substantial farms operated by the Tuson family at Longton, from data recorded in the tithe schedules of 1838 (see adjacent table). Of these farmers, James Tuson of Chapel Lane is likely to be the Jamesiv of this account. The arable crops recorded are wheat (14.9 ac), oats (approx. 11.5 ac), potatoes (approx. 5.35 ac), turnips (approx. 1.25 ac), clover and vetches (9.7 ac)[16b].
| Farmer's Name | Area (Acres) | House/ roads etc | Arable | Meadow/ Pasture | Plantation/ Garden etc | Total | Percent | James Tuson ( at Warmer) | 66.5 | 1.6 | 26.5 | 36.7 | 1.7 | 64.9 | 43.3 | James Tuson (Chapel Lane) | 61.8 | 0.6 | 13.6 | 47.1 | 0.6 | 61.2 | 40.8 | | Edward Tuson | 24.3 | 0.4 | 5.2 | 18.6 | 0 | 23.8 | 15.9 | | Total | 152.6 | 2.6 | 45.3 | 102.4 | 2.3 | 150 | 100 | | Percent | 100 | 1.6 | 30.2 | 68.3 | 1.5 | 100 | |
At the 147 acre Bank Hall Farm near Liverpool (to the south) in 1793 the figures are rather similar. There, 25% of the land was arable, 35% meadow and 40% pasture[17]. The tithe data of 1839 at Walton-le-Dale, east of Penwortham, had only 8.5% of the area under the plough, 55.8% was to pasture and another 30.8% grazing. The remainder was made up by ‘gardens and nurseries’ (2.2%) and woodland (2.7%). Nearly all the land was owned by ‘very large’ proprietors, while of the smaller owners most properties were of less than twenty acres[18]. Based on the experience of the Tuson farmers of the eighteenth century, many of these small proprietors probably leased additional land from the ‘very large’ ones.
The difference between pasture and grazing is unclear, but meadow would be grassland set aside for the production of hay to feed the animals during the winter. In any case all these examples illustrate farms working more with animals than grain production and the evidence suggests that in the seventeenth century the area south of Preston was more suitable for mixed farming, in contrast with the east and south of England where arable farming was the tradition. Preston’s grain may have come mostly from the Fylde, located north-west of the town[19].
Farming tenants such as the Tusons, though varying greatly in wealth and status, shared the necessity of making a profit to raise the cash needed to rent the land, and were therefore focussed and market driven. The landlords usually provided the farm buildings but the tenants had to supply the working capital, farm stock and agricultural implements[20]. Farming would have been a life of hard physical labour. 'Life ... was dominated by the unending calendar of the farming year. For the yeoman or smallholder the regular pattern of ploughing, sowing, reaping and caring for the livestock was inevitable. Hedges had to be pruned and layered, trees loped, ditches cleared, peat carted and beasts killed or sold'[20a]. For the women-folk too life involved much toil. Food had to be prepared, water carried from the well, clothes and bedding washed and ironed, ale brewed, the house kept clean and rushlights made. Women and children kept the gardens, and helped in the fields at harvest time. Herbs and remedies had to be prepared and there was the constant concern that poor health or a poor harvest might bring hardship or even destitution. Child-bearing was a dangerous business, infant mortality was high and life expectancy was comparativley short.
However, with the rapid rate of growth of Preston and other nearby towns (Chorley and Blackburn), especially from the 1790s, the Tuson and other farmers of the area were in an excellent position to benefit from providing for the needs of the new industrial workers, and they probably enjoyed a privileged position at least until the advent of the railways after 1840, as only then could the industrial centres be easily catered for from greater distances. In particular they would have been able to provide meat and dairy products (milk, butter, cheese) in addition to potatoes, oatmeal and the sorts of fruit and vegetables that were better grown in gardens and nurseries than open fields.
The Agricultural Labourers
Of course not all who worked in agriculture were farmers – most were labourers. Difficult times for farmers usually meant greater privation for their labourers, for the old systems of paternalism broke down as agriculture came more to depend on the cash market. Cobbett, writing in 1825, admittedly more focussed on areas further south, asked: “Why do not farmers now feed and lodge their workpeople, as they did formerly? Because they cannot keep them upon so little as they give them in wages … if the farmer now shuts his pantry against his labourers, and pays them wholly in money, is it not clear that he does it because he thereby gives them a living cheaper to him; that is to say, a worse living than formerly?”[21].
Evans observed that: ‘the massive agricultural growth and specialization of 1783 to 1870 brought little benefit to the folk who tilled the soil, tended the animals and cut the hay. The lot of most rural labourers deteriorated from the 1780s at least until the 1850s. From the 1770s to 1813 prices of foodstuffs rose generally and in some cases spectacularly; the profits of farming were based on bread prices too high for most labourers to maintain their already basic standard of living. After 1815, an era of lower prices caused farmers to retrench and rationalize. Wages were cut as unemployment shot up. Behind both developments lay one intractable and growing problem: the number of labourers. However much rapacious landlords or heartless farmers may be criticized, their actions must be seen against [the] background of rapid population growth. … It was ideal for industrial recruitment, but the rural labourer’s tragedy was that he remained immobile [because of the workings of the Poor Law]. A swollen but static population exerted severe downward pressure on wages and it is hard to escape the broad conclusion that rural labourers were poor because they were numerous’[22].
The worst years for labourers were those after the peace of 1815 when a labour market glutted by demobilized soldiers coincided with depressed arable prices as it became possible once again to import grain from Europe. In these years wages were beaten down and poor-rate expenditure reached its peak. Wages fell by about a third between 1814 and 1822[23].
The Town Labourer
Our story does not really concern the town labourer – my own Tuson family lived in the countryside (as, it seems, did most other Tusons of the area), where village life still retained much of the village structure. There, at least, food might be grown and there was a family network that might provide some support. However, even if only in passing, it should be noted that the lot of the industrial worker who cut his links with the land deteriorated badly from the late 1790s.
For one thing, labour in the spinning mills was often twelve or more hours per day for five or six days a week. However, the Horrocks concerns employed ten times as many weavers as spinners[24] and almost from the start the conditions in which many of them were housed in Preston were, to say the least, awful. Even as early as 1791 a writer told of the pull of Preston on the inhabitants of the surrounding area, where they were tempted by the prospect of ‘good wages at what they think easy work’ but then found that they had to work in filthy, overcrowded conditions, paying high prices for food and rents. In the autumn and winter they ended up on a poor diet and were prone to ‘low and nervous fevers; in short, putrid and gaol distempers, that often cut off men, leaving families behind’[25].
The years of the French Wars (1793-1815) were generally difficult for trade, with wild fluctuations in food prices, availability of work, and declining piece rates, and the following years saw the power loom continuously make inroads into the ranks of the handloom weavers. In 1826 there were riots in which power looms were smashed[26]. There was a lengthy – but failed – strike in Preston in 1836, and hunger stalked the town in 1841-2 at the time of the ‘Plug Riots’ when four men were killed[27]. It was not until 1844 that legislation restricted the daily total of hours worked to twelve[28]. Once the industrial worker lost his connection with the land he had only his labour to fall back on and at times of poor markets there certainly was awful hardship in many cases.
James Tusoniv of Longton (1778 – 1845)  Jamesiv, the oldest son of George Tusoniii from his second marriage, and my ancestor, was born in 1778, probably in Hutton, and baptised at Penwortham. At some point, probably no later than 1807, he moved to neighbouring Longton where it appears he then lived all his life. Like his father before him he also married twice, the first time on June 3rd 1806 to Katherine Oxendale (1783-1822)[29] by whom he had six children and then to Margaret Smith with whom he seems not to have had children – see below. The third of James’ children, my ancestor, was called Richard.James Tuson, b. abt. 12 Jul 1778,
+ Katherine Oxendale, b. 30 Mar 1783, on 3 Jun 1806.
1. Ellen Tuson, b. 1807
2. George Tusoniv, b. 1809
3. Richard Tuson, b. 2 Jan 1811
4. William Tuson, b. 1813
5. Margery Tuson, b. 1 Oct 1815
6. James Tuson, b. 1818
2nd wife Margaret Smith, b. abt. 1786.
Like his father before him, Jamesiv was a yeoman and therefore likely to have had considerable standing in the community. The 1838 tithe map and schedule show that Jamesiv owned about 14 acres of land and farmed about another 62, which he leased from a Richard Warmsley (see table above). The land he owned was scattered across the western side of Longton, but the leased land that he farmed was centred on Chapel Lane and Moss Lane to the east of the village. This fits with the 1841 census where he is recorded living at Chapel Lane with his wife Margaret, his son Georgeiv and family, and one agricultural labourer.
The 1841 Census records for Longton are very interesting in showing the structure of the community at the time when the handloom weaver was rapidly losing ground to factory mechanisation. There are about 477 heads of households, for whom occupations are shown, the households ranging from single individuals to large family groups. The most common occupation was ‘weaver’ - probably virtually all handloom weavers - (34%) followed by ‘agricultural labourer’ (18%) and ‘farmer’ (17%). Most of the remaining people depended on village trades, (such as grocer, butcher, shoemaker – about twenty-five in all), or were ‘independent’ (4%), female servants (8%) or male servants (4%). The data show clearly the main characteristics of the area – agriculture supported by handloom weaving and all the trades needed in a village that still showed many of the features of being self-contained. There was a mill, blacksmith shops, wheelwrights and carters, a saddler, a carpenter and a pub the 'Blue Anchor' (likely to have been where Georgeiii had been the innkeeper). There was of course a church, with a cleric and a parish clerk, and a policeman. Many of these trades would support either the farmer or weaver. In addition the census makes it clear that within agriculture-based households there might well be family members involved in weaving. This might have happened during those parts of the year when work on the land was not available. Equally we can be pretty sure that many of those described as weavers would have downed shuttles and gone to help with the hay-making or the harvest – still at that time done by hand. Even recently my cousin’s husband, a joiner living in north-west Lancashire, put aside his woodworking tools and spent a week or two helping his farmer brother at silage time.
Jamesiv died in 1845 leaving a will that showed he owned a ‘dwelling house, shippon (cattle shed) and weaving shop together with the close of land and appurtenances thereto belonging containing about 1½ acre ... lying in Hall Lane within Longton ... also his parcel of land called Jump Acre and containing about 1½ acres in Longton ... and his Cattle Gate and his 1/16 th of another Cattle Gate on the Marsh within Longton …’[30]. All these properties can be identified on the 1838 tithe map and schedule.
 There was also one-quarter of a pew at Longton chapel, a house at Library Street in Preston, a row of nine houses called ‘Tuson Row’ in Hutton (still there in 2007), an annuity of £12 for his wife (to be paid out of the farm profits) and bequests of £220, besides the residue of the estate which appears to have amounted to at least £200. In the tradition of the three preceding Tuson generations it is clear that Jamesiv made substantial social and economic progress.
The picture we have of Jamesiv is of a very successful businessman – a land-owning farmer with cattle and other property, also involved in cotton weaving. As a farmer he appears to have benefited greatly from the rising population and increased economic activity that was taking place in the region, providing food for the growing urban concentrations at Preston, Walton-le-Dale or Bamber Bridge. He must have farmed cattle which he pastured, for part of the year at least, on the cattle-grazing areas to which he had rights in property on the coastal marshland, and kept in his shippon, perhaps in the winter. He probably supplied dairy products and meat to the townspeople. According to the 1838 tithe data, he received rental income for his property in Hall Lane from a John Sims.
James’ farming prosperity may have owed itself partly to the food shortages, due to the continental embargo imposed on Britain and the resulting high prices that farmers were able to obtain, during the French Wars from 1793 to 1815[31]. In fact the inflation of the war years (an almost inescapable consequence of war) promoted speculation in land that undid those who were late to jump on the bandwagon when the war ended and prices came down. Some farmers were ruined at this time, but James, perhaps benefiting from the growing industrial markets, avoided this fate and even prospered[32].
The ‘weaving shop’ indicates that he also benefited from the cotton trade, perhaps directly by making use of members of his family or providing looms and bobbin wheels for friends or neighbours, or indirectly by renting his premises to others. He may have done better than this for it is very likely that it was he who built the row of nine cottages in Hutton, known as ‘Tuson Row’ on the 1841 and 1851 censuses[33]. Although they were not traditional cotton weavers’ cottages with cellar loomshops, both in 1841 and 1851 cotton handloom weaving was certainly being carried out in some of them. A similar development appear to have taken place at Longton, where Searson describes 'Gartstang's Row'. Tuson's Row was a further source of rental income for James, as might have been the house in Library Street, Preston. Finally, on his death James had £100 secured by a mortgage on the property of a ‘John Miller’.
The life of Jamesiv coincided with the full force of the industrial revolution, and from the relative backwaters of Hutton and Longton he would have seen it all. He was born only a few years before the first cotton mill opened in the area, at a time when Preston was a notable market town (not, perhaps, unlike Chester or York) with a population of less than 6,000. When he died in 1845 the population was about ten times as much[34] but the glory days of the handloom weaver were over and Charles Dickens was soon to use Preston as the ‘inspiration’ for the evils of ‘Coketown’ the fictitious setting for his novel ‘Hard Times’.
Notes
[1] The superscript indicates the particular generation in the family, to help avoid confusion with identical names.
[2] The original use in textile working of most of these water mills was for printing patterns on the cloth, and the area is of fundamental importance in terms of the development of textile printing technology. However it does not impact on the story of my Tuson family. The first printing factory seems to have been at Bamber Bridge in 1764. See Hunt D., 1997, ‘A History of Walton-le-Dale and Bamber Bridge’, Carnegie Publishing, ISBN 1-85936-043-2, p. 108.
[2a] http://www.madeinpreston.co.uk/Cotton/cotton.html
[3] Hunt, D., 2003, ‘Preston – Centuries of Change’, Breedon Books Publishing, ISBN 1 85983 345 4, page 72.
[4] Hunt, 2003 op. cit, p. 71.
[5] Hunt, 1997, op.cit.
[6] Evans, E. J., 1983, ‘The Forging of the Modern State – Early Industrial Britain – 1783-1870’ Longman ISBN 0-582-48970-9, p. 396
[7] Timmins, G., 1993. 'The Last Shift', Manchester University Press, p. 40, ISBN 0 7190 3725 5.
[8] Timmins, op.cit., p. 185.
[9] Holmes H. & D. Szechi, 1993, ‘The Age of Oligarchy – Pre-industrial Britain – 1723-1783’ Longman, ISBN 0-582-20955-2, p. 133-135; Evans, op.cit., p 404-405.
[10] Evans, op.cit., p.108.
[11] Evans, op.cit., p. 152; also Hammond, J. L., and B. Hammond, 1917, (1978 ed.), ‘The Town Labourer’, Longman, ISBN 0-582-48519-3, p 30.
[12] Chapman, S. J., 1904, ‘The Lancashire Cotton Industry – A Study in Economic Development’ (1973 ed., Augustus M. Kelley, Clifton, ISBN 0-678-00896-5, p. 46). [12a] Crosby, A., 2000, Hutton: A millennium history, Carnegie Publishing Limited, ISBN 1-85936-092-5.
[13] Charles Dickens’ novel ‘Hard Times’, published in 1854 about a fictitious cotton town called ‘Coketown’, was based on a visit he made to Preston.
[14] Aspin, C., 1969, ‘Lancashire, The First Industrial Society’, Helmshore Local History Society, United Printing Services, Fishergate, Preston, p. 44. [14a] Searson, op.cit., p. 62.
[15] Wadsworth, A. P. & Julia De Lacy Mann, 1931, ‘The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1680-1780’, Manchester University Press, p. 218.
[16] Evans, op.cit., pp. 104-5. [16a] Crosby, A., 2000, op. cit. p. 70. [16b] Some fields contained more than one crop, for example 'potatoes and turnips', so I have split the acreage in half and quoted the totals as 'approx.' The maps and schedules are held in the Lancashire Record Office in Preston. [17] Dickson, R. W., 1815, 'General View of the Agriculture of Lancashire, with Observations on the Means of Its Impovement', p. 149. Go to http://books.google.com/books?vid=0NydnIL5zCiODNwo&id=tQsAAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=r.+w.+dickson
[18] Hunt, 1997, op. cit., Walton-le-Dale Tithe Map, p. 182.
[19] Inferred in Dixon, op. cit.
[20] Evans, op.cit., p. 9 [20a] Searson, op. cit. p. 42.
[21] In Evans, op.cit., pp. 139-140.
[22] Evans, op.cit., p. 138.
[23] Evans, op. cit., p. 141.
[24] Asplin, op.cit., p. 44.
[25] Quoted in Hammond, op.cit., p. 30.
[26] Asplin, op. cit., p. 45.
[27] Asplin, op. cit., p. 112.
[28] Timmins, G., 1996, ‘Four Centuries of Lancashire Cotton’, Lancashire County Books, ISBN 1-871236-41-X, p. 31.
[29] There was a substantial concentration of the Oxendale family in the Preston area in the nineteenth century, as shown on the CASA website at http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/.
[30] A 'cattle gate' represented a share in the grazing rights of the marshes along the River Ribble, each 'gate' being calculated to support a certain number of animals. There is a good explanation of them in Crosby, 2000, op. cit., pp. 73-76, though Crosby refers to 'beast gates'. Matthew Sharpe, son-in-law of my cousin Barbara Bancroft, describes similar ‘sheep gates’ which even now are included in advertisements for the sale of sheep farms, usually fell farms. A sheep gate is a certain number of head of sheep per gate opening on to a fell, with shared grazing rights, such as in the Lake District or Yorkshire Dales.
[31] Evans, op. cit., p. 130.
[32] Evans, op. cit., p. 135.
[33] They may have been under construction at the time of the 1841 census for there it appears to show only five at that time. On the 1861 census the cottages were recorded as 'Hutton Row' and by 1871 they were 'New Row'. Crosby (2000) appears to refer to them as 'Hutton Row'. They are tiny two-up/two-down properties, but have a certain charm.
[34] Evans, op. cit., p. 407. This page was last modified on 21 January 2008 |
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