Sources

The main sources that I have used are listed below. Others are referred to in page notes.

The Rating Lists

There are copies of the three printed rating lists in Louth Library.

Manuscript Sources

All of these are held in Lincolnshire Archives, except for Espin 1817.

Directories

For a full description of the relevant directories go to Directories. The ones particularly useful in relation to the rating lists are Pigot 1822, White 1826, Pigot 1835, Pigot 1841, White 1842, Kelly 1849 and Hagar 1849.

Maps and Plans (see also the appendix below)

Newspapers

Statutes

Older Printed Works

Copies of the local works referred to below are in the Goulding Collection in Louth Library. Wallis 1899 is available on the internet.

Modern Printed Works

APPENDIX EARLY MAPS OF LOUTH

This appendix is concerned with large scale maps of Louth that show much more detail than is possible on the Ordnance Survey one inch to a mile maps or privately printed maps on similar scales.

Espin 1808

The first high quality town map of the developed area of Louth to be printed was “Engraved by J Roper for a drawing made by T Espin, Master of Dr Mapletoft’s School Louth … Published by John Jackson, Bookseller & Stationer May 1st 1808”. The scale is roughly 13 inches to a mile.

The drawing on which the engraving was based was said by Goulding (Books and Pamphlets printed at Louth 1921) to be in Louth Museum but is apparently no longer to be found. There seems no reason to doubt the map’s accuracy at the publication date. In two features the drawing may have been slightly imperfect: Caper Row (now Gospelgate Mews) looks unfinished, as does an odd structure (possibly related to a tannery) on the south side of the Lud in a field east of Broadbank.

Earlier Maps

Armstrong 1778

“Andrew Armstrong retired from the army on half pay in 1763 and set up a map publishing business, which his son, Mostyn, later joined. The Armstrongs are best known for their large-scale county maps of both England and Scotland, many of which were produced on a subscription basis.” (Smith, Antique Maps of the British Isles, p.100)

Armstrong carried out a survey of Lincolnshire in 1776/7/8 to produce an eight sheet county map on a scale of about one inch to a mile. As In addition he produced, as insets in the main maps, some larger scale maps of town centres including one of Louth. This is reproduced in Robinson 1979 p 28.

The map is diagrammatic and cannot be relied on for points of detail. For example: Upgate north of Mercer Row is shown fully developed on its east side, leaving no room for the open pig market, which had been established in 1775. Goosepool/Gospelgate is shown fully developed on its south side with more buildings than are shown on Espin’s later maps. However a terrace of cottages shown on the south side of Kidgate next to junction with Aswell Lane is confirmed by Espin’s maps and could possibly be the cottages that are still there.

There are some naming points of interest: Padehole/Northgate is called Finkle Street; Willow Row/Bridge Street is called North Gate; Kidgate is so named (ie not Kidgate Lane); Burnthill Lane is so named (ie not Bunting Lane).

Espin’s 1797 Map

This manuscript map is in the possession of Louth Town Council. It is marked as being by Thomas Espin and was presented by him to the Corporation (Corporation minutes 25.11.1797). It is likely to be the “old plan of Louth … very much torn and injured” repaired by T W Wallis in 1884/5 (Wallis 1899 p 208). It may be regarded as an earlier version of the map produced by Espin in 1808. It covers a smaller area but is larger in scale, comparable to the Ordnance Survey 25 inches to the mile plans. On street frontages the detail is similar to Espin 1808 but much of the back land is left blank.

Points of interest on this map include the following: New Street (very new in 1797) is shown but not named; Caper Row (see above) is not shown. Immediately to the east of Broadbank a large bend in the Lud is shown but the bridge over the river is not; presumably the bridge was built and the Lud straightened between 1797 and 1808. The Upgate pig market is shown and named; it was used 1775-1802 on approximately the site of what is now Royal Oak Court. Thornton House, 25 Westgate (described as “later eighteenth century” on the statutory list) is not shown and must have been built in the period 1797-1808. Eve Street and Hollands Lane (now Vickers Lane) are marked as private roads. Some of the buildings of the tannery off Northgate are shown but tanning seems to have been carried out over a wider area than was later the case, one bark mill being marked to the east of of Broadbank/Enginegate.

The map also marks the houses occupied by six of the seven members of the Corporation (Messrs Codd, L’Oste, Neve, Pettener, Robinson and Wrigglesworth) and the Town Clerk (Thomas Phillips).

Enclosure Award Map 1805

The map included with Louth Enclosure Award was was produced by Christopher Epworth, an experienced surveyor. It was the first large scale map to show the whole parish.

For the town centre the map is difficult to compare with Espin 1808 because of its smaller scale and relatively poor condition. The main value of the map lies in its coverage of the land dealt with in the award, which was almost entirely outside the area covered by Espin 1808. However it needs to be borne in mind that the field boundaries marked merely show what the enclosure commissioners awarded and some of the corresponding hedges were probably never planted.

Maps after Espin 1808

Espin’s 1817 Town Map

As part of the survey of Corporation land (see Espin 1817 above), Espin produced a revised town map (now in Louth Museum, but not on display) based on his 1808 map but distinguishing the Corporation land and with some other alterations including the addition of Cannon Street, which had not been not laid out in 1808. This map was never printed.

Bayley 1834

R S Bayley’s Notitiae Ludae (1834) included a revised version of Espin 1808, evidently using the original printing plate. Espin had died in 1822; presumably the revision was done by some local draughtsman. The two items apparently left unfinished in 1808 (see above) were not changed.

The problem with this map is uncertainty about the extent of the revision. Maps tend to be out of date by the time that they are printed; but the accuracy of this map on the stated date, 1834, is particularly doubtful. For example in Aswell Lane the only change shown over Espin 1808 is the addition of John Wilson’s malt kiln and granary (380078). It is not known what new development took place between 1808 and 1822, but a comparison of R1823 and R1838 shows 13 additional houses and it is improbable that all of these relate to the period 1834-8. It seems likely that Bayley 1834 can be relied upon only where it differs from Espin 1808. Where the two are the same, the 1834 map may or may not be an accurate representation of what existed in 1834.

Dewhirst & Nicholls 1839

This firm produced a series of town maps. Apart from the manuscript enclosure award map, their 1839 map of Louth was the earliest large scale map to cover the whole of Louth parish. It is especially valuable for the detail at River Head, where the occupiers of warehouses are indicated.

It is difficult to assess how up to date the map was in 1839. It shows John Wilson’s malthouse in Aswell Lane but fails to show his adjoining house, which was listed in R1838 and (as is shown by Wilson’s rateable value in the vestry poll) existed in 1834. On the other hand the River Head annotations include “Hay’s warehouse”; Thomas Hay, coal merchant, was not recorded in R1838 (which was completed in March 1838) but must have arrived very soon afterwards, as he had some of his coal stolen in October 1838.

Other Maps

There appear to be no records of other printed town maps published before the 1:500 maps published in 1889 by the Ordnance Survey and surveyed in 1886/8 (see Wallis 1899 pp 212, 215-6). These maps were very detailed; most can be seen on the website of the National Library of Scotland.

Louth Museum has a manuscript sewer map dated 1875, which shows the frontages of buildings in the main streets, but generally not the whole buildings; it does not show all of the courts, alleys etc. A version is available on the museum’s website. For most buildings this map gives the street numbers, which were omitted from the Ordnance Survey maps.