Housing in Aswell Lane area

Street Names in the Area

This page deals with housing development in the first half of the nineteenth century in the area approximately covered by the present Aswell Street, Kidgate, Lee Street and Gatherums. Street names were used inconsistently at the time. In particular it should be noted that “Aswell Lane” always included the northern or lower part of the present Aswell Street ie between Kidgate and Queen Street. The remainder of the present Aswell Street was often (but not in the rating lists) called “Quarry Lane”. In R1823 “Kidgate Lane” meant the present Kidgate; but in R1851 and in the 1851 census “Kidgate” was restricted to the western part (ie between Upgate and Aswell Street) and “Kidgate Lane” meant the eastern part of the present Kidgate between Aswell Street and Church Street. Lee Street was included in Kidgate Lane in R1823 but thereafter was identified separately. (Cinder Lane dates from about 1855 and initially did not contain houses.)

In 1851 many houses were situated in privately owned yards, most of which no longer exist. Aswell Hole was the largest of these; it should perhaps be considered as a street in its own right, since it appears not to have belonged to any identifiable person; it was re-named as “Aswell Spring(s)” in 1886.

Overall House Numbers in the Area

Espin 1808 gives a clear picture of the area as it was before house building accelerated. The northern part of Aswell Lane was largely developed, but the southern part (“Quarry Lane” on the map) had only two or three buildings on the corner. Kidgate (“Kid Gate Lane” on the map) had many buildings associated with yards running down to Mercer Row, but elsewhere in the street there were only a few buildings; some of these were barns rather than houses. Gatherums (“Gatherhams” on the map) was largely undeveloped and Lee Street did not exist.

The earliest detailed figures for housing in this area come from R1823. The first census was in 1801 but detailed records house by house are now only available from 1841. However summary street figures were reported by the Boundary Commissioners in 1837, using 1831 census records that were then available. Overall figures for 1823-1851 are given in the table below. Some difficulties of interpretation are discussed in the appendix.

Summary of Development and Redevelopment to 1851

The figures in the table show significant growth in house numbers in the period 1823-38 and much faster growth in the period 1838-51. Initially the main new development area was Lee Street. Later Gatherums and the field between Gatherums and Kidgate provided a site for numerous poor quality houses. Most of the new houses were built on land previously used for market gardening or grazing. The demolition of existing buildings was largely confined to Aswell Lane (see below).

Conspicuous Buildings

The area under consideration includes no mansions. In Aswell Lane in 1823 the most conspicuous building was the Turk’s Head and the other prominent buildings were the Red Lion, the Black Horse and a pair of houses occupied as one (230056/7).¹1. These were probably amalgamated by William Hyde (c1729-1815; retired c1800), a former Tathwell farmer, and were in 1823 occupied by Elizabeth Hyde (c1755-1837) his daughter. Later these houses were divided again.

R1838 showed a major new building in Aswell/Quarry Lane: John Wilson’s malthouse. Wilson (1791-1857) was licensee of the Greyhound in 1823 (231519) but had left the pub by 1826 and then or later adopted the less demanding occupation of maltster; he must have inherited money, since the malthouse represented a large capital investment, increased when a house was added (380077/8). (In 1834 Wilson lived in Gospelgate. The malthouse was shown on maps: on Bayley 1834 and, more accurately, on Dewhirst & Nicholls 1839; but neither showed Wilson’s house, which was included in R1838.)

In Kidgate there were some large warehouses and in 1825 the Wool Mart was constructed, partly on the site of an earlier building. When Lee Street was constructed, it included some houses that would have then been regarded as falling within the top 10% of Louth houses, but none of special note.

Some Notes on Developers

In the nineteenth century most Louth residents were the tenants of landlords owning houses as investments. It was common practice for lower value houses to be sold in groups. For example, in 1828 an auction advertisement offered for sale as lots 1 and 2 two houses and shops, but lot 3 was a pair of houses and shops (probably 230370/1) and lot 4 was five small cottages (230372/7).

In some cases the developer appears to have been the original landowner. Landowning market gardeners were in a particularly strong position, since they could develop their land piecemeal by commissioning new houses whenever funds were available, whilst continuing to use the undeveloped land. For example R1823 shows on the east side of Aswell/Quarry Lane houses 230067/8 built since 1808 and owned by “Colton.” This was Thomas Colton senior (1767-1839), a market gardener living in Kidgate.²2. The name was sometimes spelt “Coulton” and “Coultan”. He also built houses in Newmarket; his terrace 231101/08 was marked “TC 1822”; but the marking has now been covered by a modern house on the corner with Cinder Lane. By 1838 he had about eight more houses; he had evidently retired and handed over his market gardening business to his son, Thomas Colton junior (1793-1886).Thomas junior may have been a housing developer in this own right, since R1838 shows him owning a terrace of nine houses in Newmarket; he continued the gardening business until he was over 80.

Another market gardener was Morgan Jones (c 1772-1845). His main premises (381024) were demolished to permit the construction of Kidgate School (for which see The Kidgate Story David N Robinson 1997); but he had acquired land on the opposite (ie north) side of Kidgate including a house called “Paradise”, which was adapted to form the nucleus of “Jones’ Square”. This house was advertised several times in 1805-8 and is shown in R1823 as 230737/8. Later the name was applied to the area close to the house, including the site of the future Kidgate School; and Kidgate east of Aswell Lane was sometimes called “Paradise Lane”. Jones appears to have owned six houses in Newmarket in 1823 and a further ten in Kidgate by 1838.

Robert Pool (1768-1823) was a joiner and builder based in Aswell Lane (230065). He seems to have acquired land and then built small houses. R1823 indicates that, in addition to his Aswell Lane home and workshops, he owned 27 houses, all of which were in later terminology “small tenements”. The six small houses 230697-230702 listed in Kidgate but actually in Lee Street were clearly the terrace later known as “Pool’s Cottages”;³3. On the site of the present Asycough Hall R1823 showed five of them empty, which, at that time of peak housing demand, probably meant that they were incomplete.

The role of other possible developers is less clear. For example, in Aswell Lane R1823 showed seven houses in the ownership of “Adlard”; this was probably Michael Adlard (1755-1834). However he was by trade a butcher, rather than a builder, and he may have bought them from an earlier developer. Five of these seven houses had their values reduced in R1823, which may be an indication that their condition was deteriorating or that the previous valuation was made a long time before 1823. By 1842 the Adlard properties had been bought by James Vickers (1797-1866), who described himself in the 1851 census as a currier and leather cutter.(His trade involved improving tanned leather and then cutting it up into the uppers and soles of shoes, which were sold to shoemakers for completion.) He kept the first two or three houses and redeveloped the sites of the remainder to provide a relatively large house combined with trade premises.

On the west side of Quarry Lane houses 230069-71 had been shown on Espin 1808 and R1823 recorded “Drant” as their owner. The houses had previously belonged to John Drant (1739-1820), a retired shoemaker. After his death they appear to have belonged to his son, William Maddison Drant (1792-1870), a London tea dealer, who, as a freeholder, voted in Louth in the 1852 general election.

R1823 showed a house owned and occupied by Joseph Waite (1770-1842), a miller, who also owned an adjoining house. By 1838 Waite had evidently retired but still owned the houses (230030 and 230034/6; 380026/7). The 1841 census showed Waite living in the household of his son in law, William Proctor, a shoemaker (380012). R1851 showed that Proctor had by then redeveloped the site to provide three houses and shops (510024/6).

In some cases redevelopment probably took the form of knocking houses together, rather than demolishing and rebuilding. For Aswell Hole a comparison between R1838 and R1851 may indicate this type of redevelopment. R1838 showed seven low value houses there in different ownerships. The 1851 census taken only a few months before the revision of the rating list showed four houses plus a densely populated lodging house (which was also a beerhouse) occupied by Patrick Kayes (510028).⁴4. “Keys” in the rating list; he was Irish. R1851 listed only two houses plus the lodging house, perhaps because the other two had been taken over by Kayes.

Housing Standards

The growth in house numbers was generally not matched by a growth in housing standards. The great majority of the new houses were very small and without adequate water supply or sewerage. However in the frontage development of Quarry Lane after 1838 the new houses tended to be significantly bigger than those erected before 1838; probably most had gross internal floor areas over 650 square feet on the east side and over 800 square feet on the west side, where most had small front gardens, rather than doors opening directly onto the street. (Where the houses still exist, indicative modern floor areas can often be taken from energy performance certificates; but in the majority of cases the houses have been extended; so comments on the original floor areas must be somewhat speculative.)

Nevertheless the practice of building houses in yards had not been abandoned; for example, R1838 showed George Pearson as the owner-occupier of what must have been a newly built house, but R1851 showed that he subsequently added two small houses in the yard (380079 and 510064/6).

The worst nineteenth century houses are often regarded as those built “back to back” (ie so that the back wall of one house was also the back wall of another and there was no through ventilation). There were not many such in Louth, but examples include a small minority of the houses built in Gatherums in the 1840s and five of the cluster of houses in in a yard off Kidgate shown on Espin 1808 on the south side of “Kit Cat Lane”; later this yard in was called “Hempstock’s Yard”.

Nineteenth Century Development after 1851

In Lee Street a few new houses were added after 1851, a terrace at the south end of the street being dated 1856. Similarly at the south end of Aswell/Quarry Lane there were a small number of additions to complete the frontage development of the street. The frontage development of Kidgate proceeded more slowly; at the east end of the street the 1871 census enumerator recorded that Gladstone Terrace was then under construction; on the opposite side of the street a field belonging to the Borough Council remained undeveloped into the twentieth century.

A few more houses were added to the densely packed yards in the Gatherums area after 1851; but the census enumerators’ books show such confusion of numbering that precise final figures are uncertain. Also, some pairs of small houses seem to have had a single occupier or even to have been physically amalgamated. For example, a comparison between the 1:500 Ordnance Survey plan published in 1889 and the plan used for a clearance order in 1935 shows that in Wray’s Yard (off Gatherums, but not identifiable in R1851) six houses built back to back had been knocked together to form three houses; this appears to have happened in the 1890s.

Survivors

The northern part of the present Aswell Street has been largely redeveloped, partly in association with street widening. The Turk’s Head survives, somewhat altered and without its apostrophe, as do a few other buildings including Olivers Bar (present Nos 22/4, perhaps 510034/5). In contrast most of the houses shown in R1851 in the southern part of the street are still there. Similarly the houses of Lee Street largely remain.

In the western part of Kidgate over a dozen of the older houses recorded in R1851 on the north side survive. In the eastern part of Kidgate there are a few survivors from 1851, but there more modern replacements and most of the older houses were built after 1851.

The houses recorded in R1851 in Gatherums and the yards between it and Kidgate have all gone. Most were demolished in the 1930s after the Borough Council took action under the Housing Act 1930; but some survived, derelict in appearance and smelling of decay, into the early 1950s. (A good picture of the extent of occupation before systematic slum clearance began can been seen in Wiggen’s 1927 directory. The Borough Council’s minutes relating to slum clearance are incomplete; some of the original plans are preserved in Louth Museum.)

Appendix: Calculating the Figures in the Table

Any consideration of house numbers raises the issue of what constitutes a house. The 1841 enumerators were instructed to list “any building in which any person habitually sleeps” and so a “house” would include a flat above a shop. But what if the flat was part of a larger building that had a separate residential occupier? In 1841 the census enumerator would presumably have listed one house only. In the rating lists what was recorded would depend simply on who paid the rates: if the main householder had let the flat on terms inclusive of rates the flat would be ignored; but if the tenant had to pay his own rates, the flat would be recorded with its own valuation. In compiling the above figures I have ignored what appear to be only parts of houses.

In a few cases (eg 511326) the rating lists can be shown to under-record house numbers by lumping together two houses with the same occupier. The figures have been corrected to allow for clear cases but some may have been missed. As the rating lists normally showed properties in the street of the occupier’s main address, it often happened that subordinate buildings did not appear in the streets where they were physically located. An example of this was 511603, a substantial house in Kidgate, which was listed in the Market Place, because the ratepayer was a firm based there.

The operative dates of the 1851 census and R1851 were close but not identical, the rating list being later. For Aswell Lane the figures can be reconciled as follows:

Though the location of houses with a street frontage was usually straightforward, there were differing opinions about houses between streets. For example, the houses in Bretts Yard, an alley running from Kidgate to Mercer Row, were regarded as being in Kidgate by the 1841 enumerator, but have been excluded from the table, because the rating lists treated the yard as being in Mercer Row. Similarly the 1851 census version of the distribution of houses between Kidgate Lane and Gatherums differed from the R1851 version; the latter is shown in the table; the total number of houses was the same.

Houses on the corner of two streets might be treated as falling in either. The only identified case in the area under consideration was the corner house 230731/380073/510059, which was treated as in Kidgate in R1823 but in Aswell Lane in R1838 and R1851.

The census enumerators included houses under construction; these are ignored in the table; but empty houses are included.

The numbering of houses in streets was not undertaken systematically in Louth until 1860; and even then houses in yards were often not numbered; also many streets were subsequently renumbered. As the rating lists did not indicate the side of a street on which buildings were, the precise location of any particular building is often difficult to determine.