Supplementary Notes

1. The Printed Lists

Editions of R1823 were printed by two Louth printers, Henry Hurton and Charles Watson. Watson usually printed the rating values that applied before the revaluation, but Hurton did not. In reproducing the list I have used Hurton’s pagination but added the older valuations given by Watson. The two publications contained many small differences of spelling and abbreviation and I have chosen whichever version seemed to me the better.

R1838 was printed by the Louth firm of J & J Jackson. In addition to the rating details reproduced in the databases R1838 contains information about the rates levied and expenditure on poor relief, mainly in the three previous financial years. I have used some of this information on the Poor Law page.

R1851 was printed by J & T Jackson.¹1. John Jackson senior was dead; presumably “T” stood for his son, Thomas, one of the valuers: see below. It updated the statistical information given in R1838.

2. The Valuers

Each of the three valuations was carried out by a committee of nine valuers, as listed below.

The revaluations may have given the valuers an opportunity to feather their own nests by placing artificially low values on the properties that they occupied. In R1823 the reduction achieved by Thomas Overton looks suspicious. R1838 shows that at some date between 1823 and 1838 Overton’s Eastgate premises were given an increased value, perhaps an indication that the R1823 value had been too low.

In R1851 the exceptionally large reduction for the pious John Booth Sharpley was notable. Sharpley was at the time perhaps the most prominent member of the Louth community. His father, Anthony Sharpley was originally a miller and baker but by 1822 had separate partnerships as a miller and as a coal and corn merchant at Riverhead, as well as being a substantial farmer. John Booth Sharpley began his career in about 1822 as a draper in partnership with Michael Plaskitt (see 230944). The partnership was dissolved in 1830, ²2. London Gazette 21.9.1830. when Sharpley appears to have taken over his father’s Riverhead interests and became a successful coal and corn merchant, initially in partnership with Thomas Lawrence.

Sharpley was a Methodist lay preacher, originally a Wesleyan. His admiring cousin, Cornelius Stovin, described him as “the greatest theologian Louth ever had the honour to possess”.³3. Jean Stovin (Ed) Journals of a Methodist Farmer 1871–1875, p 86. He helped to finance the large Free Methodist Church, which some of us can remember dominating the central part of Eastgate.⁴4. Robinson 1979 p 89. He was mayor in 1839, 1848 and 1854. In his first term he aroused surprise when he prohibited the use of the Mansion House for the usual new year’s ball, because he disapproved of dancing. From his first election in November 1839 he was as mayor a JP (magistrate) ex officio and proved to be a zealous in that role, often sitting alone; by Christmas he had sent five prostitutes to prison. In his later years he mellowed somewhat, but even in 1855 (by which time he was a regular JP) he took a severe view of “the very numerous cases that had come before him of drunkenness on the Sabbath” and defended his use of the stocks to deal with the drunkards.⁵5. Mercury 20.12.1839, 10.1.1840, 16.11.1855. He was probably the developer of a terrace of wretchedly poor houses in Cannon Street and a similar terrace in Newbridge Hill.⁶6. Although the ownership of the latter was attributed to his brother, Roger Sharpley, by Mercury 24.1.1851. There is much additional information about Sharpley in Gurnham 2015 pp 27-8.

3. Classification of Records

The contents of the rating lists were primarily records of properties but can also be considered as records of people, except where the property was empty. A classification of records, so that a simple database query can pull out records of a particular type, would facilitate analysis; and a limited attempt to do this is contained in the “Type” field in the database version of R1838.

Simple classification is difficult because a single record may relate to different types of property. For land and commercial buildings mixed records usually present no problem, because it is usually apparent which element was the more important; but difficulties arise for many records relating to housing. The rating lists sometimes used the simple description “house” for buildings that had a partly commercial function. For example the first page of R1838 showed Frances Foster as occupying a “house” (380004) and the record is therefore classified as “H”. Doubtless she lived there, but the building is known from other sources to have been a “cook shop and eating house”.

Some of the mixed descriptions are unequivocally commercial eg “house and shop”, “house and workshop” and “house and surgery”. These are classified as “HC”. However many of the records contain ambiguous terms. For example “house and premises” or “house &c” did not necessarily imply business use. The word “office” often meant a place of business (OED definition 6a) but in the nineteenth century often, especially in the plural and especially for large houses, meant a subordinate room or building used for domestic purposes eg a wash-house, storage room or lavatory (OED definition 7a). In these cases no commercial use is assumed.

To mitigate these problems I have for dwellings rated at £8 or over amended the classification by adding a separate element to show whether the occupier is known to have been in business on his or her own account: “-B” = business on own account; “-R” = apparently private resident or employee; “-U” = business status not known. Thus Frances Foster’s building appears as “H-B”.

A special code, “P” had been used for public houses. Linked to this “BH” means a beerhouse, but is an unreliable indicator, as many beerhouses were short lived; for example only eight of the 23 beer retailers listed in Pigot 1835 also appeared in Pigot 1841.

4. Missing Acreages and Garden Land

In the rating lists most records relating to open land stated the acreage, though this might be a total acreage for two or more plots. Where no acreage was given the usual reason appears to have been the small size of the plot concerned. For example, R1838 showed 25 garden plots valued at £1 and only two of these specified acreages (380065 and 380175, 0.13 and 0.17 acres respectively).

The rating lists showed many small gardens occupied separately from houses: about 50 in R1823, 105 in R1838 and 90 in R1851. A few of these were occupied commercially by market gardeners, but most must have been used by householders growing their own vegetables. In addition R1838 and R1851 showed fields occupied by the Provident Society to provide what would today be called allotments. Many of the gardens appear to have been temporary, associated with the development of land for housing. For example R1823 showed four gardens in the Monks Dyke area let to householders in various parts of the town and owned by “Ingoldby” (presumably Christopher Ingoldby senior, a solicitor). R1838 showed that Ingoldby had acquired more land in the area and had let 16 plots as gardens but also had built seven houses.

5. The Rating Appeals 1823

In 1823 the vestry established a committee (Churchwardens’ accounts book 17.4.1823) to consider appeals against the new values used for rating. The committee comprised William Wilson, solicitor, John Fytche, landowner and Rev Stephen Preston, a wealthy clergyman. Sixteen occupiers appealed and most were successful at least for some of their properties. The results of the successful appeals with some other notes are tabulated below.