Cumnor in the 1860s: How Far Did Dependence on Agriculture Shape Its Social Structure?
Cumnor in the 1860s: How Far Did Dependence on Agriculture Shape its Social Structure?
‘We stood in Cumnor ..A straggling line of scattered cottages with mud or rough stone walls uncemented and rude and low overhanging thatched roofs with here and there the bee hives on a bench by the gate in the low stone wall or a few brown faced urchins who peeped slily at the unaccustomed stranger….(Anon 1850) ..
‘We turned our back upon the line of cottages or huts perhaps they might be called’ the writer continued, ‘ ..Cumnor is at best a poor squalid place.’ Though lacking the intensity of urban life famously described by Engels (1844), Cumnor epitomizes aspects of a sharply polarised society with a land-less rural working class. This paper considers the relationship between the economic foundation of a Berkshire parish and its ‘social structure’ (ie the pattern of social stratification and the practices and expectations underlying it).1 It rests primarily on nominal record linkage, exploiting 1861 Census enumerators’ books, a trade directory for 1864 and an electoral register for 1865. Similar linkage provides evidence of land ownership from an 1851 rating list.2
Occupational Structure and Social Power
The relationships that reproduced social structure in the 1860s, (including those in the workplace, between landlord and tenant, and relationships within households) worked themselves out at varying geographic scales. Some relations- those concerned with church, school and (potentially) politics- might have been primarily articulated at the parish scale, and these are considered in later sections. The initial focus is on relations of production, and abstracting from varying relationships within households, on the occupational division of labour between householders. As Figure 1 shows starkly, in 1861 a single occupational group predominated in Cumnor- ‘Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Workers’ (minor group 62 within the HISCO classification). 3 Together with
‘We stood in Cumnor ..A straggling line of scattered cottages with mud or rough stone walls uncemented and rude and low overhanging thatched roofs with here and there the bee hives on a bench by the gate in the low stone wall or a few brown faced urchins who peeped slily at the unaccustomed stranger….(Anon 1850) ..
‘We turned our back upon the line of cottages or huts perhaps they might be called’ the writer continued, ‘ ..Cumnor is at best a poor squalid place.’ Though lacking the intensity of urban life famously described by Engels (1844), Cumnor epitomizes aspects of a sharply polarised society with a land-less rural working class. This paper considers the relationship between the economic foundation of a Berkshire parish and its ‘social structure’ (ie the pattern of social stratification and the practices and expectations underlying it).1 It rests primarily on nominal record linkage, exploiting 1861 Census enumerators’ books, a trade directory for 1864 and an electoral register for 1865. Similar linkage provides evidence of land ownership from an 1851 rating list.2
Occupational Structure and Social Power
The relationships that reproduced social structure in the 1860s, (including those in the workplace, between landlord and tenant, and relationships within households) worked themselves out at varying geographic scales. Some relations- those concerned with church, school and (potentially) politics- might have been primarily articulated at the parish scale, and these are considered in later sections. The initial focus is on relations of production, and abstracting from varying relationships within households, on the occupational division of labour between householders. As Figure 1 shows starkly, in 1861 a single occupational group predominated in Cumnor- ‘Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Workers’ (minor group 62 within the HISCO classification). 3 Together with
References: Caird, J, 1851, English Agriculture in 1850–51,London, 1968. Collins, E. J. T ed., 2000, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 7, 1850–1914,Cambridge Giddens, A, 1984, The Constitution of Society, Cambridge, Polity Grigg, D,1989, English Agriculture: An Historical Perspective Engels, F, 1844, Condition of the Working Class in England Hammond J. L and B. Hammond, 1978, The Village Labourer,London,, p. 58. Higgs, E, 1995, ‘Occupational censuses and the agricultural workforce in Victorian England and Wales’, Economic History Review, 48 (1995). Howkins, A 1991 Reshaping Rural England: A Social History 1850–1925 (1991). Howkins, A, 1992, ‘The English farm labourer in the nineteenth century: farm, family and community’, in B. Short, ed., The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis, Cambridge. Newmarch,W,1859, ' On the Electoral Statistics of England and Wales 1856-8 Part II Results of Further Evidence ' Journal of the Statistical Society of London,22,1,101-168 Obelkevich, J, 1976, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey 1825-1875, Oxford Overton, M, 1996, Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500–1850 Purdy, F, 1861, ‘On the earnings of agricultural labourers in England and Wales’, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol Reay, B, 2004, Rural Englands,Palgrave Thompson, F Winstanley, Michael. ‘Agriculture and Rural Society.’ A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain. Williams, Chris (ed). Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Blackwell Reference Online. 25 January 2010 ----------------------- Tenant Holdings, Cumnor, 1851 [pic] Figure 5: Cumnor, 1860:Development within the Earl of Abingdon’s Freehold [pic] Figure 6: Cumnor, 1861:Housholders at Social Power Levels 3 and 4, by Freeholder (Excluding Householders Employed in Agriculture) Figure 7: Cumnor, 1861:Housholders and Scholars by Social Power Levels Values for ‘Schoolchildren’ refer to the Social Power Level of the head of household of the homes from which each scholarsresident in Cumnor was drawn