Nice point James. I am tempted to say have a look at: http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521450535 Even more tempted to say buy it so that I can enjoy some royalties. The rentals quoted in the New Domesday may be historic rents and on some of the smaller properties may be manorial rents that had yet to to be revised through the flurry of manorial reforms that took place from about 1840 to more or less the Second World War, with a high point in the 1860s. With this in mind, the Domesday is dated 1872 but it is based on historical Poor Law data of the early 1860s some of which will predate this because the Poor Law contributions were only revised intermittently. So that's one problem. A second problem is that regardless of issues like land quality, and location (and they can be big issues), there is a sort of inverse square rule at play here. That is, small pieces of land were usually intensively used relative to large farms and properties. To that extent the smaller lands on the whole attracted a higher unit or per acre rent. In this context see the book in the website, especially pp. 55-60 or thereabouts and 116-22 where unit size of holding relative to average rent is demonstrated. A third problem is that these may look like land rents, but what about the buildings? In other words these were rents for properties where a property is a composite of land, houses, farms and other buildings. As for whether 3 ares is large or small? Perhaps it looks large for the occupation you mentioned, but depending where you lived in Britain, and also depending on soil quality and personal ambition of the individual, a rough and ready rule of thumb is that a 'peasant holding', where peasant means a holding that a farmer could maintain with family labour alone and perhaps guarantee a sort of independence (though in some places that farmer would also have to work for others as a wage labourer) is reckoned at between 35-50 acres. The old socialist exhortation, 'Four acres and a cow' was simply that, a socialist exhortation to give the semblance of independence, not really a suggestion that a person, let alone a family, could survive on 4 acres. It was a political statement about trying to give everyone a margin of independence. Things changed a wee bit when intensive market gardening developed, but in turn that involved having a lot of capital to start with, so also a non-starter for the lowly 'peasant'. By the way, we use the term peasant to indicate a measure of independence rather than the modern derogatory term it has become. You did ask - but finally, this is far from a precise science. Mike ---------------------------------------- Michael E Turner Professor of Economic History Department of History University of Hull Cottingham Road Hull HU6 7RX Tel: (44)(0) 1482 465913 Fax: (44)(0) 1482 466126 Web: http://www.hull.ac.uk/history/homepage.html Email: [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: James Loveluck [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 09 January 2006 10:15 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Lovelock land owners 1872-73 My g grandfather James Loveluck also appears near the end of the list at Aberavon, Glamorgan. I'm not sure where the land came from since his father, William, was a customs officer, and in the 1881 census James (Ship Broker Commission Agent) was living in the "Custom House, Margam", where his father William had also lived. 3 acres seems like a lot of land to be associated with a custom house. Maybe it was inherited from his grandfather (also William) who was a farmer. It's interesting that there were already large differences in the value of land in different parts of the country - e.g. 3 acres in Glamorgan had a rental value of £31 whereas 1 acre in Henley-on-Thames was worth £75; and depending where one lived in Berks an acre could be worth anything from £3 to £23. Maybe Mike, with his historian's hat, could comment on this. James John Lovelock wrote: >Thank you Mike for this new resource. > >I was pleased to see that it includes my GGG Grandfather George >Lovelock in Henley on Thames Oxfordshire. George lived in a Georgian >Town House in Northfield End (where he appears in the 1871-1891 >Censuses). I assume the entry refers to this property. > >Best Wishes > >John Lovelock >Buckinghamshire UK > >-----Original Message----- >From: James Loveluck [mailto:[email protected]] >Sent: 05 January 2006 18:16 >To: [email protected] >Subject: Web site addition: Lovelock land owners 1872-73 > >Hello all, > >I have added to the Web site a document listing Lovelock records from >an > >1872/73 return of land owners. The document is linked to the Sources - >General page: >http://perso.numericable.fr/~lovjames/family-history/lovelock/gen-recor >d >s.htm >in the section "Other Records". > >Many thanks to Mike Turner, who transcribed these records. > >James > > >==== LOVELOCK Mailing List ==== > > ==== LOVELOCK Mailing List ==== Lovelock family history Web pages: http://perso.numericable.fr/~lovjames/family-history/lovelock/ ============================== Search Family and Local Histories for stories about your family and the areas they lived. Over 85 million names added in the last 12 months. 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