CAKE & COCKHORSE BANBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY SUMMER 1980. PRICE 50p. ISSN 0522-0823 BANBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY President: The Lord Saye and Sele Chairman: J.S.W. Gibson, Harts Cottage, Church Hanborough, Oxford. Magazine Editor: D. E.M. Fiennes, Woadmill Farm, Broughton, Banbury. Hon. Secretary: Hon. Treasurer: Mrs N.M. Clifton, Mr G. de C. Parmiter, Senendone House, The Halt, Shenington, Banbury. Hanwell, Banbury, (Tel: Edge Hill 262) (Tel: Wroxton St. Mary 545) Hon. Membership Secretary: Records Series Editor: Mrs Sarah Gosling, J.S.W. Gibson, Banbury Museum, Harts Cottage,, Marlborough Road. Church Hanborough, (Tel: Banbury 2282) Oxford OX7 2AB. Hon. Archaeological Adviser: J.H. Fearon, F!eeze Cottage, Bodicote, Banbury. Committee Members: Dr E. Asser, Miss C.G. Bloxham, Mrs G.W. Brinkworth, Mr A. Donaldson, Mr N. Griffiths, Miss F.M. Stanton Details about the Society’s activities and publications can be found on the inside back cover CAKE & COCKHORSE The Magazine of the Banbury Historical Society. Issued three times a year. I Volume 8 Number 3 Summer 1980 Pamela Horn Aspects of Oxfordshire Poor Relief - the 1830's 55 Pamela Keegan Cropredy - The Brick Era 1775-1855 68 Alistair Tough Trade Unionism amongst Railway Workers in Banbury 76 Oxfordshire Local History Competition and Exhibition 77 Book Reviews 79 ~ ~~ Annual Report and Accounts 82 How long and how large history is! Our last issue was mostly filled with the 15th century, this with the 19th. That on the 15th century concerned those who, for their times, lived comfortably; this issue follows the modern obsession with the poor and, in the case of Cropredy, the brick houses in which they lived. There is a reason for that, other than fashion. It is rare to find records of the poor before the introduction of parish registers in the 16th century, and little can be found before the invention of newspapers, cen- suses and other modern methods of monitoring the lives of all of us. The mediaeval obsession was with property and its inheritance; surviving records are filled with little else, so we know little of the unpropertied. That does not necessarily mean that our ancestors did not worry about the poor; we just do not know. But in the hundred years war there are many incidents of violence recorded in which the defeated were all put to the sword, except those worth ransoming. Probably property did then matter more than lives. It is in fact better to live now. What then induced Richard Bowle, yeoman of Banbury, to risk his life and his hard-won farm to travel to Kent to join Jack Cade's rising of 1450 ? Our cover picture shows the North Front of Farnborough Hall, Warwick- shire, taken from the National Monuments Record. 53 NOTICES ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING The annual general meeting will be held on Saturday July 12 at Farnborough Hall, six miles north of Banbury. At 5 pm there will be a conducted tour of the house, which is a National Trust property; those who are not members of the National Trust will have to pay the normal fee for the tour; those who are members should bring their membership cards. The AGM will follow after the tour. Any members wishing to propose any business for the AGM, including nomination of committee members, is asked to write to the Secretary not less than one week before the meeting. ANNUAL DINNER This year the dinner will be in the great hall at Broughton Castle on Friday October 24, by invitation of our President. The notice and application form for places are enclosed with this copy of Cake and Cock- horse. The arrangements will be similar to last year, with a guest speaker and entertainment. Though the great hall at the Castle will seat more diners than did the barn at Windmill Farm, numbers are limited. Please send in your forms and cheques as early as possible. AUTUMN PROGRAMME To save the postage involved in sending out the autumn programme of meetings separately in August, we are taking this opportunity to notify members of the four meetings arranged for September to December. Please note them in your diaries, The meetings arranged for 1981 will be notified in or with the autumn issue of Cake and Cockhorse. It is customary for one or more members of the'committee to entertain the guest speaker to dinner after each meeting; if any member has a special interest in the sub- ject of the talk and would like to meet the speaker at dinner afterwards, please let the Secretary know at least 24 hours before. The speaker is the guest of the Society; others pay for their own dinners. The autumn meetings, which will be held at the North Oxfordshire Technical College, Broughton Road, Banbury, at 7.30 pm will be as follows:- Tuesday September 16th (note change of day for this one meeting) Christine Bloxham - Seasonal Customs. Thursday October 9th. David Green F.S.A. - Henry Wise, gardener to Queen Anne, and the formal garden in England. Thursday November 13th. Dan Chadwick - Stained Glass. Thursday December 11th. Sarah Gosling - Banbury Photographs. 54 ASPECTS OF OXFORDSHIRE POOR REIF: TEE 1830s 'I get on very well here - and the Farmers are delighted with the prospect. The only matter I have to contend with is party & political interests - The town of Banbury is opposed in these respects to the vicinity - and they are fearful. of being swamped as they term it by the outparishest. Edward Gul- son, assistant poor law commissioner, writing from Banbury, 7th March, 1835, concerning the implementation of the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834. In early Victorian England poverty was an inescapable fact of life for many people, with perhaps 30 per cent of the population living at or below subsistence level as late as the 1850s. * In previous decades, the proportion was far higher. This was especially true of the old, the sick and the children of labouring families, though a number of Oxfordshire households suffered from the decline in pillow lacemaking and glovemaking as factory production undermined the prosperity of the old domestic trades 2 Some of those in need were aided by local charities; others gained from the provision of allotments on which they could grow their own vege- tables and perhaps raise enough corn to feed a pig. In 1819 poor law authorities were empowered to acquire land by purchase or lease for this purpose. And although the initial response was modest, certain landowners and clergymen offered plots of their own for allotments in the belief that these would encourage labourers to become hard-working and self- dependent. At Finmere in the 1820s, the Duke of Buckingham offered land at the rate of 50s. per acre to any poor man resident in the parish who had a wife and two children living. But the plan proved unsuccessful, as the plots offered were too large to be cultivated with a spade.' Another enthusiastic supporter of the idea was the blanket manufacturer,. John Earley of Witney, who declared in 1840: 'the allotment system is a great blessing to the poor man; it saves many evils, and brings up the children to industry by the example set by the parents; it gives the poor man a feeling of respectful independence . , . independence of the poor's rates. The allotment system will not only give a man bread, but also cheese with it. ' A third, more permanent, solution to the poverty question was a resort to emigration and in a minority of parishes this, too, was adopted. Indeed, some poor law reformers saw it as the 'natural vent' of surplus population. ' Among the communities participating in the movement was Hook Norton, which sent about 175 persons away in the mid-1820s. A few years later thirty-six men, women and children migrated from Kings Sutton, their move to New York being financed by the imposition of a levy of 6d. an acre on land in the parish and a further special rate of 6d. in the E.5 That initiative encouraged the Bicester authorities to take a similar step in 1830, with the venture financed by borrowing El, 000 on the rates to cover the cost of clothing, travel, and equipment for the migrants for their journey. In the late spring of 1830 a first instalment of seventy- 55 one adults and forty children was carried by waggon to Liverpool ready to embark for the United States. Others followed, with a total of 217 persons sent away at a cost to the parish of El, 415 14s. 104d. Most of them made a success of the venture, though a few faint-hearts found their way back to Bicester, where they were set to work by the parish authorities collecting coal from a nearby wharf. Deddington also shared in the upsurge of emigration in the late 1820s and early 1830s, though here enthusiasm was dampened when about fifty of those departing in 1831 travelled on a cholera stricken vessel and many died on their journey. ' In other cases, aid was given in the late 1830s under the terms of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act itself; thus in the period July 1836 to July 1837, 25 people were sent to Canada from Garsington and Holton and 31 from Wheatley. In all, between July 1836 and December, 1847, 315 Oxfordshire emigrants were sent away under poor law auspices from eighteen different parishes. One hundred and forty of them travelled to Canada, eight to the Cape of Good Hope, and the remain- der to South Australia. * But on grounds of cost and of organisational difficulty, emigration could never provide a major solution to the problem of pauperism, no matter what its supporters might claim.