‘Open’ and Close’ Parishes.

The system of ‘open’ and ‘close’ parishes (as described in the Introduction) meant that the landlords of ‘close’ parishes were able to restrict numbers, so as to reduce the burden of rates from inhabitants who might become paupers, and labourers wanting houses had to move to adjoining ‘open’ villages. Thus farm workers often had to travel a considerable distance to work. In Bedfordshire the system was investigated in 1865 by R. Hunter, a doctor employed by the Privy Council. Hunter found that the system of open and close parishes was most marked in an area of East Bedfordshire in the Poor Law Union of Biggleswade. He showed that the neatness of the well administered ‘close’ village had been bought at the price of creating rural slums in larger villages and country towns. Hunter took the extreme view that farm workers should not live in country towns at all.

Details concerning House Accommodation in different Counties of England arranged in the Alphabetical order in Counties.

BEDFORDSHIRE.

Bedfordshire as being the chief scene of the straw plaiters’ labour has a large adult population; for the most part it is very inadequately supplied with cots. They are few and small, and their condition is often a mere precarious holding together of rotten materials; the stitch in time has not been applied, and there are hundreds on which no repairs can now be bestowed with advantage.

The new cots are very poor, small, or dear. I saw four at Wrestlingworth which were only a few years standing, they might have been built for ￡100, they were let for ￡13 a year, a proceeding of which no one can complain, the fault if any lying with those who having waste bits of land lying idle still allow their servants to seek lodging by competition among those who pay dearly for every yard they get to build on, and have no interest in the people beyond their rent.

There are numerous houses of the worst character; sometimes a boarded partition would make two bedrooms of one, but when the outside measurements were only about 15 feet by 11, this was a questionable improvement.