SCOPE AND FORMAT OF VOLUME

An important group of documents relating to the parish of Cardington at the end of the 18th century is among the deposits in the Bedfordshire County Record Office. They illustrate social structure, the detail of individuals and various other local matters.

The central document for this Volume is the General Account of the number of Persons in each House. January 1st, 1782. (P38/28/1). The document was discovered with the parish records, and deposited at the County Record Office in 1957, through the good offices of Mr. Humphrey Whitbread. This population listing gives a level of detail not available for this and most other parishes before the fifth decennial census of 1841. Its evidence can be correlated with the Parish Registers, both for Cardington and for other parishes. The wealth of some property owners is indicated by their Wills (ABP/W/—), by the Land Tax returns of 1783 (HA/14/5/2) and by the 1784 Election (HA14/1) documents. For those at the other end of the social scale, the Poors Book (P38/12/1) can enlarge upon those Workhouse inhabitants listed in the main document, and upon non-institutionalised paupers. Some information can be gleaned from gravestones in Cardington churchyard. Those village houses standing in 1782 can mostly be identified, not only on architectural grounds, but from restoration plaques mounted by the Whitbread or Howard families, and also by correlation with the 1793/4 survey of Cardington (MDW 6).

This Volume concentrates upon the demography of the villagers rather than the topography of the village. Editorial additions have been made to the 1782 listing. Some of these are cross-referenced to the other main documents published in this Volume, including a selection of Wills proved between 1762 and 1825, and the Overseers’ Accounts for 1781-2.

The primary value of this group of documents lies in the reconstitution of households listed in 1782. Analysis based upon this reconstitution must be mainly static, since the group of known households becomes a smaller proportion of all households the further one goes before or after 1782. Comparisons might be made with the results of other static analyses, given a reasonable compatibility in their conventions and levels of detail.