Yateley History Project

CENSUS ANALYSIS

Census analysis is another classic project in local history studies. Clare and Lindsay Harrold had already transcribed the 1841 and 1871 enumerators' books for the Society. So Roy Maryon and Alison de Winter undertook transcription and analysis of the 1851 census. Gordon Harland studied the pattern of livelihoods revealed by the three transcribed census, supporting his work from Post Office and commercial directories.

Roy and Alison tested the widely held belief that the peasantry of rural Victorian England was anchored to the land without the means to travel. They looked at birthplaces of married couples in the 20-50 age range in the 1851 census. Their analysis revealed that over half of the husbands and almost three quarters of wives were not born in Yateley. However half of all the wives were born within 15 miles of Yateley. They concluded that Yateley born husbands tended to bring in wives from the surrounding villages. Only ten of the total of 138 couples in their study had both partners born in Yateley.

Two thirds of domestic servants were not born within Yateley or its surrounding parishes. Gordon Harland quoted Flora Thompson in claiming that domestic servants did not associate much with other villagers. Gordon was not then aware, in the early 1980s, that Flora Thompson would later be found in the Yateley Census for 1901 working at Yateley Post Office as a single-needle telegraph operator.

The Census Team also compared age and sex structure with the county of Hampshire, and analysed household and family size.

Gordon Harland, in his essay looked at the professions, the decline in the number of farms, the increase in the numbers of tradespeople, and the meteoric growth of the labouring classes from 1841 to 1871.

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