Hearth Tax

The Hearth of the Matter

We can use hearth tax data to explore the nature of the old manor house at Belton and the Brownlow family's wealth.

Following the 1660 Restoration, Charles II needed an annual income of £1,200,000. Households paid two shillings tax per hearth pa from 1662 to 1689 to cover this ‘King’s ransom’. The records survive for two years covering Belton and the surrounding area. Ian Ross explores the information the records supply on the Brownlow family & on the old Belton Manor House, demolished c1685.

The tax assessed occupiers, not landlords. It was based on hearth numbers (including stoves) . This data gives an idea of the size of each household and the relative affluence of the occupant. The tax was paid in two installments, at Lady Day (25 March) and Michaelmas (29 September). Dwellings exempt include, houses worth less than 20 shillings (£1) pa and not paying parish rates, those occupied by people on poor relief, charitable institutions such as schools and almshouses, industrial hearths, except smith’s forges and bakers’ ovens, inmates of hospitals and almshouses & private ovens and kilns. Property owners and landlords had to make a written return of the number of their hearths within six days of receiving notice. The Parish Constable had the power to enter uninvited to check the accuracy of the returns.

The bill 'for laying an imposition upon chimney hearths' received royal assent on 19 May 1662. Repealed in February 1689, under William and Mary, it being declared as not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people, exposing every man’s house to be entered into and searched at pleasure by persons unknown to him.

Taxation was based on wapentakes

In England, under 10th century Danelaw, shires were divided into wapentakes, corresponding to hundreds elsewhere. The term applied in Derbyshire, parts of Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, and Yorkshire. The word signified the brandishing of weapons in approval at a meeting. Such divisions persisted into the C19.

Winnibriggs and Threo (Wineo) was a wapentake in Kesteven, consisting of 17 parishes. It surrounded the Soke of Grantham, a separate wapentake of 12 parishes that included Belton. The hearths subject to tax in each parish for 1665 is given below.

The warmest & coldest parishes in Wineo, and Grantham wapentakes in the 17th century. Number of hearths subject to tax colour coded according to key. The median number of hearths per household was 1.

Parish boundaries are based on Kain & Oliver (2001). Historic Parishes of England and Wales : an Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata. [data collection]. UK Data Service.

The 1665 hearth tax returns for Belton

Names of the occupiers subject to tax. The Belton almshouse in use from June 1660, was exempt. Belton old manor has 23 hearths. An asterisk indicates too poor to pay, or in the case of Matthew Snart, because his house burnt down.

Hearth numbers recorded for other Brownlow properties in Lincolnshire are,

Ringston Hall, Rippingdale - Richard Brownlowe esq - 19 including 2 forges.

Great Humby Hall, Humby Magna - Sir William Brownlow Bart - 22

The Lady Brownlow, Summeby - 22. Property in Old Somerby belonged to Sir William, and so Lady Brownlow could be his wife, Elizabeth Duncombe. She was buried 8 September 1666 at Belton.

Hearth Tax Return Lincoln - Kesteven vol 1 PRO E179 (140 754 & 791) 17 & 23 Charles II. Index personarum. SR L.351.724

Belton's almshouses left, dated 1659, still with their 6 chimneys. The gateway is inscribed "Piae Senectae Domus", Home of the Old Age.

The Brownlows appear in the 1666 London records. Sir John Brownlow has 26 hearths at his Lennox House in Brownlow Street, St Giles in the Fields parish and a further 20 (paid: 20, 22 recorded) at his Isleworth house, location unknown. Sir William has 10 hearths at his property in Brownlow Street, Holborn, St Andrew's parish.

Population

Research suggests that the ratio of persons to inhabited houses of the period is 4.04 for rural communities. This gives a Belton population of perhaps, 125.

Belton old manor size

Clearly the number of hearths will govern the gross external area (GEA), the area taken to the outside face of the external walls of a building, i.e. its footprint, exemplified by these massive chimney stacks at Fenton Hall, Fenton, Lincolnshire dating from 1597.

There are limited records relating GEA to the number of taxable hearths, but I have plotted 45 data pairs in the figure below.

With an R2 value of 0.89, a polynomial trend line fits the data best.

'Old' Sir John Brownlow (1590-1679) was resident at the manor of Belton in 1665 as High Sheriff of Lincolnshire with 23 hearths taxed. Using that figure in the polynomial formula gives a GEA for the old manor of Belton of approximate 700 square meters.

We can use this figure to hypothesise how it would fit into the Belton landscape.

Room number

Goose (2001) examined the ratio of hearths to rooms in Cambridge and Reading by linking probate inventories with room numbers and Hearth Tax. Available on 59 households, the maximum number of hearths was 22 with 13+ rooms.

A correlation exists R2 = 0.93, using the equation for up to 7 hearths, where 97% of the data lies. One can extrapolate that the old Belton manor had ~29 rooms.

With even more hearths in his Lennox House, Sir John found it too large and divided it. He let half to Lady Allington.

Goose, N. (2001) How Accurately Do the Hearth Tax Returns Reflect Wealth A Discussion of Some Urban Evidence

Above the remains of some of the 32 hearths of the Elizabethan, Exton Hall, Rutland, burnt down in 1811 & 1915.

Wealth

Goose (2001) went on to correlate personal, inventoried wealth with hearth numbers. Applied to the old manor's 23 hearths, his data extrapolates an inventoried wealth of £2,119 or in 2021, £494,000 (Bank of England calculator). Only at the level of nine rooms or above is substantial inventoried wealth found, though the range is wide.

Sir John's total hearth tax bill for all three properties, 69 hearths, would have been £6 18s pa, or £1,631 adjusted to 2021. This may not seem a lot, but the median wealth in Cambridge for 1 to 2 hearth households, similar to most of Belton parish, was just £15 (£4 to £29).

It demonstrates that when Belton House was designed in the early 1680s with its 64 chimneys, a potential hearth tax of ~£6 8s was not off- putting. Nevertheless, one can postulate that 'Young' Sir John Brownlow's demolition of the old Belton manor house, Ringstone Hall and Great Humby Hall, and the disposal of Lennox House was to rationalise 67 hearth tax payments against those of Belton.

A comparison of the Brownlow's wealth with others of 'quality', who had 10 or more hearths, is given below. Some of the Grantham occupiers may have been inn keepers with accommodation, it is not possible to determine.

The old Harlaxton Hall north front, above, home of Lady Deligne had 21 hearths, just two less than Belton. This mainly Tudor and Jacobean house gives us a handle on imaging how the old Belton manor house might have looked. Lady Deligne was descended from Sir Daniel de Ligne (d. 1656), a Flemish refugee who purchased the estate in 1619. The front of the building is reported circa 1844 to be 236 feet in length (72 m). It had two courts, the first entered via an archway. This late 16th century gateway still stands to this day. Surrounded on three sides by a wide, deep moat, it was deserted and demolished c1860-1875 by John Sherwin Gregory (Image Richardson C.J. 1844 Old English Mansions).

We know that the principal face of 'Old' Sir John Brownlow's Belton manor house faced north. If it were on the Orangery site, then with similar width to Harlaxton it would be set back further south of the 1609 entrance courtyard that is 40 m in width. Its footprint would extend across the present day Orangery and its two parterres, east and west. But constrained by its moat, Harlaxton's width could have included service buildings that would lie separate from the main house at Belton. The 1680 accounts when the Brownlows lived in the old manor has stables - somewhere.

Views of Harlaxton by Buckler, north east, Salvin from the east and Salvin from the south. The five main chimney stacks have three chimneys each accounting for 15 of the 21 hearths.

The 32 hearth-Exton Hall with a 1,250 square meter GEA would suggest that the old Belton manor covered two thirds that area; images of Exton below.

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