Population

From The Times News in Brief - Wednesday 27th August 1919

Population

1603 - 57 (communicants)

1676 - 67 (The Compton Census)

1705 to 1723 - 22 then 23 families (Bishop Wake's Visitation - see a transcript in the Church section).  At about 6 people per family that would give a population of about 130 or so.

1801 - 108 (estimate from Annals of Agriculture, and Other Useful Arts: An Inquiry into the State of the Cottagers in the Counties of Lincoln and Rutland by Mr Robert Gourlay.)

1841 - 146

1842 - 158

1851 - 179 see Lincolnshire Returns of the Census of Religious Worship 1851

          175 see 1851 census

1856 - 179

1861 - 189 see 1861 census  (for Census transcription click here)

1871 - 180 see 1871 census  (for Census transcription click here)

1872 - 180

1881 - 165 see 1881 census  (for Census transcription click here)

1891 - 172  (for Census transcription click here)

1901 - 146  (for Census transcription click here)

1911 - 144

1921 - 134

1931 - 145

 A reminder that the majority of the population were not, until relatively recently, free to live where they wanted comes in the settlement agreement, of which we have a transcription below, allowing one John Scrimshaw, his wife and family legally to move to Wold Newton from Strubby.

Wold Newton was a "closed village", a term coined by the Poor Law Commissioners in 1834 to identify those villages with land owned by one or two families who sought to minimise their poor rates by excluding poor immigrants from obtaining settlement rights. Population size was controlled by building only enough housing for the workforce needed on the estate and its tenanted farms. When more labour was needed, for example during harvest, it could be obtained from nearby "open‟ villages like Binbrook.  For all that, the land owners of Wold Newton did not entirely avoid their social responsibilities.  The assessment, attached below, of 1804 imposed a charge of £50 on the two principle landowners.

By comparison, that was about the same as the amount for which they were assessed for Land Tax 20 years earlier - see the 1781 assessment attached below.

We are fortunate in having parish records dating back to 1578.  Those which run up to 1812 are deposited in the Lincoln Archive.  Such is their fragile state that access is limited to inspection of microfiche copies.  Happily, Squire William Wright transcribed them at some time in the 20th century when they must have been in a more legible state than now and we have a link to a typed transcript of his work below.

The marriage register for 1837 to 2021 is available here: Marriage Register

 We also have an incomplete transcript of the bishops' transcript of the registers taking us back to 1561; link below.