The British Record Society has joined with the University of Roehampton to produce a series of texts of the Hearth Taxes of the 1660s and 1670s. These are being published, county by county, generally in conjunction with the relevant local record society. There may well be some twenty volumes in the series. They will make available lists of inhabitants, and the size of houses they occupied, village by village across England. The volumes are provided with scholarly introductions complete with maps and tables so that the volumes can be of the greatest use to social and economic historians working on a national canvas as well as to the local historians of the counties concerned.
When the mapping and analysis is completed, it will provide a bird's-eye view of the distribution and density of taxable population in England and Wales in the 1660s and 1670s. The introductions also stress that the Hearth Taxes throw light on the buildings about which they give such austere information. It is not useful to count hearths without some awareness of the houses that contained them. This series will therefore focus attention on housing as necessary evidence in interpreting the past. They are also especially useful for locating lost ancestors, since they can pin down which parish registers are worth searching, whilst the house size gives some sort of indication of the status of the taxpayers themselves. In addition they are naturally ideal tools for local historians, and provide the opportunity of setting the community being studied in context.
The University of Roehampton has, with the assistance of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, had master microfilm made of the Hearth Tax listings in the National Archives, which, in turn, has made copies of the relevant portions available to every appropriate local record office in the country.
The work of transcription of Hearth Tax records from microfilm is already progressing in a considerable number of counties. The volumes so far published are for Cambridgeshire Michaelmas 1664 (with an introduction by Nesta Evans), Kent Lady Day 1664 (with introductions by Sarah Pearson and Duncan Harrington), Norwich, Thetford, Yarmouth and Lynn Exemption Certificates 1670-74 (with introductions by Peter Seaman, John Pound and Robert Smith), and County Durham Lady Day 1666 (with introduction by Adrian Green). They are fully indexed both by surnames and by places.
For more information about the British Academy Hearth Tax Project please visit -
The images of hearths on this page are reproduced with the kind permission of - Jeremy Milln, Sarah Pearson, John Walker, Peter Smith and the Museum of Lakeland Life, Kendal, Cumbria
The following volumes have so far been published and are available to purchase at -
The British Record Society has joined with the University of Roehampton to produce a series of texts of the Hearth Taxes of the 1660s and 1670s. These are being published, county by county, generally in conjunction with the relevant local record society. There may well be some twenty volumes in the series. They will make available lists of inhabitants, and the size of houses they occupied, village by village across England. The volumes are provided with scholarly introductions complete with maps and tables so that the volumes can be of the greatest use to social and economic historians working on a national canvas as well as to the local historians of the counties concerned.