The third instalment is by Carolyn…
My visit to the records office was an amazing experience. Handling rental records written on paper by people from hundreds of years ago was a great privilege. I was very struck by a handful of tiny handwritten receipts that fell out of a bundle of records and the fact that the ledger totals had to be painstakingly copied and reconciled by hand. No spreadsheets or printers in those days. The names of local people that we know in our modern day community were echoed again and again. It must be wonderful to be so deeply rooted in the district. As different rent collectors took over their methods of recording, the information changed. Some meticulously recorded property and tenant names whilst others relied on tenant names
Is this the site of one of the Whitle farmhouses?
only within each district. Presumably they knew their tenants well. The Whitle farms always paid up on time, unlike some of their neighbours. Maybe they were skillful farmers, had embraced diversification before it became fashionable or the land was in better shape.
Carolyn
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