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Archiver > ABERDEEN > 2009-08 > 1249488896


From: Gavin Bell <>
Subject: Re: [ABERDEEN] SMITH family New Pitsligo Aberdeenshire
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:14:56 +0100
References: <8CBE211138E0F1A-1428-717D@WEBMAIL-DF03.sysops.aol.com> <4A76A820.1040700@which.net><8CBE396684A76B2-B84-15BB@webmail-md19.sysops.aol.com> <4A793F9B.8030509@blueyonder.co.uk><A495B11346F64EDD83C96A56079AB00A@LENOVO53E5F674>
In-Reply-To: <A495B11346F64EDD83C96A56079AB00A@LENOVO53E5F674>


M Keith Abel wrote:

>.... Moreover to compound the confusion, census returns will list
>several unconnected people and families as living in the same house.
>
>I remember when I visited Inverurie, a very kind person from the library
>undertook to drive my wife and I around to the places where my ancestors
>lived, the school my grandfather attended, the manor house I was named
>after. It was a thrill to visit "Burnhead", the house my great grandfather
>Peter Abel rented. I asked our guide about the several unconnected persons
>listed in the censuses who also lived there since it was obvious that the
>tiny cottage could scarcely have contained great grandfather's large family,
>let alone all those other people. She pointed out the row of sheds out
>behind the house that I had taken to be storage buildings, chicken coops
>etc. These "dwellings" were built of stone about 10 feet square with a
>"leanto" roof, no window, a door that consisted of a rectangular hole in the
>wall and a hole in the roof to let the smoke out from a fire built on the
>ground in one corner. There was no evidence that a wooden door had ever been
>installed in the doorway ....
>

I think the situation is sometimes more complicated. When you find 5
households with the same address, it certainly does not mean that 5
families were living crammed into a single cottage. But nor does it
ncessarily mean that that there was one family in the cottage, and the
other 4 lived in outhouses.

What often happened was that several different houses (none of them
palatial, certainly, but probably none of them quite so squalid as you
suggest) actually shared the one placename. Sometimes this is made
clear by the name itself - "Burnside Crofts" or "Cottown of X" makes it
clear that there was more than one dwelling. But if you examine a
large-scale OS map from the 1860s you will very often see that a group
of what are quite obviously separate buildings have just a single
placename attached to them.

And the buildings that you find above ground today are no very reliable
guide to what was there 50 or 100 years ago. Since the later 19th
century, increasing mechanisation has meant that fewer workers were
required on the land, so fewer houses were needed, and many have become
ruinous or been bulldozed - but their names are probably perpetuated in
newer buildings.

If your ancestors were enumerated in the Census from 1861 to 1881 you
can get some sort of handle on the conditions they lived in because one
of the questions asked for the number of rooms with windows inhabited by
the household. I think this was mainly intended to quantify the
horrendous conditions of some families in urban areas, who were indeed
crammed into cellars with no windows, so I would be surprised if in the
countryside you could substantiate, from the Census data, many instances
of the sort of "black holes" you suggest above.

You don't say when your ancestor was at Burnhead, but an analysis of the
1871 Census published shortly after it was taken stated that in the
parish of Inverurie (including the town) there were 714 housholds who
had, between them, 2133 rooms with windows, or 3 per household. A
similar ratio applied in other parishes, and while we would nowadays not
be content with such a meagre allowance of light and air, it does rather
suggest to me that what you saw were actually outhouses, not dwellings.


Gavin Bell

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