Kelly’s Directory reports on the Harwell of 1891

Kelly’s Directory reports on the Harwell of 1891 as follows:

…The living is a vicarage, average tithe rent-charge £167, gross yearly value £346, including 80 acres of glebe, with resident, in the gift of and held since 1856 by the Rev. Samuel Mountjoy Smith, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Here is a Wesleyan Methodist chapel.

Here are almshouses for six poor widows and other charities amounting to about £100 a year.

Robert John Hopkins Esq., who is lord of the manor, the President and Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Mr John Lay are the principal landowners.

The soil is loam and chalk; sub-soil, chiefly chalk. The chief crops are wheat, barley, oats and roots.

The area is 2,521 acres; rateable value £6,443; the population in 1891 was 710.

Parish Clerk and Sexton

Isaac Hitchman.

Post and M.O.O.S.B. & Annuity & Insurance officer

Miss Eliza Ann Hutchings, postmistress. Letters arrive from Steventon R.S.O. at 7 am; dispatched at 12 noon and 6.35 p.m.

Wall letter Box

hours of collection, 8 a.m. & 6.30 p.m.; Sundays 10.30 a.m.

Volunteer Fire Brigade

Richard Rice, captain, and 18 men.

Schools:

National (mixed) built in 1837, for 80 children; average attendance, 36; Miss Lucy Hitchman, mistress.
Wesleyan (mixed), for 80 children; average attendance, 56; Mrs Street, mistress.

Carriers

James King, to Abingdon daily. Isaac Jefferies, to Abingdon, Wallingford and Wantage.

Crashaw, Rev. Arnold (Wesleyan)
Lay, John
Munn, Lieut. Col. Robert
Perry, Mrs (nee Lay)
Rice, Richard
Robart, Mrs
Shorter, Mrs
Simmons, Richard
Smith, Rev. Samuel Mount joy (vicar)
Thomas, Dennis

Commercial:

Bosley, Mark, butcher
Bosley, William Joseph, coalmerchant
Burnham, Hy. inspector of nuisances to Wantage rural sanitary authority
Cooper, Edward, builder Folly Farm
Day, Fras. Benj. frmr. Winterbrook ho.
Day, Catherine (Mrs) & Harriet (Mrs) farmers and maltsters
Day, George, brewer
Day, Isaac, farmer
Day, Isaac, Chequers Inn
Day, Joseph, corn dealer
Froud, Edward, boot-maker
Gardener, George, butcher, dairyman & general dealer
Greenaway, James Whitehorn, White Hart P.H.
Hall, William, butcher & coal dealer
Hanson, William, veterinary surgeon
Harris, John, bricklayer
Hazell, Edmund, Crispin Inn
Hitchman, Isaac, carpenter
Hughes, John, blacksmith
Hughes, Thomas, blacksmith
Hughes, Thomas, Crown Inn
Hutchings, Eliza Ann (Miss), grocer and draper, post office
Hutchings, Thomas, farmer
James, John, baker and grocer
Jordan, Henry, grocer
Keat, Richard John, grocer and baker
Keat, William, farmer
Lay, Benj., farmer, Lower Manor Farm (Bishop’s Manor)
Lay, John, farmer and landowner
Perry, George, farmer
Pryor, John Thomas and Son, grocers
Pryor, John Thomas, dep. registrar of births & deaths, Hendred sub-dist, Wantage union
Rice, Richard, surgeon, medical officer & public vaccinator for Blewbury district, Wantage union
Richens, John, farmer, King’s Farm
Saunders, Francis, cattle dealer
Tame, Jonathan, farmer
Thomas, Alfred, farmer
Thomas Francis, dairyman
Tilby, James, carpenter
Tyrrell, Henry, baker
Tyrrell, Henry, farmer
White, William, sadler and harness maker
Wood, Jane, (Mrs), boarding and day school, Pillar house

Local-knowledge of about this time tells of a mill at Townsend, in the Lay’s orchards; old stocks at the top of Burr Street, where there is now a seat; the village pound at Townsend, and a Romany, Tommy Moren, who lived in “Masslands”, Cow Lane, and made rush seats, clothes pegs and other useful things.

Comments

• Kelly’s 1848
  David Marsh –
  7 Feb 2011
  See also Kelly’s 1948 (pages 1989 and 1890)