Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

population, (or at least on households or families) is available for 1563, the 1670s, c.1730
and c.1780, as explained below. These are therefore the years used to compare the
population of the different zones.
Table 3.2 Population estimates for Zone A, Alcester 1563 to 1780
Acreage 1563 1563 1670s 1670s c. 1730 c. 1730 c. 1780 c. 1780
lower higher lower higher lower higher lower higher
Zone A, Alcester 1758 528 660 1080 1485 1372 1715 988 1235
The 1563 Bishop’s Census gives a count of 132 families in Alcester. 17
From that
figure we can estimate a population of between 528 and 660 souls. 18
The town’s
population probably doubled in the next hundred years. By the 1670s there were between
1080 and 1485 living in the parish. 19 The majority of parishioners lived in the town
itself, with another cluster of houses at Kings Coughton to the north and also scattered
settlements on Alcester Heath and the Ridgeway.
Assessing Alcester’s population from the 1670s to 1801 is problematic. If it was
in the range 1080 to 1485 in the 1670s, it must have declined (at least temporarily) after
the epidemic which hit this area in the mid-1680s. However, the period from 1685 to
1720 seemed to be a boom time for the town, with many people settling there and an
increase in personal wealth, as described in Chapter 4. Around 1710-1712 another
epidemic struck, followed by the great epidemic of 1725-30. Gooder suggests that
17 Commentary on the accuracy and use of the 1563 bishops’ census can be found in A. Dyer and D.
Palliser, eds., ‘The diocesan population returns for 1563 and 1603’, OUP/British Academy, Records of
Social and Economic History, New Series, 31, (2005), and in D. Palliser and L. J. Jones, ‘The diocesan
population returns for 1563 and 1603’, Local Population Studies, 30, (1983), and in A. Dyer, ‘The bishops’
census of 1563: its significance and accuracy’, Local Population Studies, 49, (1992).
18 Figures for the 1563 bishops’ census quoted in this chapter are from Dr. Peter Kitson of the Cambridge
Group using a multiplier of 4 for the lower estimate and 5 for the upper estimate.
19 The Hearth Tax for 1670 records 270 households, while the Compton Census of 1676 appears to list 280
conformist, 3 papist and 16 non-conformist households respectively, (a total of 297 households). The
lower estimate for the 1670s is obtained by multiplying 270 households by 4, the higher range by
multiplying 297 households by 5.
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