Norton Mandeville: Poor relief

A History of the County of Essex: Volume 4, Ongar Hundred. Originally published by Victoria County History, London, 1956.

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'Norton Mandeville: Poor relief', in A History of the County of Essex: Volume 4, Ongar Hundred, (London, 1956) pp. 154. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol4/p154a [accessed 4 May 2024]

POOR RELIEF

No parish records are known to survive except the registers. Details of poor relief, 1776-1821, which are given below, come from returns made to Parliament and may not always be very accurate. (fn. 1) In 1776 a total of £70 was said to have been spent on poor relief. (fn. 2) The average for 1783-5 was £36. (fn. 3) The cost of relief was given as £140 for 1800-1, and for 1816-17. (fn. 4) Between those years it fluctuated, averaging slightly over £100 a year. Only once, in 1815-16, was it higher (£150) than in 1800-1. In 1817-18 it was given as £130, in 1819-20 as £116 and in 1820-1 as £100. (fn. 5)

There was a cottage in three tenements in Norton Mandeville which was used as a poor house. (fn. 6) It was sold by the Ongar Union in 1837. (fn. 7)

Footnotes

  • 1. Cf. Greenstead, Poor Relief.
  • 2. E.R.O., Q/CR 1/1. This seems a high figure for the time, if correct, for the population can hardly have been more than about 80.
  • 3. Ibid.
  • 4. Ibid. 1/9.
  • 5. Ibid. 1/12.
  • 6. The parish had a poorhouse by 1776, at latest: Rep. Sel. Cttee. on Overseers Retns. 1777, H.C. ser. 1, vol. ix, p. 350.
  • 7. E.R.O., G/On M1. It was probably at Norton Heath, where a 'Poor House Field' was shown on the Tithe Map, 1847. Norton Mandeville became part of Ongar Poor Law Union in 1836.
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