Other datasets

1. Candidate Town Characteristics Database 1563 To 1911

This database contains data pertaining to 1,783 settlements in England and Wales that have some claim to urban status at any point between 1563 and 1911 either because the settlement meets one or more criteria that have been used by historians to identify urban settlements or because one or more contemporaries or historians have labelled it as a town. The database consists of a series of linked lists with nationally standardized names. These include: the population totals in every censal year 1801-1911 of every settlement with a population of 2,500 at any point between 1801 and 1911 (the Law and Robson dataset); 17 contemporary lists of active periodic markets between 1612 and 1888; one list of towns by a contemporary (Richard Blome, 1677); two lists of towns by historians (Langton, Everitt, Clark and Hoskings). The databases is linked to the Cambridge Group's GIS.

2. Candidate Town Points GIS Database 1563-1911

This GIS dataset contains a set of 'central points' for each of the 1,783 settlements in the Candidate Town Characteristics Database 1563-1911. These central points were defined according to hierarchy of enduring features (i) the centre of the market area where this could be identified from Extensive Urban Survey (EUS) Series or from cartographic, building name or street name evidence (ii) failing that the parish church if centrally located (iii) failing that the centre of the high street; and failing that a centrally located inn, public-house or post-office.^[1]

3. Candidate Town GIS Footprints c.1900

This GIS dataset contains a set of 'footprints' for each of the 1,783 settlements in the Candidate Town Characteristics Database 1563-1911. These footprints correspond to the actual urban areas shown on the Ordnance Survey 1st Revision 1:10,560 series which was surveyed between 1895 and 1914 with all but two counties being finished by 1907.

4. St Paul's Records, 1689-95 (Guildhall Archive)

This database records taxes collected in London. The data were transcribed and digitised by Mr Callum Easton for a University of Cambridge MPhil thesis. Easton kindly furnished the project with his data. The data derive from records of tolls collected from Newcastle coal shipments to London, 1689-1695. This period covers the Nine Years War and associated naval and privateering actions against coastal shipping, giving insight into wartime coastal operations during a period of great stress. The dataset include the names of ships and masters, whilst giving the date of entry to London with the dates of payment of city entry taxes. Individual ships can be traced as returning to London with coal repeatedly, allowing for analysis of the trade cycles of individual colliers operating between London and Newcastle. In practice, this dataset amounts to 1,500 observations of East Coast trade cycles (return voyage plus loading time) drawn from approximately 2,500 voyages along this route.

5. GIS of the Exposed Coalfields of England and Wales c. 1830

This GIS polygon dataset consists of the exposed coalfields of England and Wales. Exposed coalfields are those sections of coalfields that are not concealed by geologically younger rocks. Exposed coalfields were of major economic significance because prior to c. 1830 coal mining was almost exclusively confined to the more accessible parts of the exposed coalfields. This dataset was created from the Geological Map Data of Great Britain 1: 625,000 bedrock produced by the British Geological Survey. Each polygon includes the name of the coalfield, its county and its area in hectares and acres.

6. GIS of Houghton Coal Price Data c.1690

This GIS dataset consists of point data for 53 market towns with coal prices for the years 1692-1703. The coal price data was digitised from John Houghton's 'A Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade'.^[2] This source gives coal prices in shillings per chaldron which have been converted into pence per ton for comparison. Newcastle Chaldrons (53 cwt.) were also converted into London Imperial Chaldrons (28 cwt.) before converting to tons.

7. GIS of Poor law Union Coal Prices, 1842-3

This GIS dataset consists of point data for average coal prices for 474 poor law unions for the years 1842-3 as published in the British Parliamentary Papers. The point data locations are of two types. For urban poor law unions the town after which the poor law union was named was used with the GIS point data deriving from the Candidate Town Points GIS Database 1563-1911. For rural poor law unions the workhouse of each poor law union was used as the location point on the assumption that this would be the location of greatest amount of coal provided by the union for the consumption by the poor. Workhouse locations were derived from Higginbotham with co-ordinate data kindly supplied by Historic England.^[3]

8. GIS of Urban Coal Prices of England and Wales, 1905

This GIS dataset consists of point data for 72 towns which have coal price data in 1905. The data was digitised from the B.P.P. publication 'Cost of living of the working classes. Report of an enquiry by the Board of Trade into working class rents, housing and retail prices, together with the standard rates of wages prevailing in certain occupations in the principal industrial towns of the United Kingdom', Cd. 3864, 1908. This source gives coal prices in shillings per ton for 72 markets. These have been converted into pence per ton for comparison.

9. Mineral Statistics 1911

The mineral statistics 1911 record numerous statistics pertaining to the production, distribution and consumption of different minerals. This database contains the digitized version of the data from mineral statistics 1911 concerned with the production, distribution and consumption of coal. It was created to be used with other databases created to allow us to model the flow of coal around the transport networks of 1911. In total, 24 of the tables from the mineral statistics of 1911 have been digitized. Examples of these tables include i) the total output of coal and total number of persons employed in each county at all coal mines and quarries during the year 1911. ii) the quantity of coal remained for home consumption and its proportion to each head of the population. iii) the quantity of coal received coastwise at various ports of the United Kingdom.

10. Steam Engines of Britain, 1706-1804

This GIS dataset consist of point locations of steam engines of England, Wales and Scotland 1706-1804 deriving from a dataset originally created by John Kanefsky.^[4] The attribute data includes: the year when an engine was installed; county where engine was installed; the industry in which the engines was used; the engine maker; the engine's horspower, the cylinder diameter and cylinder stroke to the nearest foot. The Kanefsky dataset included 2,268 steam engines. As of June 2017 we have been able to geo-locate c.1,800 of these engines. We expect to be able to geo-locate a further 2,000 to 2,100 of the engines with varying precision but at minimum to the correct parish.

11. Parliamentary Enclosures in England, 1606-1902

This GIS dataset consists of 4,883 English parishes which underwent parliamentary enclosure in England from 1606 to 1902.^[5] The data set includes the year of each enclosure award and the acreage of land enclosed. In situations where a parish underwent enclosure successively under more than one act this is also recorded as is the type of enclosure. The original data for this exercise comes from Tate and Turner which was digitized in a spreadsheet format by Gregory Clark.^[6] We thank Clark for sharing his digitised data. We have also made major progress in upgrading the Tate-derived GIS data by incorporating areal and other corrections from Chapman, Kain and Oliver and others, by disaggregating the data to the sub-parish unit level, and by incorporating Wales into the dataset.^[7]

12. Return of Real Property 1815

This GIS data provides the value of real property in every parish/township in England and Wales in 1815.

^[1] EUS reports: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/EUS/ consulted 2014-2016

^[2] J. Houghton, A Collection for the improvement of Husbandry and Trade 1692-1703, ed. R. Bradley, 4 vols (1727)

^[3] P. Higginbotham, The Workhouse Encyclopedia (2012), Appendices D-E

^[4] J. Kanefsky (1979), 'The diffusion of power technology in British Industry, 1760-1870', University of Exeter, PhD thesis

^[5] This field comprises the standard 39 ancient counties of England with Yorkshire further sub-divided into its 3 Ridings, and the ancient county of Monmouthshire, which is sometimes regarded as part of Wales

^[6] W.E. Tate and M.E. Turner, A Domesday of English Enclosure Acts and Awards (1978)

^[7] J. Chapman, 'Enclosure in the Southern Counties, 1700-1900', UK Data Service, SN 3278 ; J. Chapmen, Guide to the Parliamentary Enclosure of Wales (1992); R. Kain and R. Oliver, 'Enclosure, Rating and Drainage and Sanitary Maps of England and Wales in Public Archives, 1598-1936', UK Data Service, SN 3820.