Genealogy Chat

Thank you Heather,

This information could be useful to lots of people on GR.

Best regards, Thelma

The hearth tax was on the same lines as the window tax. It was a way of discerning how big your property was and therefore how much you whould pay in taxes. Hence the reason you see so many very old houses with windows bricked up :)

Thank you for the information. Very helpful and much appreciated.

Thelma

From Wikipedia

Hearth tax records are important to local historians as they provide an indication of the size of each assessed house at the time. The numbers of hearths are generally proportional to the size of the house. The assessments can be used to indicate the numbers and local distribution of larger and smaller houses. Not every room had a hearth, and not all houses of the same size had exactly the same number of hearths, so they are not an exact measure of house size. Roehampton University has an ongoing project which places hearth tax data in a national framework by providing a series of standard bands of wealth applicable to each county and city.

Please could someone explain what the Hearth Tax was and how it could be useful in researching? Many thanks Thelma