Skegness Through The Years: Part 4
This is an extract from the book "Skegness Through The Years"
Introduction
Skegness in the early seventeenth century was a very small farming community of probably fewer than thirty families. The proximity of what was then called “the German Ocean” was of very little consequence to the local economy, except in the constant battle to preserve farming land from the encroaching sea and to make the marshland suitable for grazing. The Earl of Scarbrough’s ancestors owned most of the land. The only building that has survived today from the beginning of that century is St. Clement’s Church. This had been built in the sixteenth century after the old church had been “clene consumid and eten up with the se”. It was in St. Clement’s Church that the only significant record relating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was kept. This was the Skegness Parish Register, which began in 1653.
The present study is based on a detailed examination of that Register from its beginning in 1653 to 1812. The aim is to try to build up a picture of the people who lived in Skegness during that time.
Population
Over the 151-year period, there were 368 baptisms and 300 burials (see Table 1). This suggests a growing population. However, the figures take no account of inward or outward migration. Nor do they take account of the (relatively small) number of people who were buried in Skegness, but obviously did not live there (e.g. “corpses of three sailors and a woman all unknown cast on the shore” in 1811.) Between 1653 and 1721, burials exceeded baptisms, whereas for the next 90 years, there were considerably more baptisms than burials.
Census figures for Skegness are available for only two of the years covered by this study: 1801 and 1811. The population of Skegness was 134 and 132 respectively. The population of England grew rapidly in the second half of the eighteenth century, with the advent of industrialisation. Skegness was a long way away from the new population centres, but it was probably nevertheless a net exporter of population.
All this suggests that in 1650 the population was somewhat lower than in 1801, that it declined slightly over the next 70 years and increased gradually over the next 80 years. It is impossible to put reliable figures on this, but it is safe to assume that at no time between 1653 and 1801 was the population greater than 140, or about 30 families.
Source: Skegness Parish Register 1653–1812, Skegness Library BL. SKEGNESS 929.3/1
Notes:
a. The entries for the period 1673 to 1721 begin on Lady Day and end on Lady Day the following year. The other entries are for calendar years.
b. The figures for children are mainly based on entries which say "son of" or "daughter of", but also include, for example, "boy drowned age 9".
c. The figures are for 10 year periods, apart from the first and last rows of figures, which are for 11 year periods.
The families
One of the most striking features of the Register is that, over the period, there are a large number of different surnames: 159 surnames, compared with the total number of baptisms and burials (668). 111 surnames appear fewer than 4 times. Thus, there is evidence of a mobile population. There is only one Smith. There are no references to the well-known Skegness names of Grunnill and Perrin, while another old Skegness name, Moody, appears only twice – in 1682 and 1685.
Two-fifths (269 out of 668) of the entries in the Register relate to eleven family names. These are: Bowring (Bowron, Bowrin) (57), Green (46), Chapman (27), Miller (Millar, Millins) (25), Everington (22), Dickinson (Dickison, Dickson) (18), Enderby (18), Walls (18), Grummitt (14), Cotnam (Cotman) (13) and Clarke (Clerke, Clerk, Clark) (11). There are also 12 entries relating to Thompson, but these concern two different families, one of whom was the rector of Skegness.
Table 2 shows how long these eleven families lived in Skegness. The Greens are the only family to appear throughout the whole period of the Register (six generations).
Up to 1720, there were five main families in Skegness: Chapman (gentry), Green, Enderby, Cotnam and Clarke. For a brief period in the 1740s, nine of the eleven main families mentioned in the Skegness Register were living in Skegness. Only the Clarkes had disappeared and the Millers had not yet arrived. By 1756, the Cotnams and Chapmans had disappeared too. From 1786, only four of the main “Skegness” families remained: named Green, Everington, Enderby and Bowring. In addition, the Millers had arrived. As a publican, William Millar can be seen as the first of a new generation of Skegness residents (though some of his namesakes were shepherds). The Enderby family is first mentioned in 1692 and continues to be found in documents about Skegness after the end of the period of this study. Similarly, though the Everingtons arrived later (first mentioned in 1743) they continued to be important throughout the nineteenth century.
Christian names
196 males and 172 females were baptised during the period of the Register. Thirty different boys’ names were used, the most common being John (used 48 times), William (36), Thomas (30), George (13), Joseph and Robert (10 each). The more unusual names were Hussey and Thory (Chapman) (both the maiden names of their respective mothers), St. John (Bowrin) (married to Lydia Lucy), Adelard, Cornelius, Edmund, Elias, Endbert, Isaac, Lenton, Matthias, Petagrine and Cuthbert. Other names used were Andrew, Charles (5), Edward (5), Henry, James (2), Jeremiah, Matthew (3), Nathaniel (4), Philip, Richard (6) and Samuel (4).
Thirty-three different girls’ names are used. The most common are Elizabeth (used 38 times) and Mary (used 37 times), followed by Ann (Anne and Anna) (27) and Susannah (and Susan) (13). The most interesting name was Mary Avice, daughter of St. John and Lydia Lucy. Other less common names were Abigail, Avis (2), Esther (2), Everin, Mildred, Naomi (2), Neeley, Odlin, Thomasina and Zilla. Other names used were Alice, Amy, Bridget, Catharine (2), Charlotte, Dinah (2), Eleanor (2), Eliza (2), Frances (9), Hannah (2), Harriet, Jane (4), Joan, Maria (2), Mabel, Martha, Rebecca (2) and Sarah (9). Mention must also be made here of Endocia Haller, wife of William Haller, shepherd, who bore three sons and a daughter between 1782 and 1785.
It was not at all unusual for the same Christian names to be used by the same parents a second and even a third time after the first one had died: for example, there were two Thory Chapmans baptised in successive years.
The social order
What sort of people lived in Skegness in the eighteenth century? At one end of the social scale, there were “gentlemen” and rectors.
Gentlemen
Plaques in St. Clement’s Church describe William and Hussey Chapman as gentlemen. The family lived in Skegness for almost a hundred years at least from 1666 until Ann Chapman’s death in 1755. One of the few other people to be referred to as “Mr” in the Register, Mr Burton Rayner, and his wife, Ann, had two daughters in 1766 and 1767. It is possible that the Rayners took over the Chapman residence.
Rectors and curates
There were only six rectors or curates in the 145 years between 1667 and 1812 (and, remarkably, only 3 in the 112 years between 1667 and 1779).
Thomas Thompson was rector of Skegness from 1667 until 1718 – 51 years! He and his wife, Mary, had 6 children between 1674 and 1682. Of these, one died. Mary died in 1684, possibly during her seventh pregnancy.
R. Bursey was rector between 1719 and 1746, while Thomas Garmston was rector from 1747 to 1779. According to the Register, John Johnson was curate from 1780 to 1796, followed by E. Greene from 1797 to the end of the register in 1812. However, a board in St. Clement’s Church shows Samuel Partridge, Francis Swan and Dr. John Parsons, respectively, as rectors from 1780 to 1834. Presumably, the living was insufficient to sustain the lifestyle a university-trained theologian would expect at that time.
This board also shows that George Viscount Castleton, an ancestor of the Earls of Scarbrough, had taken over as patron of the living at the time of the arrival of Thomas Thompson in 1667. The patronage remained in the family until 2004.
William Willson, rector of Skegness from 1938 to 1944, discovered a document dated 25 September 1722 and signed by R. Bursey, Rector, which enumerates the tithes, holdings fees and other emoluments by which the rectors of Skegness were supported at that time:
In primis, the Churchyard consisting of one rood of land or thereabout. Item, all tythes of sheep, viz. wool and lamb in kind throughout the parish. Item, all tythes of feeding and depasturing of cattle. Item, all tythes of pigs, geese, hens, turkeys, ducks, bees, hemp, flax, fruit, garden tythes, thatch and willows. Item, all Easter dues, viz. every communicant 2d., every fire-hearth 1d., every foul [sic] 1d., every calf 2d. Item, all Churchings, Mortuarys, Marriages and Burials.
William Willson also refers to a document which gives “the astonishing information that in 1791 St Clement’s actually had a surpliced choir, musically trained”:
Paid John Bowring for larning [sic] them to sing ………£1 1s. 0.
Washing surplices: 10s 6d.
Airing ‘em:…….............…….1s 6d.
…….…………….......................…..12s. 0.
Willson goes on to say that in 1812 the organist’s salary was increased to two guineas and “in the same year, the Churchwardens in a fit of recklessness spent the sum of 12d on repairs to the organ.” He added: “it is greatly to the credit of Skegness that so much care as this was bestowed on decency of public worship at the period in question; for that was an age when, in the Church of England, beauty of Church buildings and furniture, seemliness of ritual and enthusiasm of religious feeling were alike regarded with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.”
Tenant farmers and graziers
Many of the main Skegness families – the Greens, the Bowrings, the Everingtons and the Enderbys – are described at some time as “graziers”. They would probably have been tenant farmers on land owned by the Earl of Scarbrough or his ancestors (the Enderby and Everington families certainly were), though some of them obviously fell on harder times and are sometimes described as “labourer”. Representatives of all these families were churchwardens at some time during the period covered by the Register.
Sailors and fishermen
Considering that the modern economy of Skegness is based on its proximity to the sea, during the period under review, the sea appeared to be of little consequence. There are only 13 references to burials related to the sea. In 1717, John Pilmor, Wm. Baines, Tho Hudson and one John, a servant, all seamen drowned by storm, were buried. Richard King, a sailor, was buried in 1741. The Old Sailor (otherwise unnamed) was buried in1759. Robert Gill, a shipwrecked sailor, was buried in 1763. A drowned sailor supposed to be about 15 or 16 years old was buried in 1804. The corpses of three sailors and of a woman all unknown cast on the shore were buried in 1811. Finally, the last entry in the Register records that the corpse of a sailor (unknown) cast on Skegness shore was buried on 22 September 1812.
Of these, only “the Old Sailor” and possibly Richard King could be considered to be residents of Skegness, when they died.
There are only two references to “fishermen” in the Register: one birth and one burial (Thomas Green, a fisherman, buried in 1785, John, son of John Green, fisherman, baptised in 1805).
Publicans
One can almost sense the association of “publicans and sinners” when mention is made of publicans in the Register. Only three references are neutral in tone: the baptism of William Millar’s son in 1780, William’s burial in 1797 and the baptism of Thomas Melsar’s daughter in 1809. John Petty gets a bad press: when she was buried aged 6 years in 1800, Susanna was described as daughter of John Petty, publican, and Susanna, a former wife. In 1804, John “illegitimate son of Mary Houghton (& Jno Petty Publican her master)” was baptised, while Frances “illegitimate daughter of Mary Houghton by John Petty Publican her late master” was baptised in 1806. John Petty was the landlord of the New Inn, later Hildreds.
Labourers
Most of the young family men were farm labourers: of the 40 children baptised between 1800 and 1812, 25 were fathered by labourers. (The other fathers were graziers (8 children) publicans (4) and a shepherd, a fisherman and a sojourning soldier (1 each).
Servants
There are four references to servants being buried in the course of the register, all female. The first was Elizabeth Wilson, who is described as “maid servant of Mr William Chapman” and was buried in 1677. The second was Lidia Medcalfe, also a maidservant, buried in the following year. Two more servants were buried in 1777 and 1807, respectively. This suggests that there were a few better-off families in Skegness, who employed maid-servants, including the Chapmans, the rector, some of the better-off tenant farmers and latterly the hotelkeepers.
Paupers
Skegness obviously had its share of poor people. Between 1741 and 1812, there are at least eight references to “paupers”, “poor man” and “poor widow”. In some cases this represents a fall from grace. For example, William Lawrence was the son of a churchwarden, but died a poor man in 1770. Similarly, Dorcas Green bore a large number of children up to 1748 when her husband died, but she died a poor woman 36 years later.
Illegitimate children
Some of the keepers of the register pull no punches as far as illegitimate children are concerned. Seven are described as “illegitimate” and three as “bastard”. John Petty is the only father named. A pointed reference is made too to “widow” Smalley whose daughter, Ann, was baptised in September 1743, two years after the death of John Smally, a pauper, in August 1741. There appears to have been some inconsistency, however, in the treatment of illegitimacy in the register (or rectors may have refused to baptise illegitimate children) because all but one of the entries relate to the periods 1761 to 1778 and 1804 to 1808. These periods are all contained within the periods when Thomas Garmston was rector (1747 to 1779) or E. Greene was curate (1797 to the end of the register in 1812).
Health and longevity
Size of families
Of the eleven main families referred to in Table 2, all have at least one father with four or more children. Many of these died, as the following table (Table 3) shows.
Infant and child mortality
In England as a whole in 1700, “maybe a fifth of all babies died in their first year; perhaps one in three died – of gastro-enteric disorders and fevers – before the age of five.” These figures are mirrored closely in Skegness during the 150-year period. Ninety-six (almost one third) of the 300 burials during the period were children. Surprisingly, the figures were lower for the period up to 1731, when “only” 23% of burials were children. The 1730s were a bad period for child mortality with 15 out of the 22 burials being children (spread throughout the decade). The last twenty-one years (from 1792 to 1812) also saw a large proportion of child burials with 20 out of the 43 burials during this period being children.
Disease
In England as a whole, 1718–19, 1727–31 and 1740–42 were particularly bad years for typhus, typhoid and other fevers. The figures involved for Skegness are too small to draw firm conclusions. However, it is possibly noteworthy that in none of these 7 years did baptisms exceed burials, while burials exceeded baptisms in all but two of them. By contrast, in the 9 years 1731 to 1739 (inclusive), burials never exceeded baptisms and baptisms exceeded burials in all but two of those years.
Longevity
At least one early commentator recorded that Skegness was not a particularly healthy place in the eighteenth century, because of the prevalence of marsh fever. Dutton, on the other hand, says evidence from gravestones suggests Skegness was a healthy place. “In looking over the tombstones the visitor [to St. Clement’s Church] will notice that most of the ages are more than the allotted span, which speaks well of Skegness as a health resort.”
There is, in fact, not much evidence one way or the other from the Register. We have, however, been able to work out the approximate ages of 13 men who died in Skegness between 1708 and 1812. The three oldest were William Chapman, gentleman, aged 82, his son, Hussey, aged 73, and Thomas Ellis, a pauper, aged 82. The ages of the others ranged from 38 (John Enderby 1774) to 59 (Thomas Green, 1785, though this person could have been a younger man of the same name). The mean average age of these thirteen men was 59. The median age was 52.
All but one of the five women whose ages are recorded between 1798 and 1812 (excluding one who died after childbirth) were between 72 and 80. The other woman was 52 when she died.
From this limited evidence, one can draw the conclusion that most men did not live much beyond 50. Women lived longer, provided they survived childbirth, but many women died within two years after the birth of a child, presumably during or soon after childbirth or a further pregnancy.
Housing
At any one time, there were probably not more than 30 families with different names living in Skegness.
Where did these people live? The only building that was standing at the beginning of this period, which is still standing, is St Clement’s Church. That was said to have been built in the fields, way back from the sea. John Enderby is first recorded as farming the Church Farm, which is nearby, in 1766. The Skegness Hotel, later the Vine, was advertised in The Stamford Mercury in 1772 as “standing on as clean a shore as any in England”. A sketch map of 1793 (see Map 1) shows a total of 8 houses in the “central” area of Skegness (including the junction of Wainfleet Road and Roman Bank, the current High Street and the beginning of what is now Drummond Road). There would also have been other houses outside the area covered by the map. So, at the end of the eighteenth century, the Enderbys lived at Church Farm, while it is possible that some of the Dickinsons and/or Millers lived at the Skegness Hotel. The rector, if resident, would have lived at the rectory, which, if it existed, would have stood near to St. Clement’s Church, while there was also, presumably, a house of some standing formerly occupied by the Chapmans. McKinley House (the Moat House) was built around 1780 and was inhabited in 1793 by the Revd E. Walls. The Everington and Bowring families lived in farm houses or cottages (the Bowring house is shown on the map of 1793, as is Everington’s land). Six or seven other families of graziers may have also lived in similar properties.
Most of the remaining 10 or 20 households probably lived in very poor accommodation: some were single mothers, while others are described as poor or paupers. So, there would have been a maximum of 35 housing units (30 is a more probable upper limit) in Skegness during this period, of which only two: the Vine and Church Farm, still exist.
In England generally, housing conditions (other than for the wealthy) were poor: the rural poor inhabited “shacks made of wattle, turf and road-scrapings”. Indeed, it was recorded that in order to discourage poor-law settlements many parishes demolished cottages and refused permission to build new ones. It is not surprising, therefore, that none of these dwellings have survived. There is, however, an example of a ‘mud and stud’ cottage built in this period at Church Farm Museum. This would have been the most likely form of housing for most of the inhabitants of Skegness.
Roads
The sketch map of Skegness in 1793 referred to in the previous section shows a “Publick High Road”, a road to Winthorpe and Burgh (Roman Bank), a road to Croft and Wainfleet, and a “Publick Road [formerly High Road to Gibraltar Point now impassable]”. Interestingly, there is reference to Revd Mr Walls’ old house which had been washed away by the sea (clearly within living memory at that time). The roads at the time would, of course have been little more than cart tracks, some of which would have been covered in stone. Roads in England in 1700 were described as “perhaps worse than the Romans had left them”. Though the standard of roads improved in England generally in the eighteenth century, it is doubtful whether these improvements reached Skegness. Even by 1849 a map covering a wider area (see Map 2) showed little change in the layout of Skegness. This shows only High Street, Wainfleet Road, Burgh Road, Roman Bank and Sea View Lane, all of which probably existed in 1793, but does not show Drummond Road.
Conclusion
Skegness in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a very small settlement of no more than 30 dwellings. In previous centuries it may have had a castle, a harbour and a ferry crossing to Norfolk. But by 1650 these had long since gone. The small church had been rebuilt in the fields about a mile from the sea. The area bordering the sea was a mixture of sand dunes and marshes. This marshland was constantly being eroded and reclaimed for grazing.
A core of eleven families accounts for two-fifths of the 668 baptisms and burials recorded in the Skegness Parish Register between 1653 and 1812. These include the Chapmans, gentry, whose memory is recorded on plaques in St. Clement’s Church; the Bowrings and the Everingtons whose names are mentioned on an eighteenth century map (both tenant farmers); and the Enderbys who were the tenants of Church Farm. The Greens were the only family to survive the whole 150-year period of the Register. The rest of the population was fairly mobile with 159 different surnames recorded, including 111 which appear fewer than 4 times. For such a small parish, the rectors stayed a long time: only 3 between 1667 and 1779. The most popular Christian names of baptised babies were John, William and Thomas for boys and Elizabeth, Mary and Ann (with variations) for girls.
Farming was the predominant occupation of the men of Skegness. Much of the land was owned by the Earls of Scarbrough, though it was farmed by tenant farmers. There may have been independent small holders, but there is no evidence of this. Sea-based activities were peripheral to the economy of the village: only two men are recorded in the Parish Register as fishermen.
Infant mortality was high. As in the rest of England at the time, almost a third of the burials recorded relate to children. Not many of the ages of the adults buried are recorded, but the overall picture, with exceptions, is that most men did not live much beyond 50. Women lived longer (into their seventies), provided that they survived the child-bearing period, but many of them did not.
Only two buildings survive from this period: St. Clement’s Church and the Vine Hotel. Neither was in the centre of Skegness – the area around High Street, Wainfleet Road and Roman Bank. Much of the population would have lived in mud and stud cottages near farms away from the centre of the village.
The first signs of change appeared towards the end of the eighteenth century, with the building of the Skegness Hotel (now The Vine). From then on Skegness gradually, and very slowly, would begin to develop into the tourist attraction that it has become today. But at the end of the period of this study, the event which would change the face of Skegness for ever – the arrival of the railway in 1873 – was a long way off. The population of Skegness in 1811 was 132 – probably only slightly greater than it had been in 1653.