Overseers’ Rate Assessments

Included in the Cerne Abbas Overseers of the Poor records are detailed rates assessments for the period 1826 to 1858.  From 1826 to 1835 one assessment was done each year.  Then from 1836, and barring a small gap from 1841 to 1843, the assessments were done every quarter until April 1858.

The rates assessments list, by occupier, all properties in the parish, who the proprietor was for each property, and a description and the rental or annual value of the property.  With such detail and such regularity in the updating of assessments, changes of occupancy can be seen much as they happened and families tracked from property to property.  Many of the assessments include cottagers as well as householders, making the assessments very much a census of heads of household.

Graham Clark, one of the Society’s correspondents in New Zealand, has transcribed a selection of Cerne Overseers’ rates assessments from 1826 to 1858.  All the Overseers’ records, including the rates, are digitized and can be seen on the Ancestry website.  We are indebted to him for his work.