(Rebecca Roseff, November 2003)

Herefordshire is a county of 2180 square kilometres on the borders of Wales with a current population of about 170,000 people. The City of Hereford is about 65,000 people, none of the five market towns are larger than 10,000.

For most of the Holocene (the period since the end of the last Ice Age, i.e. the last 10,000 years) we don’t know how many people lived in Herefordshire. It is clear though that there were enough people in prehistory and the Roman period to make a significant impact on the landscape. There are 52 hillforts in the county for example, one per 4192 ha, five Roman towns and innumerable earlier burial mounds and monuments. These represent a considerable amount of energy surplus to the main task of earning a living for as well as building towns and monuments we know that people were doing all the usual things, farming, ritual, making implements and jewellery, warfare etc for occasional their artefacts turn up in excavations. The monuments and artefacts prove that prehistoric people had a sufficient surplus of food to support crafts people, warriors and priests.

The first official census in Herefordshire was the Domesday Survey of 1086. Over 200 years later, after the Black Death (1348), there was a poll tax (1377), the Hearth Tax of 1664 can be used to make an estimate of population and then in 1801 came the first official census. Official censuses have followed every ten years since. Though there are problems with all these sources they can be used with care to construct population figures for the county.

These graphs and figures hide emigration from the county that certainly took place in the later 19^th century when more than 10% of people left the county every 10 years (e.g. more than 16,000 people between 1861 and 1871) due to poverty and other causes (Grundy 1986). There may well have been migration in the medieval period before the Black Death. This and other matters are explained below.

Domesday (1086) only mentions heads of household so in the graphs all people mentioned were counted and the total multiplied by 5. There are many uncertainties with Domesday, how many people are missed or whether some people have been counted twice. It is not clear whether the circa 180 landholders listed lived in county and whether they had a retinue with them who were not counted or whether the 8 churches and 3 monasteries had uncounted and associated people. In this essay slaves (823), landowners (180), priests, everyone is counted and given a nominal family of 5 and then added 20% for missing people, for undoubtedly there were some.

The following section relies on documentary sources, from Domesday (Thorn and Thorn 1983), the poll tax (Fenwick 1998), the hearth tax (Faraday 1972), the national census (Herefordshire, Census of England and Wales, Printed Reports 1841-1951, Church of the Latter Day Saints 2000, Office of National Statistics Web Site).

For calculating population at Domesday (1086) all people mentioned were counted and the total multiplied by 5. There are many uncertainties with Domesday, how many people are missed or whether some people have been counted twice. It is not clear whether the circa 180 landholders listed lived in county and whether they had a retinue with them who were not counted or whether the 8 churches and 3 monasteries had uncounted and associated people. In the graphs below I have added all people – slaves (823), landowners (180), priests, everyone and given them a nominal family of 5 and then added 20% for missing people, for undoubtedly there were some.

For 96 people in Archenfield and some villages in Archenfield and elsewhere where land was held by Welshmen (circa 13 villages) it seems likely that the people listed were heads of clans containing an unknown number of people (Taylor 1997, 25). I have calculated 120 for the heads of clans (96 plus an estimated 24 for heads in other villages in Archenfield). To find the size of the clan there is a clue in the number of ploughs recorded in Archenfield (there are 73). The average number of ploughs belonging to villagers and smallholders elsewhere in Herefordshire is 0.6 per family; thus 73/0.6 is 122 families, making the 96 heads over only 1.27 people per clan. The phrase "with their men" would suggest rather more than this however and Archenfield may have been a largely pastoral economy. I have taken the 120 heads of clans and multiplied this by 6 to give the heads of families in the clans. There is no way of knowing if this is right, or even nearly right, but nevertheless, the low number of Welshmen in comparison with the English suggests they were a minority. Using this method the estimate is unlikely to be an over estimate, it maybe an underestimate.

For the mid medieval period figures are derived from the poll tax taken from Fenwick (1998). The 1377 poll tax includes everyone over 14 except very poor people and priests. In order to include these people (i.e., children below 14, the poor and priests) I have doubled the figure; this is probably an over estimate. About three-quarters of the people listed in the total for Herefordshire (15,318) given in the Exchequer Accounts are also listed in the acquittances. Missing from the acquittances are the parishes on the west of the county in Wigmore, Huntington and Ewias Lacy hundreds, including Leominster. Leominster was a borough in 1334, assessed at 1/15^th of Hereford in the lay subsidy. Glasscock (1975) says that for some reason places on the west in the 1334 lay subsidy on which the poll tax was based, were not listed, so it is not possible to know where the west boundary of the county lay. These missing hundreds make up about one fifth of the county area of the 19^th century. It seems likely that the missing quarter of people came from here and from Leominster as most places are mentioned in the remaining part of the county. Therefore the total given seems a realistic figure for the 19^th century area of Herefordshire.

The 1664 figure is taken from the hearth tax (Faraday 1972) using all inhabited houses and multiplying by 5 and adding 15% for missing people. Some sort of check on this figure is provided by the Compton Church Survey of 1676 (Whiteman 1986). The total number of people listed in the church survey is 67,732, a 3% higher population, so the fit is actually quite good (sadly there are uncertainties with the Survey, or this figure would have been taken as the more reliable).

The 19^th century figures are from the Census and are the first reliable and total count of people in the county.

The urban and rural population is distinguished in the tables and graphs below. The distinction between the two however was probably rather blurred before the 19^th century. Town’s people would have had common meadows and backyard plots to grow food and rear animals and no doubt a considerable amount of food and other resources was produced in and around the town.

Domesday lists there is land for 658 ploughs not taken up at the time of the survey, it implies a fall back in ploughing by 28%. Other entries imply some land has reverted to waste:

"on these waste lands have grown woods in which Osbern goes hunting" (Titley entry in Thorn and Thorn 1983)

talking of 30 hides or so in the west of the county and:

"in the Golden Valley 112 ploughs could plough. 56 hides; they paid tax" (Thorn and Thorn 1983, 25; 7). This decline is generally attributed to Welsh warring in the 11^th century (ibid).

These entries suggest the population had declined before Domesday possibly due to Welsh and England fighting.

The graph shows a slight dip from Domesday to the poll tax reflecting the impact of the plague, though the town population, starting as it did virtually from nil, rises. However, the figures do not show the height of the population prior to the Black Death, this can only be surmised indirectly.

Though there are no censuses there is some documentary evidence, in the form of holding lists of manors. In 17 manors of the Bishop of Hereford surveyed 1086 and 1280 manor sizes grew by 412% (Hallam 1988) and in Herefordshire:

"wherever there is information, it tends to show an increase of from 40% to 100% in the century after Domesday and most often an increase of about two thirds" (Hallam 1988, 534)

Jack (1988) found from tenancy lists that 58 people died between October 1348 to September 1350 in Woolhope, a settlement that had an estimated 270 people in 1086 and 222 people in 1377. This would indicate that over a quarter of the people died in two years. A more dramatic loss was suffered by vicars who may have been particularly vulnerable. There was a huge rise in deaths in 1349 in the Hereford Benefices, 56 in this year compared to an average of 2.5 in the 14 years before and after, with another peak of 11 deaths in 1353 (Dohar, 1995, 42).

Archaeology also suggests there was a larger population in the 13^th/14^th century. Not necessarily because of the shrunken medieval settlements (237 listed on the SMR) for desertion may be due to a number of reasons. But the ridge and furrow recorded across the county on floodplains (SMR 10647, 33566, 31880, 22215, 31852, 31439) and hills (SMR 7421, 21898, 30534, 30695 etc) and the large number of small banked and protected woods (e.g Sharpnage in Woolhope, Badnage near Tillington, Downey in Eaton Bishop) are good evidence of widespread cultivation. The most convincing argument though is the large number of castles, churches and towns dating in part to the 13^th century that must have required a large output of grain, crafts people and resources.

Consideration of total population based on selected counted people as here prompts the crucial question concerning the size of the medieval household. Were families as large as possible as in the late 19^th century, when people existed just this side of alive or were medieval people cleverer? It seems likely that they were. After the Black Death, in the years 1377 to 1664 (nearly 10 generations), families in Herefordshire increased by 35%. This represents an average of 2.2 surviving children per couple. The figures don’t take migration into account but the rise in population in England as a whole was low, so migration is unlikely to have been very significant at this time (Hatcher and Bailey 2002, 57).

The poll tax population (30,636) is one generation after the Black Death. If there had been a population surge after the catastrophe and every couple had reared five adults successfully, this would put the immediate post Black Death population at 12254. If half the population had perished it would put the pre Black Death population at 24,509, lower than the estimated Domesday population (32634). This seems unlikely.

If in the first generation after the Black Death population rose at the 1.1% rate given above, it would put the immediate 1350 population figure at 27,851. If half the people perished as the slight documentary and circumstantial evidence suggests, it puts the pre Black Death population 55,702. If in the preceding generation early 14^th century famines killed one third of the population, it would put the population at about 81,696. Compare this to the 1801 population of 88,436. Given the corroborating evidence set out above and below this high population seems quite possible.

If the Black Death toll was one quarter, the peak would be half that shown on the graph above (41,777 people).

Historians believe the population trebled from 2 to 6 million in England between Domesday and the Black Death (Hatcher and Bailey 2002, 31). If Herefordshire was the same, as many as 20% of people may have migrated. However, even if this were the case the average rate of increase would still only be about 1.11%. Compare this with the national rise in population over two generations between 1740 and 1801 when the population rose from 5.5 million to 8.9 million. This represents a 1.27 rate (2.5 surviving children per couple). In the next generations there was a higher still rate of increase.

Of course some couples had larger families for a significant percentage had no children at all. The calculated Domesday and poll tax figures given here however do include all people.

In the post medieval period population rose at a slower rate in Herefordshire than in England as a whole. This can be seen from the graphs above. It was not that people were having smaller families but because people were migrating. Between 1841 and 1901 about 63,000 people left the county (Rees 1993, Grundy 1986) to look for work in other parts of the country and the world. They must have gone to the cotton mills in the north, the Welsh mines, the West Midlands, London and America. For the agricultural labourer there was little work or incentive to stay in Herefordshire and people were very poor.

In the last 20 years this trend has reversed. The population has risen sharply as people locate to places with more space and good schools and Hereford is currently one of the fastest growing towns in Europe.