Catton in 1851 - 1871

At first glance Catton in 1871 appears little different to the village of twenty years earlier. Its population had risen to 682, but only a modest amount of new building had taken place. It continued to be described as “delightfully situated” and as having “many picturesque mansions, villas, houses…tasteful plantations, pleasure grounds and gardens” (1). Certainly the physical structure of the area had not changed greatly and the same was true of the social and economic make-up of the parish, but subtle changes in a number of areas of local life had occurred and were to continue at an accelerating place.

The popularity of the parish with the wealthy (many of them notable Norwich merchants and alderman) had not diminished. If anything it had slightly increased, thereby justifying Walter Rye’s comment that Catton was a “favourite colony of the wealthy” (2). The two largest households were those of Samuel Gurney Buxton, Esquire, Justice of the Peace, and Robert Chamberlin, mayor of Norwich 1854-6 and 1871. Of more enduring national fame was one of the residents of the “White House” at the junction of Church Street and Spixworth Road, Anna Sewell.  Her mother Mary wrote “moral” books for children, Anna wrote the children’s classic, “Black Beauty”.

From census evidence it seems the upper and middle classes were increasing in numbers while the lower middle and working classes were diminishing (see Appendix Seven). This is reinforced by the fact that fewer houses had more domestic servants than in 1851: 86 servants in 26 households (average 3.3 per household) compared with 76 in 29 (average 2.6) twenty years earlier. The two largest households (noted above) contained 22 persons each. This increase in the number of domestic servants is quite in keeping with national trends and can be seen as a reflection of the middle class advance and fashion in the later nineteenth century. As one contemporary put it, “wives and daughter do now less domestic work than their predecessors; hence the excessive demand for female servants…” (3). Gardeners and coachmen were also increasing in number, as shown in Appendix Five.

By  the 1870’s servants were considered essential by the English middle classes. “Every family that could afford a domestic servant …had one. The assistance of a charwoman or a pauper's lavey marked a first step out of the working class; while no claim to true gentility could be substantiated without … three (servants)” (4). Servants were increasing in number but their lives were not becoming any easier. They were seen as part of a rigid social hierarchy within the home, with tasks and “positions” laid down by writers such as Mrs. Beaton. Female servants, who greatly outnumbered males, were often girls from poor homes. They frequently found themselves almost alone much of the time in their new occupation, a drastic change from the crowded but companionable surroundings they had grown up in. Domestic service offered some security to these girls, but for the most part the work remained dull drudgery.

The census did not, unfortunately, include questions about income or wealth. Some idea of income may be inferred, however, from the number of servants employed by specific families. Contemporary writers described the wealth required to support a given number of servants and this information together with the numbers of Catton servants is illustrated in Figure 7. This graph indicates that fewer households had 3-6 servants while a greater number had either one or two or a large number (more than 6 servants). These impressions – of greater inequality in the incomes of local families – are perhaps slightly misleading since only a minority of households employed servants. It might appear that fewer people were owning more wealth but the community in general was enjoying a better standard of living than it had in the depression of twenty years earlier.

The growing demand for servants (who now made up 13.2% of the local population) increased both employment and wages. Similarly, labourer's wages had risen from the mid-60s as a result of the migration of rural labour to the towns and the years of “high farming” (see Figure 6). Increased mechanisation in agriculture meant less labour was needed on farms by 1871 but the mobility of the population had increased noticeably (less than a third of those named in the census had been born in the parish), helping to support wage levels.

Most of those who were born in Catton were young (under 35) and in social classes three or four. The age distribution and birthplace data is illustrated in Figure 8, the relationship of local birth to occupation (and of course social class) appears in Figure 9. An increasingly large proportion of the population was born elsewhere in Norfolk. There were also more non-Norfolk born people living in Catton by this time. The middle decades of the century had seen a steady influx of country people almost balanced by migration out of the parish. In a very rural parish (such as Ringmere in Sussex) at this time these proportions of locally born and newcomers were almost reversed. The increasing “turn-over” of population meant only three married couples contained partners both born in the village, 82 couples were both “newcomers”.

Catton was never to boast a railway station which would have further increased local mobility but in the 1850’s army marriages had a considerable effect on the better off. A number of local girls (including several daughters of Robert Chamberlain) married soldiers and thus left the parish. If a comparison is made between the Catton-born people in specific age groups with the Catton-born in 20 years older age groups in 1871 an interesting result emerges. The number of Catton-born 20-34 year olds in 1871 is only 30% of the number of Catton-born 0-14 listed in 1851. The pattern is even more dramatic with 35-49 year olds in 1871: the Catton-born number is only 15% of the 1851 15-29 year olds. While in no way conclusive proof (dealing as it does with age groups rather than comparing named individuals) these statistics point to the 15-29 year olds being a highly mobile group.

With agriculture reaching its peak of prosperity in the mid-1860’s and an increasingly mobile labour force less tied to a particular parish there was an upward pressure on agricultural wage rates. Catton’s farmers increasingly had to compete with alternative employers for their workers. As a result of these changes, by 1871 the agricultural labourers wages were, on average, 75% higher than they had been in 1851. This income would buy 50% more flour than it had two decades earlier (see Figure 3). The increasingly mobile population were less overcrowded too, for there were now on average only 3.8 persons to a labourer's household, 0.5 lower than in 1851 (5). The size of the household in which most Catton residents lived had fallen from six to five over the same period, despite a population rise of 47 (not including the patients in the new lunatic asylum in the south of the parish) without any additions to the total number of inhabited houses.

Amongst other statistics pointing to an improved overall standard of living are the high proportion of the population over 65 years of age (7.7% when the national average was 5%) and the very small number of paupers. The “workhouse test” in Norwich from 1863 had greatly reduced the attractiveness of the city to the poor and pauperism in Norfolk had slightly increased since 1851 (6) but the number of Catton paupers was half what it had been twenty years earlier. Finding their livelihoods a little less difficult to earn, more labourers had been sending their children to school. Better wages made the sacrifices less irksome and the greater mobility and growth of Norwich probably helped emphasise the importance of basic literacy and numeracy. In 1861 and 1871 97 scholars are listed in the census, with about half the children coming from social classes four and five. By 1871 31 of these children were outside the 5-9 years age group, so although the lives of such children remained hard things were probably improving – slowly. No child under 11 was now employed as an agricultural labourer.

Enlightened landowners remained an important influence in Catton. Robert Chamberlain, for instance, appears to have been a landlord of this kind, being described by W.P.High as “a munificent benefactor to both the church and the parish” (7). More importantly, the owners of Catton Hall and its estate seem to have been socially paternalistic. From 1854 to 1866 the man in question was John Henry Gurney, a member of the famous Norwich banking family and M.P. for Kings Lynn. An example of his attitude to his tenants is provided by the terrace of five labourers’ houses in Church Street which he had built in 1858. In the early 1870’s plans were made for a national school in the village. The new school in Church Street was opened in 1874, having been paid for by J.H.Gurney’s successor at the Hall, Samuel Gurney Buxton. At the west end of the school, which could originally accommodate 120 children was a “reading room for working men” with books, newspapers, a bagatelle table and so on, open five evenings a week (8). This reading room epitomises enlightened paternalism in operation, being run by a committee of which S.G.Buxton was the president, the new vicar, Rev. Crookshank, M.A., was the vice-president and Mr James Chamberlin of the Manor House was secretary. The committee itself consisted of  “working men … Messrs. Badcock, Batchelor, Holmes and Osborn” (9). These men were “respectable” middle-aged tradesmen (such as a blacksmith or carpenter), most of whom employed two or more men and boys.  The gentry were clearly still playing an active role in the life of the parish and were to continue to do so into the present century.

The very bed-rock of gentry power, agriculture, was loosing its traditional dominance of the local economy. For although Catton had only one less farmer than in 1851 the area they farmed had lessened by 37% and they were employing three less labourers. The exact number of agricultural labourers is difficult to ascertain since only 11 men described themselves as farm or agricultural labourers but a further 37 were simply listed as labourers. But even if all these men are included as farm workers the agricultural labour force had still declined by 18%.

The ownership of land remained principally in the hands of S.G.Buxton, George Buxton and Mrs. Chambers. The lions share, 236 acres, belonged to the only one of the three resident in the parish, S.G.Buxton (10). This represented an increase of almost 50 acres on the land ownership of George Morse in 1843, a concentration of ownership frequently found in the mid-Victorian period. The agricultural areas was decreasing - from 536 acres in 1851 to 438 acres ten years later and only 334 acres in 1871. By this latter date the largest local farmer, Ephraim Hinde, only farmed 186 acres, less than two-thirds of his 1851 acreage. Interestingly, Hinde was the only farmer to list women amongst his employees (7 men, 3 women and 2 boys in 1871).

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