342 Recent Wiltshire Boohs, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 



given was a very pleasing building, chiefly of late work, being in bad 

 repair, and " its accommodation being insufficient," was pulled down and 

 a larger Church built. 



The fortunes of the " Workhouse" opened in 1773, the work done by 

 its inmates, and the feeding of them, with its annual cost, are followed 

 until it degenerated into a mere disorderly " Poorhouse " in 1802. The 

 bad times of the early years of the nineteenth century, the gradual 

 decay of the cloth making industry later on, and the agricultural 

 depression and consequent changes in agriculture which between 1870 

 and 1885 transformed Corsley from a wheat growing to a dairy farming 

 parish, with the result that its population which numbered 1621 in 

 1841 was reduced in 1901 to 824, all receive due attention. In the 

 middle of the nineteenth century the most notable men in Corsley were 

 Mr. Barton, of Corsley House, Mr. H. A. Fussell, the dyer of Sturford 

 Mead, Mr. Taunton, the clothier of the Mill Farm, and Mr. Coombes, 

 the silk manufacturer — " a very reserved man who kept no company, 

 except that once every month he gave a dinner to all the people in the 

 parish who had only one leg, one arm, or one eye." 



The real pith and kernel of the book, however, lies in the second part, 

 in which the author claims to present " what may be considered a 

 picture of Corsley in 1905-6." She may well claim this. The modern 

 life and circumstances of no other parish in Wiltshire.probably of no other 

 country parish in England, have ever before been depicted on this scale of 

 accurate analysis. There seems to be nothing touching the life of any 

 one of the 800 inhabitants of Corsley which has not been enquired into, 

 discovered, tabulated, and arranged in its proper position, in order that 

 this account of rural life may be absolutely trustworthy and accurate 

 and full. The scope of the inquiries, which embraced every farnity in j 

 the parish, included the place of birth, age, sex, employment, wages, 

 religion, and personal character of each person, amount of land held and 

 character of cultivation, rent and number of rooms in each house, I 

 friendly societies, insurance, women's earnings, rent of land, profits of 

 garden, and in many cases which are here given in full, the actual I 

 detailed budgets of expenditure by the housewives and the menus oi\ 

 every meal served for a week in labourers' cottages in Corsley. These [ 

 are set forth in a long series of tables. The result of the elaborate series j 

 of calculations as to income and cost of living, is that of the 220 house- 

 holds in the parish " about five-sevenths are above poverty, rather less I 

 than one-sixth in secondary poverty, about one-eighth in primary! 

 poverty." In the 165 cottages there is more than a room apiece for the 

 624 persons inhabiting them. " Out of 70 households whose head is a 

 labourer only 16 are in primary poverty and 13 in secondary poverty ; I 

 the remaining 41 are therefore above this line." 



The author writes in conclusion as follows : — " One is accustomed to I 

 think of the labourers of Wilts and Dorset as the worst paid and most, 

 poverty stricken class in Rural England. Looking, therefore, to find 

 poverty in a Wiltshire village, it was no small surprise to the investi- 

 gator to discover that the majority of the inhabitants were in quite J 



