We at the Great Britain Historical GIS are starting to plan a project to
assemble "mappable" statistics for Britain from the pre-1801 period,
i.e. from BEFORE the first census.

PLEASE TELL US ABOUT RELEVANT DIGITAL DATA SETS.

The long-run aim is to systematically extract the geographical names
they include to greatly extend our gazetteer of historical
administrative units, and in particular to make our coverage of pre-1800
parishes more systematic, and to create a new gazetteer of vills. Even
longer term, integrating different data sets should enable new analyses
of really long-term change.

However, the immediate aim is simply to establish what computerised
data sets exist, and help ensure that as many as possible are deposited
with the UK Data Archive (UKDA) at Essex University. We do not currently
have funding for this project, but one of our key funders have requested
that we make a detailed proposal; the way they work means that funding
at least for a small project starting next spring is now highly likely.
So long as we are funded, we would take on the various practical tasks
involved in getting data into UKDA, but the original creators would be
credited as the depositors. One past example of us taking on this kind
of role is the 1801 crop returns; read the detailed documentation and
you will realise we did quite a lot, but they are clearly Michael
Turner's data:

  http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=5156 

This is a project whose potential we have been exploring since 1998
(other projects kept interrupting us!), and we already know about a
series of transcriptions created by academics, now all retired or
deceased:

 -- 1676: Compton Census of religion (Whitman) 
 -- 1563: Diocesan Population Returns (Palliser and Dyer)
 -- 1535: Valor Ecclesiasticus
 -- 1524/5: Tudor taxations (Sheail)
 -- 1334: Lay Subsidy (Glasscock)
 -- 1291: Taxatio (Denton; already in UKDA)

The Domesday Book (1086) is not in this list because it is a vastly
more complex source. We know of two separate transcriptions of Great
Domesday, one already in UKDA, plus a separate transcription of Little
Domesday, which was far more detailed but limited to East Anglia. For
now at least, that is beyond our scope. The sources we list are much
simpler, listing just a couple of numbers per parish or vill, and often
just the one thing the government really cared about: how much tax each
area paid.

The researchers listed above transcribed the archive documents, but did
not always create a computerised version. In most cases we know of a
computerised version -- but there may be a better one. For the Compton
Census, the version we know about is decidedly incomplete, so we would
love to hear about more counties.

By "geographical survey", we mean something covering the country fairly
systematically and at very least going down to county-level (although
often with a couple of counties missing). Everything listed above is
basically village by village. We are not directly interested in listings
of individual people or households, but of course we are interested in
parish/vill/hundred-level statistics created from such listings. We have
a separate interest in "topographical descriptions", like Defoe and
Camden, and would be happy to hear about further clean digital
transcriptions we could add to our "Travel Writing" collection, but here
we are basically looking for statistical data: tables of numbers with
geographical names in the left hand column. We are as much interested in
the names as the numbers, and any coordinates you have added would be
very helpful.

We hope to hear about relevant data sets we have not thought of. A
couple of transcriptions are missing from the above list because we know
there are major copyright problems -- but if you have done an
independent transcription from the original archive document we would be
very happy to hear from you! (e.g. Poll Tax of 1377-81). If you have
computerised someone else's transcription without their permission, we
have painlessly sorted out that kind of situation on a couple of
previous occasions (and what you have done so far probably counts as
"private study"). We are interested in data for any part of the British
Isles, although most relevant data sets seem to be limited to England
and Wales. This is about transcriptions of historical sources, not
archaeological evidence. Oddly, 18th century data are very scarce.

Our aim is to get datasets into the UKDA collection with access
conditions that enable us to use the data ourselves, but we are not
looking for any special access privileges. If you own the rights in a
dataset, you will decide the access conditions, although if they are too
restrictive UKDA might refuse to accept the data, and we hope most
people will want to see their data under something like "creative
commons". So long as we do get the funding, we expect to sort out issues
with documentation and file formats (and if we don't we will pass on
anything we are sent to UKDA "as is").

It is worrying how little of Britain's early "statistical heritage" is
currently securely preserved in a data archive, and whether or not we
achieve our own longer term goals a small project can add much. Please
help.

Humphrey Southall

(ideally please reply to [log in to unmask])

PS (1): we are not planning a new boundary GIS, as the pre-1800 sources
for this barely exist: Darby's Domesday Geography used a base map
constructed from the the 1888 OS "Sanitary District" diagrams, as held
in our digital map library. We already have better boundary maps for
"historic parishes" than that, and the proposed gazetteer work would
make it much easier to use that mapping for earlier dates.

PS (2): meanwhile, we have just added listings of (a) Scottish pre-1974
"Districts of County" (b) British New Town Development Corporations, (c)
Irish baronies and (d) Irish poor law unions to our gazetteer of
administrative units. For example:
http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/relationships.jsp?u_id=10016411