Page 6 - Moreton Village Only Book

6 Moreton Village Only

A Century of Change

HE 19TH CENTURY was a period of immense change in England – the Napoleonic
wars finally came to an end with the battle of Waterloo in 1815 and with England at
T peace with France for the first time in more than a hundred years, many unemployed
soldiers and sailors were thrown back into society. In the same year, the Corn Laws were
passed to encourage British agriculture by fixing the price of corn and thus the price of a loaf
of bread (“the penny loaf”) and protect it from cheap imports (how different from today!)
By the mid 1830’s, important social changes saw the abolition of slavery, children under the
age of nine prohibited from working in factories and the infamous “Poor Laws” which
established parish work-houses for the poor – immortalised by Charles Dickens in “A
Christmas Carol” and many of his other books. Births, marriages and deaths had to be
registered on a centralised basis (providing the first national information – previously it had
only been recorded in parish records by the local priest). In 1837 Queen Victoria came to
the throne, ending the “Georgian period” and ushering in the Victorian era with the founding
of the British Empire and the many major industrial, socio-economic and agricultural changes
that still affect us today. The “penny post” where a letter could be sent anywhere in the
country for 1d (about 0.5 pence today) was introduced in 1840 but the first post box was
not recorded in Moreton until the late 1800’s.

The Map below illustrates early enclosure and open fields in Thame and its hamlets before general
enclosure. Based on Richard Davis’s map (1797), a late 18th century map of Moreton, Thame
enclosure award and map (1826), and North weston award and map (1847).