Wheatley - Village Archive

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Poll books. Until 1884, only owners of property could vote.

The only polls of 1856, 1860 and 1860 show who owned house and land in the village with many absentee owners.

Note that in 1856, there were no owner occupied houses in the village and that by 1860, there were just five. The 1862 poll is much more rudimentary and provides no such information.

In 1884, in the United Kingdom under the premiership of Gladstone, the Representation of the People Act 1884 (48 & 49 Vict. c. 3, also known informally as the Third Reform Act) and the Redistribution Act of the following year were laws which further extended the suffrage in the UK after the Derby Government's Reform Act 1867. Taken together, these measures extended the same voting qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside, and essentially established the modern one member constituency as the normal pattern for Parliamentary representation. All men paying an annual rental of £10 and all those holding land valued at £10 were now entitled to the vote, bringing in about 40% of the male population.

Absentee owners, like Richard Henry Wace who owned significant farm land and lived in Sussex, are shown.

William Bracher occupied Rectory Farm in 1856; Crown Farm was occupied in 1856 by William Aldworth (also publican) and in 1860 by Charles Bushnell (also publican and also in 1863 and 1867); and, in 1856 and 1860, James Davis occupied what was then known as Brasenose College Farm (from 1845 or earlier), which had only 14 acres, see record 2525. Where or what was Haine's Close?

In 1885 John Barrett is living in 'Windmill, Hill House' [Windmill House was certainly not built by then, we are not sure when Hill House was built]; The Crown farmhouse and inn appear to have been split with James Britnell in the farmhouse and Charles Bushnell in the inn; Edwin Coppock is at the Red Lion; Edward Davis in Armbrough's (now Ambrose) Farm; Thomas Putt in the Crown Tap; James White at the Plough; and Samuel Williams at The Chequers.

There are many names not much known in the Wheatley Archive.