St Mary Bourne One-Place Study

The history of a Hampshire parish

Local HistoryOn this Day

On this day … 18th November 1830

JulzMuirhead

The first of the known events in St. Mary Bourne that were attributed to the Swing Riots. This is just a brief mention as the study is going to look in more detail at what was happening locally leading up to this and the second known event that happened a few days later.

“Friday Night – A Hay-rick, at Wadwick the property of Mr. Longman, was burnt last night. The fire was visible at Andover. It is supposed to be the act of an incendiary.”1

A common sight… Covering a hayrick, in the late 1830’s This slightly stylised image, shows a rather thick thatch. But portrays a scene, familiar to almost everyone in Britain, at this time. And for more than a century after…2

The website ThatchingInfo.com has been particularly useful to me, I imagined a Hay-Rick being just a stack of hay. In reality they were far more, they were used to keep cereals stored and hay dry. The thatch covered them and kept them safe from the weather.

Extract from an 1890s Ordinance Survey map3

The newspaper article states that the fire was visible in Andover! This map shows Wadwick in marked with blue in the upper right, Andover also marked blue is down on the bottom left. The distance between the two is approximately 8 miles. It must have been a considerable fire to light up the sky that much for it to be seen so far away.

  1. Hampshire Advertiser, 20 November 1830, viewed at Findmypast.co.uk ↩︎
  2. https://thatchinginfo.com/thatching-ricks-stacks-in-britain/ ↩︎
  3. Map Explorer. https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/ ↩︎

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