Census Returns

Census returns for the parish of Whitchurch reveal information about the people working at the Silk Mill, where they lived and with whom. The information is not complete, only a snapshot of Whitchurch on the day of the census. However, we can find details to elaborate on the lives of the mill workers of the time.

The transcripts are from the 1891 census and include only the entries where a member of the family works at the Silk Mill. A full set of census returns for Hampshire is available from the County Record Office in Winchester. The 1901 census can be viewed on line at the Public Record Office website.

Suggested activities

Create an inventory of everyone working at the mill with their name, age and job. Use this information to create graphs showing ages by gender and by job. This information can be used to work out the average age of workers and to compare which jobs were done by young or old people.

Find out where the Silk Mill workers were born. Use a map to locate the place and measure how far it is from Whitchurch. This will show how well travelled the Silk Mill's workers were.

Choose a family for whom the number of rooms in their house is given. Work out what the different rooms would have been used for and how many bedrooms they could have. Remember most houses wouldn't have a bathroom, only an outside toilet and a tin bath tub used in the kitchen. Children could compare this with a three bedroom house today.

A transcript of the census returns for workers at the Silk Mill is available in Word format. The documents should be enlarged to A3 size for use in the classroom.