Bury before 1700

The map of 17th and 18th century Lancashire shows clearly the concentration of Kays in Bury. This page looks at Bury itself, dividing the data between the six townships that made up the parish. It only looks at the 17th century at present, but the aim is to extend it.

The data is taken from two sources:

• The registers of the parish church of St Mary the Virgin between 1591 and 1698. Just over half the entries give a place of origin, often the name of the farm or road where the person lived. We’ve had to be careful about the entries that use just ‘Bury’ – did they mean the parish or the township? The assumption made is that in birth and death entries, it was the township, but a value judgement was made on each marriage entry.
• The Hearth Tax Assessments of the 1660s and 1670s. There are 4 of them in all, from which we’ve extracted the Kay households liable to the tax. They were not always consistent about the split across townships – Elton and Bury are combined on one of them, and Walmersley and Shuttleworth on two – so the figures shown here are an average derived from them. The 1664 Assessment also listed households that were exempt from the tax; for the sake of consistency, these are not included, though they would have added about half as much again to the figures.

You can use the radio buttons under the Key to switch between the two. There is also an option to show and hide the main Kay holdings at the time, those that were of sufficient substance to leave wills and take out leases.

The map speaks for itself. At that time, the Kays were concentrated in the four townships that made up the ancient manor of Bury, nearly half of them living in the township of Walmersley. To see how the situation had changed by the 19th century, have a look at our map of Bury in 1841.