Order Form
Mitcham in 1838:
A Survey by Messrs Crawter & Smith
Local History Notes 21: ed. Stephen Turner, with an introduction by Peter Hopkins
Among the archives at Surrey History Centre, Woking, is a small folio volume entitled Collected Reference to the Parish of Mitcham in the COUNTY OF SURREY SURVEYED by Messrs Crawter & Smith 1838. Its 170 folios list every property in Mitcham - cottages, houses, shops, farms, gardens, fields, meadows, woods and wastelands - together with acreage and use - arable, meadow, pasture, wood or 'sundries'. Each property is numbered, from 1 to 1438, and the names of the occupiers are listed, though often several buildings in the same ownership are grouped together. Thus the book gives a very detailed picture of Mitcham in 1838.
The survey listed landowners alphabetically by the initial letter of their surname, with the lands then arranged by occupants. This order has been retained in the transcript but, in addition, a list in numerical order gives just the owner and folio number for each entry. An alphabetical index of landowners and occupiers, including folio numbers, has also been provided. The original schedule lists the individual acreages of arable, meadow, pasture, wood and sundries in separate columns, but to save space these have been combined, and an additional column has been inserted to show land use.
The centre pages reproduce sections of the 1846 Mitcham tithe map, which used the same plot numbers. The whole parish is covered by four double-page maps, at a scale much reduced from the original and with plot numbers retyped at a readable size. An even more reduced copy of the complete map is reproduced as the centrefold. Three single-page copies of this map have been shaded and outlined to show the major landowners, the main occupiers, and the use to which the land was put in 1838, and these appear at the end of the booklet.
Extract from the Introduction
