Notes:

Contracted Christian names have been expanded. Broyle, Broyle Mill, Canteen, Chamberlaines & Moor Lane were all local place names within Ringmer parish. 'Railway' probably indicates that the men were employed away from home constructing the railway advancing from London towards Brighton, as the Railway Inn, Ringmer, is not believed to have been built until later that year. Barcombe, Framfield, Laughton & South Malling were parishes that adjoin Ringmer, Lewes is about 3 miles away, and the thriving resort of Brighton and the parishes of Chailey, Fletching and Waldron were all within a 10 mile radius.

The list was calculated to include 379 adults and 544 children, a total of 923 souls (about two thirds of the village population). Coal given away 23 January 1839 was noted as 16 tons 17½ cwt.

The context of the list is that the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, implemented in Ringmer from May 1835, had abolished the parish-run social security system on which the majority of the population depended, substituting relief that (at least in theory) was available only in the jail-like Union workhouses. Ringmer workhouse was used by the Chailey Union to accommodate pauper children. 'Chailey' and 'Ditchling' were respectively the main Union workhouse and the Union workhouse that cared for decrepit elderly paupers. There are 20 adults and 47 children (mostly from the larger families) in the Chailey category. Several smaller families seem to have been managing to keep out of the workhouse despite no evident employment. The two widows in the Cheyney almshouses at Ringmer Green are identified, as are two individuals in receipt of Hay's Charity, a parish charity for the deserving elderly paid at three rates, with £20 p.a. the top rate. The combination of low prices for most farm produce and burgeoning population meant that for more than a decade Ringmer had suffered from very heavy winter unemployment, and it was to alleviate this that the charitable provision of free coal and soup twice a week for the village poor during the winter months was established.

The list includes both individuals who belong to Ringmer parish under the settlement laws but are permitted to reside elsewhere and poor individuals who live in Ringmer but are legally settled in another parish. The latter group do not qualify for free coal.

Mrs James Blaber, Mrs John Divall and Mrs John Trigwell appear as such on the list because their husbands had been transported to the Antipodes. William Oliver has only children because he had run away (he was also later transported) and his wife had died. Mary MacKenley, evidently a village character, was a Nottingham woman who lost her husband but nevertheless continued to produce children at an impressive rate, many of them sadly short lived.

The employers are mostly farmers, and their farms can be identified from the 1840 tithe award. Many of the labourers' cottages can also be identified, either directly from the tithe award or by using it to follow in the steps of the 1841 census enumerators as they progress round the parish. The three largest farmers are William Ridge of Upper Stoneham Farm in neighbouring South Malling (who also leased several parcels of land in Ringmer), the Lewes corn merchant and chalk pit operator John Hillman, who also farmed Gote Farm, and Charles Saxby of Lower Lodge Farm. Not all the employers are farmers - Richard Berry was the main village carpenter-builder at Ringmer Green and Dr James Ivory ran a private lunatic asylum at the former Royal Horse Artillery barracks (now the Southdown Hunt Kennels). The surveyors of the highways employed four men, while another's employment is given tersely as 'road'. 'Fish' is not a known local personal name, and probably indicates that John Gaston drove one of the fish vans recorded as travelling by night between the local ports and their inland customers.

Notes by John Kay

Morris, B.