OLDHAM Thomases

A history of working people of Oldham in Lancashire

Appendix 2 – Population growth in Oldham

The graph above shows the growth in population of the County Borough of Oldham (blue) and Oldham together with the neighbouring townships of Chadderton, Royton and Crompton (red; after 1832 this corresponds to the Parliamentary Borough). The numbers before 1801 are from Edwin Butterworth’s Historical sketches of Oldham (1856; pop. 680 in 1600) and A statistical sketch of the county Palatine of Lancaster (1841), and the later figures are from the UK Census returns from 1801 to 1931. The numbers in cyan are my estimates (629 in Oldham in 1563, and 1130 in 1666) based upon Hearth Tax numbers (Giles Shaw Manuscripts; see main text, Chapter 1, p. 2) and Walton’s (1986) estimates of population growth (76.2%) in Lancashire between 1563 and 1664.