Part houses in the Valuation

This shows the prevalence of part-houses recorded as separate properties in the Valuation. This is a somewhat technical definition which excludes some properties which we would today regard as 'Houses in Multiple Occupation'. For example, the factory which had once produced the woollen fabric which gave its name to the Stuff Balls had by 1828 been subdivided into four houses. These are not regarded as part-houses, each being a 'part-factory'. Each of these houses, to judge by newspaper reports, was run as a common lodging-house of the lowest kind; but each had a single 'occupier' paying rent to the proprietor. Hence, so far as the valuation was concerned, none was a 'part-house'.

What this map really shows are houses that were too large for the market as it stood in 1828 and were therefore divided between separate occupants. Viewed that way they were areas that had 'come down in the world'. That may explain why the Close shows the highest rates. Fifty years before, the great County families sought to maintain a Lincoln town-house. The Wrays, for example, had Eastgate House. By 1828, such gentry town-houses had largely vanished. The Close had far more widows than before; and widows did not need the amount of accommodation that a County family, in Lincoln for the great social occasions of the year, might think necessary.