The London and Middlesex Hearth Tax: an analysis of the status and wealth of neighbourhoods and households on the eve of the Great Fire

This project will lead to the publication of the 1666 Hearth Tax returns for the City of London and Middlesex - the largest and most complex set of hearth tax returns to survive from Restoration England. Data from the returns will be delivered online via British History Online, while a two-volume hard-copy edition will include a series of historical essays drawing on an analysis of the returns, as well as a critical edition of the text itself. These essays will examine the links between wealth and poverty, the built environment, urban topography, personal status, occupation and demography in relation to the City of London and its suburbs north of the Thames in the later Stuart age. Another strand of the project will involve the creation of a GIS to display and interrogate the information from the returns via maps of the City of London and its suburbs.