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Bicton, Colaton Raleigh, East Budleigh, Otterton, Venn Ottery & Harpford, the historic parishes of the area.

Tithe maps were drawn to apportion tithes, a tax of a tenth of all agricultural production payable to the church, fairly to the landowners in the village. In a cash economy it was no longer feasible to pay tithes in kind or to stack up produce in tithe barns, and so the Tithe Commutation Act (1836), commuted tithes to a cash payment, but required an accurate mapped assessment of every field, garden and plot in a village. This required the production of two associated documents: the tithe map; and apportionment document. Each plot of land on the map was given a number and the apportionment document tells us who the plot was owned by, occupied by, what was growing there, what the plot name was, what size it was and what tithes were payable. We can use this information, in conjunction with other evidence as diverse as census data, landscape painting, oral history, the built environment, literary sources and artefacts to reconstruct the 1840 landscape and attempt to account for landscape change between then and now.

Of course, since the tithe map was produced for a fiscal reason, unlike Ordnance Survey maps, we can’t expect them to be very useful for rights of way, ancient monuments and other things we expect from modern maps. However they were produced to a large scale, varying between 12 ins. and 25 ins. to the mile, and were the first really detailed, universal, mapping survey of England, showing field boundaries and individual buildings. Benjamin Donne mapped the County of Devon, showing road details, in 1765. Nominally the first Ordnance Survey dates around 1809 at a scale of 1ins. to 1mile. The first surveys of the south coast were, however, commissioned in 1791 from the Board of Ordnance in the face of the Napoleonic threat. Some estates produced their own detailed surveys in the 18th century, but they are not universal.

The tithe maps were often produced in several copies: one for the bishop, one for the landowner and one for the tithe commissioners. The Devon Record Office holds the copies that were made for the bishop of Exeter. The National Archive at Kew holds another copy of the map and all correspondence and deliberations concerning the apportioning of tithes, parish by parish – worth looking at if you are ever in London. Tithe maps were divided into first and second class maps depending on the quality of the surveying. Those of you who want to go further into the technical aspects of this huge Victorian map-making project should read the authoritative works on the subject – see below. Suffice it to say that each map bears the cartographic signature of the surveyor who did the job. Thus Honiton has the triangulation lines on the map itself; Gittisham is very ornate, Venn Ottery  is very colourful, Beer contains unusual features such as lime kilns and dew ponds, East Budleigh has a printed apportionment.

Of course there is nothing new about tithe map research and it has always been the first port of call for landscape historians. However, the digitisation process which has been conducted in conjunction with the Devon Record Office does allow us to see patterns in the landscape that are impossible to see using conventional analysis. For example, one of the key areas in tithe map research is trying to see whether  elements of the pre 1840 landscape can be seen poking through into the window opened onto the 1840 landscape by the tithe maps. Tenurial relations in 1840 do in fact quite often provide clues about medieval land use. Ironically, the tenancies can be more enduring than land ownership (both categories are recorded in the apportionment). Only with digitisation which, for this purpose, can be seen as an advanced form of colouring-in, do these relations emerge. For example, interrogating a tithe map with the question: “show me all the landholdings over 10 acres” may highlight an unsuspected former open field system in which each tenant holds a long strip, producing a rainbow of colours on parts of the tithe map. It can also be significant when the apportionment describes a consecutive run of field numbers, say 324,325, 326, 327, which add up to form a strip on the map;  there may be  similar sequences in neighbouring fields. This is especially interesting when the strips run across the grain of the land, each strip including, for example, some upland plateau land, a steep wooded slope and some valley bottom land, suggesting an equitable, and possibly very early, distribution of land.

Parishscapes volunteers, including several OVA members, have been helping both with the transcription process and linking the digitised map with a digitised version of the apportionment. This involves geo-rectifying the tithe maps to make them fit onto the Ordnance Survey base and then ‘polygonising’ each field on a GIS (Geographical Information System) layer to link it to the apportionment. This will eventually make the maps fully interactive and allow you to interrogate the data. 

Prepared by © Philippe Planel, 2009 Parishscapes

Bibliography

The Tithe Surveys of England and Wales, Kain, Roger J. P.; Prince, Hugh C., Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 0521024315
The Tithe Maps of England and Wales - A Cartographic Analysis and County by County Catalogue, Kain, Roger J. P.; Oliver, Richard R. Cambridge University Press,1995, ISBN 0521441919

EB-G-00002 any 

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Later Developments

Following on from the East Devon Parishscapes Project volunteers from all over Devon, and elsewhere, transcribed all of the counties’ tithe apportionments.

These transcriptions were then checked again for errors by volunteers organised by the Devon Heritage Centre.

The tithe maps for Devon were all scanned and posted on the Devon County Council Historic Environment Record website along with PDF copies of the original the apportionment and the transcriptions.

Subsequently the scanned tithe maps were geo-referenced and stitched together as a seamless layer on the DCC HER.
 

The final stage linked the tithe apportionment data to each tithe plot on the tithe map seamless layer.

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Viewing Tithe Maps & Apportionments

The tithe maps for all of the Devon parishes can now be found on the Devon County Council Historic Environment Record:

https://www.devon.gov.uk/historicenvironment/

Individual Parishes
 

The tithe maps and apportionments for individual parishes can be found by clicking ‘Tithe Maps & Apportionments’ in the left-hand panel.
To view, select a parish from the drop-down list and click ‘submit’.
Click ‘Tithe Apportionment’ to view a scanned image of the original document.
Transcriptions can be viewed and downloaded by clicking ‘PDF’ or ‘CSV’.
The tithe map can be viewed lower down the screen.  Note: the map image may appear as a thumbnail.  If so, drag to the centre of the screen and use the scroll wheel to zoom.

Devon-wide Seamless Layer
 

The tithe maps can also be viewed as a seamless layer via the Historic Environment Map, the ‘View historic environment data on a map’ link on the right-hand side of the page.
To view, click the 4 square icon on the green bar, top right of the screen, and select the ‘Tithe Mosaic’ base-map.  It may be necessary to remove other HER detail by clicking the layer list icon on the green bar and unchecking some of the layers under the ‘Historic Environment’ layer.  But, the ‘Digitised Tithe Map polygons’ layers does need to be checked.
Zoom to the area of interest.  Click any tithe plot and tithe apportionment data will be displayed.  Note: several clicks will be required to display the full data panel.

Martin Smith, November 2023