Oakham in Rutland in the Victorian Census Returns 1841-1901: An examination of the major factors underlying the county town’s continued existence and prosperity

The intention of the thesis is to examine, through the returns to the Victorian censuses of 1841 to 1901, how a microcosm of England – the small market town of Oakham in England’s smallest county, rural Rutland – shared in the immense changes of the Victorian years. The key question is what factors underpinned Oakham’s admittedly unspectacular survival while a number of other English small towns declined. The analysis is based on a thorough investigation of the census returns from 1841 to 1901, thus making it possible to highlight the key aspects of the town’s demographic structure and occupational change.

In the first chapter, the case is made for the micro-historical approach as the rationale for an in depth study of a small and relatively insignificant rural market town such as Oakham in Rutland and the value of the census returns as a tool of historical research. Oakham was small enough to allow the entirety of those returns to be analysed and not just a selected sample, an approach used for larger towns but which can distort the final analysis. Three areas of change form the core of the analysis - demographic growth, occupational change and educational progress - but three other factors not apparent directly from census returns are investigated briefly - the coming of the railway to the town, the importance of Oakham being the county town and the late nineteenth-century rise of local government – since the picture would be incomplete without mentioning these important factors.

The conclusion reached is that the town of Oakham followed national trends - its population grew (but not as fast as the national average), its major occupations changed steadily from the primary to service sector (but without any real growth in the secondary sector) and its educational facilities progressed (but only in accordance with national regulations). Overall, the thesis argues that, allowing for its rural location, Oakham mirrored wider change in Victorian society and its economy, particularly in the shift from reliance on the agriculture economy to becoming a local service and non-industrialised hub. Oakham’s Victorian history was characterized by endogenous growth through undramatic net in-migration linked to the rural-urban drift and by its continuing importance as the county town, aided considerably by its west-east railway link.