Account book of W.P. Adlington, farmer of Carlton on Trent, Nottinghamshire, 1892-1894

This account book of W.P. Adlington covers the period 1892-1894 and provides only a partial record his business activities. Since the volume contains only details of one aspect of Adlington's expenditure, on labour, for a very short period, its value for research is limited. It does however provides useful evidence of Adlington's farm and is relevant to the study of agricultural labourers in the late nineteenth century. The account book is divided into the names of employees, the work they did and the payment they received. Very occasionally, these columns are broken by memoranda such as the date of the start of harvest at Carlton on Trent.

William Palmer Adlington is recorded as a farmer in Carlton-upon-Trent (now Carlton-on-Trent) in the trade directory for 1894. He does not appear as a farmer in that village in directories for 1886 or 1897 and it seems likely that he owned or rented land at Carlton-on-Trent for a short period. Adlington's home farm was at Sutton-Upon-Trent where he lived at Poplar House during this period but by 1900 the farm is in the name of George Adlington and an alliance had been forged with John or Charles Fisher, farmers of Sutton-upon-Trent. The company is described in a 1900 directory as: 'Fisher and Adlington: farmers and estate agents and breeders of pure Lincoln long wool sheep and shire horses'. It seems to have been a short lived company however and is absent from a 1904 trade directory when Fisher seems to be trading alone.

From the account book, we can gauge that Adlington employed over 20 people at his Carlton-on-Trent farm in a variety of different roles including ploughing, harrowing, threshing, or tending his garden, roads and horses. The book contains references to payment for work done by G. Adlington.

The account book is arranged chronologically.

ACCESS: Accessible to all registered readers.

REPROGRAPHIC: Reprographic copies can be supplied for educational use and private study purposes only, depending on access status and the condition of the documents.

COPYRIGHT: Permission to make any published use of the account book must be sought in advance in writing from the Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts and Special Collections (email mss-library@nottingham.ac.uk). The Department will try to assist in identifying copyright owners but this is often difficult and the responsibility for copyright clearance before publication ultimately rests with the person wishing to publish.

LANGUAGE: English

This volume was acquired by The University of Nottingham's Library in 1957.