Poor in Bishopstoke 1770-1834

The majority of these people at this time, before the coming of the railway, would have been farmers and farm workers, for this was an agricultural community. The roads which ran through Bishopstoke village - now called Church Road, Spring Lane and Riverside, would have been dirt tracks, dusty in dry weather and muddy in the wet weather, liable to flood near the river, with no pavements or street lights. Only a few of the houses we see now in Bishopstoke would have been in existence then. Of the several thatched cottages which used to be in Spring Lane, only two remain - numbers 117 and 119. In Church Road the old Rectory was built in 1808, and part of Oakbank was certainly in existence, owned in 1825 by Henry Twynara, though altered and added to considerably since then. Concerning other houses which have now disappeared, we know from the Enclosure map of 1826 that there were about 40 buildings in the village, most of them in the lower end, near the river and the mill. The Manor House was one of these, though no Lord of the Manor ever lived there.