Salt and Earth

The main wealth of the parish was founded on its salt and its agriculture.

Salterns

Until the storms of the1780s wiped out many of Milford’s salterns salt had contributed 28% of the total tithe of the parish.

The yeomen farmers of the parish and backbone of the Vestry were the first to expand the salterns then they sold up to entrepreneurs who continued the expansion. Disaster struck in the 1780s and threequarters of Milford’s salterns were wiped out.

Agriculture

The farmers by 1801 were cultivating a fifth of the area of the parish largely to grain. The rest of the parish was pasture for their stock and horses, woodland for fuel or heath for summer grazing.

Bricks

To the east of the parish especially around Lymore, the earth also yielded up clay for brickmaking.

Links

www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk/publications/hampshirestudies/digital/1940s/…/Fussell.pdf

References

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol5/pp115-124

Records

If you would like to research Milford’s history, search the archive.

If you have some documents, images or artefacts which tell some of Milford’s history and would like to add them to the archive then please get involved.