On 2nd March it’s World Book Day! To celebrate, we thought we’d highlight this rather special object in our collections: the Bolling Household Book.
The Bolling Household Book contains the accounts from the Bolling estate from 1669-87. Francis Lindley had bought the Bolling estate, including Bolling Hall, in 1668 – but died only a year later.
The accounts were kept by his widow Elizabeth Lindley until their son, Francis (Frank) took over the estate in 1687 and subsequently lived at Bolling Hall with his wife, Caroline, and their children. This is the only known document of its kind about Bolling Hall.
The Household Book shows rents and coal mining income, as well as outgoing like Poor Tax, Hearth and Ships Money. It shows that Bolling Hall had repairs to ‘gutters’, ‘glazing’, and ‘pointing’ in 1669. The ‘plumber’, ‘masons’, and buying ‘slate’ and ‘lyme’ came to £8.11s.4d (nearly £1000 in today’s money)!
The Household Book also records personal expenditure for the children’s ‘cloaths and schooleing’ (clothes and schooling), such as ‘2 paire of gloves for Franke’ and a ‘pettycoate for Betty’.
This extraordinary book is on display at Bolling Hall – why not come and see it for yourself?