Speenhamland, Berkshire

Speenhamland is an area within modern Newbury, Berkshire.

Name and location

Its name is probably derived from Old English Spen-haema-land, "land of the inhabitants of Speen", with "Speen" perhaps being formed on a Brittonic root deriving from Latin spinis, "thorns".[1]

Speenhamland was a tithing, or administrative subdivision, of the parish of Speen, though even in the early 19th century it was contiguous with the suburbs of Newbury.[2] It lies to the north of the River Kennet, between the centre of Newbury and Speen village to the north-west.[3]

Poor relief

The Speenhamland system of poor relief was devised at a meeting in the area in 1795. It set poor-relief rates by the bread price and the number of household members, in or out of work.[4]

gollark: You probably have to be able to make people adapt their programs a *bit*.
gollark: What if you just virtualize the filesystem for every single program?
gollark: Because of weirdness with `require` half my programs have fallbacks to `dofile`.
gollark: Programs would probably not deal well with that.
gollark: Sure.

References
  1. Coates and Breeze (2000) Celtic voices, English places: studies of the Celtic impact on place-names in England, p. 41.
  2. Lysons & Lysons (eds., 1813: Magna Britannia, vol I, part II, London: Cadell & Davies, p. 372.
  3. Page, William; Ditchfield, P.H., eds. (1924). "Speen with Speenhamland, Bagnor and Benham". A History of the County of Berkshire. Victoria County History. 4. pp. 97–110.
  4. Chris Grover (Lancaster University), "Hard Work", History Today, June 2020.

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