1911 Census

A national household census was conducted on Sunday 2^nd April 1911. In addition to the kind of details that had been collected in earlier censuses – about the occupants of each household on that night, including their relationship to the head of household, their marital status, age, occupation, and place of birth – it also recorded for how many years married women had been married, how many children they had had by that marriage, and how many of those were still living or had died. There were often more detail about occupations, as well.

The 1911 Census was the first to be conducted after the sinking of Bell Bros. Ltd.’s Bowburn Colliery in 1906-1908. It therefore records the families of most of the first miners employed at that colliery. Its publication presented a wonderful opportunity to see where those families had come from and to explore how many of them were related to, or likely to have known, other “first villagers”, before they came to live here.

Bowburn LHS’s transcript contains all the households living in the new Bowburn colliery streets. It also includes all the families living at Tursdale Colliery, Cornforth Moor, Old Quarrington (Heugh Hall Row etc.) and Cassop Moor. The maiden names of married women have been added, where known, by Bowburn Local History Society; they are not recorded in the original Census. Families living in Cassop and part of Quarrington Hill are also included in this transcript. There are 3,156 individuals listed, with ages, places of birth, occupations and all other information contained in the original Census.

To see who was living in Bowburn and nearby at the time of this Census, click on “1911 Census”.