The Hearth Tax

Just a quick one today.  A break from 'news' and stuff - time for a quick look at the seventeenth century Hearth Tax for England and Wales.  This post was prompted by my coming across this website the other day:

Hearth Tax Online

- which certainly seems worth keeping tabs on in the months and years ahead.  Further investigation, however, brought me to the above's 'mother site', thus:

The Centre for Hearth Tax Research

Then I thought of The National Archives, where most of the original Returns are kept.  Turns out they have a guide to the records, too:

TNA Guide to the Hearth Tax

And, whilst I'm at it, I might as well give my own article on the topic an airing (though towards the end it concentrates on the North-East of England)...

A Rough Guide to the Hearth Tax

I can't pretend to know a great deal about the Tax in Scotland or Ireland - though a starting point for the former would be here.  In Ireland, the Returns are usually referred to as the 'Hearth Money Rolls', but no obvious online guide seems to exist.

All of which is largely irrelevant if your own research is stuck in the 1700s+, of course.  Ho-hum.