Hearth of standard bands of wealth applicable to each county and city. Published lists are available of many returns and the original documents are in the Public Record Office. The most informative returns, many of which have been published, occur between 1662–1666 and 1669–1674. In Greek mythology, Hestia is the goddess of the hearth, while in Roman mythology Vesta has the same role. In ancient Persia, according to Zoroastrian traditions, every house was expected to have a hearth for offering sacrifices and prayers. Hearth is also a term for a kindred, or local worship group, in the neopagan religion Ásatrú. Hearth
Hearth tax led him to conclude that ‘the proportions of different hearth tax categories remained remarkably stable for the hundred’s six best assessments’. A decade later, Margaret Spufford cleared a path for local historians interested in studying local variations in wealth and poverty at county and parish levels, and set out the relevance of the hearth tax to architectural history and genealogy. She developed Hoskins’ argument that the numbers of hearths in a household could be equated with levels of personal wealth, and that by organising the properties into groups determined by the number of hearths, historians could assess patterns of wealth