Hearth tax significant proportion of householders were not liable to pay at all. The hearth tax was much resented because it often entailed inspection of the interior of dwellings by the sub-collectors and petty constables, who had legal authority to enter every property to check on the number of hearths. Some people stopped up their chimneys so that the tax was not due on them, but where this was discovered by the assessors the tax was doubled. On 31 July 1684, a fire in Churchill, Oxfordshire, destroyed 20 houses and many other buildings, and killed four people. It was apparently caused by
Hearth tax under-recorded in the returns and assessments; while on other occasions the certificates enable us to provide names for aggregate statistics of the not liable recorded in the returns and assessments. This research facilitates further understanding of those people who were beneath the tax threshold and the terminology which was used to describe poorer property. The is based at the University of Roehampton, London. The Centre was established in 1995 (then known as the Centre for Hearth Tax Studies) under the direction of Professor Margaret Spufford. The current Director is Dr Andrew Wareham and the Project Manager is Dr John Price.