Village Population

Population data has only been gathered with any accuracy since 1801, and then was regularly conducted every ten years after 1841 in the National Census.

Domesday Book

Assessing numbers further back in Medieval England is problematic but at certain points records were collected, the most obvious being 1086 in the ‘Great Survey’. At that time there were 53 householders recorded across the three settlements in early Compton and it has been assessed that the total population can be extrapolated by multiplying this number by 5, resulting in a rough estimate of 265 people at Domesday.

Poll Tax

The poll taxes of 1377 were levied on everyone over the age of 14, excluding only those who were too poor to pay. Historians have attempted to use this incomplete data and extend it to calculate overall population numbers. The most accepted multiplier is 1.9; for the 126 poll-tax payers at 1377 in Compton Bassett, it gives an estimate of 240 people in the parish. This should be judged against a population that had halved during the first half of the 14th century, after the Great Famine of 1315–22 and the Black Death of 1348–9.

19th Century

There was a steady migration to Calne from around the mid 19th century, chiefly for employment in the town which was flourishing. Companies such as C&T Harris, pork processors, were major employers of local people.
A drop in the Compton Bassett population after 1891 is because Cowage was removed from the parish, resulting in the loss of 35.

National Register

In 1939 a National Registration was conducted. Its main focus was to quickly obtain the population status and to record everyone’s occupation. From this we can determine the population of Compton Bassett to have been 344.

Sources

Walker, J.T., Lee, J.S., Broadberry, S. Measuring the Middle Ages. https://academic.oup.com/jrssig/article/19/4/16/7029516?login=false
Victoria County History. A History of the County of Wiltshire, Volume 17
The National Archives.