From an analysis of the names occurring in the Churchwarden’s Accounts 1750 – 1752, it seems clear that it was mostly children and a couple of housemaids who were being paid for catching vermin. These came from many of the households in the Old Town of Milton Abbas, and there are 80 different people paid in just these two years. The payments did not just go to the farmers and their children but to most families. The same family names also occur as paying church rates.

We will examine the Churchwarden’s Accounts further to discover if this remained true after the building of the new village.