In 1795 Aikin described Mellor as having “a chapel of the Church of England round which are a few straggling houses,”[422] but probably this description referred only to the centre of the township. When the 1801 census was taken the following particulars were collected:--the township consisted of 270 houses of which 19 were uninhabited, and the remainder contained 301 families. It had a population of 1670 (805 males and 865 females), of whom 68 were employed chiefly in agriculture and 945 chiefly in trade, manufactures or handicraft, leaving 657 not included in these two classes.[423] Between 1770 (the date mentioned by Radcliffe) and 1801 population generally had increased, though it is hardly likely that it would have increased much in a place like Mellor; indeed, the fact that, at the latter date, there were 19 houses uninhabited strongly suggests that within a considerable time it had neither increased nor decreased to any extent. If it can be assumed that the number of families was the same in 1770 as in 1801, then allowing 55 of these to have been farmer families (Radcliffe’s fifty or sixty), 246 families would be left as otherwise occupied: roughly a proportion of 9 to 2. Even allowing for a considerable increase in the number of families by 1801, it appears that in 1770 the farmer families must have been greatly outnumbered by the others. [Footnote 422: Aikin, _ibid._, p. 482.] [Footnote 423: _Abstract of Population_, Act 41, Geo. III., 1800, p. 59.] Though the description of the parish of Middleton by Aikin is not so picturesque as the description of the township of Mellor by Radcliffe, it is not improbable, without any great distortion of facts, that one might be used for the other, and no doubt for other places as well. In some cases (as in the six or seven mentioned by Radcliffe in Mellor) it appears that of the two occupations the agricultural may have been the more prominent, and that in others they were more equal. If French’s statement relating to Bolton in 1753 may be accepted as correct, this was evidently the case in the country districts in the neighbourhood of that town at that time.[424] Even in cases where industrial activities were of least importance, taking into account the size of farms and other evidence, there can be little doubt that a spinning-wheel was to be found in the farm-houses.[425] Starting from these, we appear to get a gradation with industrial activities becoming more and more important, until we reach the cottagers mentioned by Radcliffe, who can hardly be regarded as engaged in agricultural activities at all. In the country districts it was these cottagers, and the small farmers of the type to which he refers, who constituted the main supply of manufacturing labour. [Footnote 424: French, _ibid._, p. 9.]