Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

area to complement that found by the likes of Jones and Martin. 4
Where appropriate,
comparisons are made with the national scene and with studies of towns, villages and
industries nearby. 5
Although occupational structure is a wide focus, I have tried not to lose sight of
individuals in a sea of statistics. Individual people and their families and trades have been
examined to ascertain how they were affected by changing circumstances.
The geographical area
The study area, comprising thirty-six contiguous ecclesiastical parishes around the
small market town of Alcester, Warwickshire, stretches from the metal-working, urbanindustrial
Birmingham and the Black Country in the north to the predominantly ruralagricultural
lands of the Vale of Evesham and Cotswolds in the south. 6
Immediately to the north-west of the study area lies the market town of
Bromsgrove, which changed its emphasis from cloth production in the seventeenth
century to nailmaking in the nineteenth century. Also to the west lay Droitwich, with its
well-established salt industry, and Worcester, which was a county town and an important
ecclesiastical and market centre, also famed for its production of gloves and, later,
porcelain.
4 S. R. H. Jones, ‘The development of needle manufacturing in the West Midlands before 1750’, Econ. Hist.
Rev., 31, (1978), J. M. Martin, ‘The parliamentary enclosure movement and rural society in Warwickshire’,
Ag. Hist. Rev., 15, (1967), J. M. Martin, ‘The rise in population in eighteenth-century Warwickshire’,
Dugdale Soc., OP23, (1976), J. M. Martin, ‘The social and economic origins of the Vale of Evesham market
gardening industry’, Ag. Hist. Rev., 33, (1985) and J. M. Martin, ‘Village traders and the emergence of a
proletariat in South Warwickshire, 1750-1851’, Ag. Hist. Rev., 32, (1984).
5 For example, the Black Country in M. Rowlands, ‘Continuity and change in an industrialising society: the
case of the west midlands industries’, in P. Hudson, ed., Regions and Industries, (Cambridge, CUP, 1989),
p. 103.
6 Stock and Bradley was actually a chapelry of Fladbury parish rather than a separate ecclesiastical parish.
A short summary of each of the parishes included in this survey with essential information to help place the
various communities in their correct context is found in Appendix 1: Parish Gazetteer. See also Appendix
1a: Map of Parishes in the Study Area.
3