Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

their shop near Alcester church. Not only did they have to bring in the metal for their
blades, but also the ivory for their ‘elephant hafted knives’. They also dealt in various
commodities made from horn. 184
The making of clocks, locks, nails and knives appears to have continued in a very
small way in Alcester in the early eighteenth century. By and large these commodities
were supplied from outside the town or produced as a sideline by craftsmen such as
blacksmiths or gunsmiths, but records in Period B reveal one locksmith, one cutler cum
shoemaker and one nailer cum cutler. 185
The town’s cutlery and nailmaking trade
apparently dwindled after 1730. 186
In 1661 Edward Waldron was paid for ‘boaring and stocking musquetts’ and is
elsewhere described as a blacksmith and locksmith; he also supplied rings, keys and nails
and mended the church clock. 187 The town’s gun-trade was probably an off-shoot of the
Birmingham trade, which in 1680 secured a contract to make guns for the Board of
Ordnance. 188
In the first half of the next century gun-making became a significant factor in
Alcester’s economy. From a handful of gunsmiths in Restoration Alcester the number in
184 WoRO, probate and miscellaneous probate (800/843) of Job Felsteed, Alcester, cutler, 1667, £32-3-6.
WaRO, CR1886/BL/1791,1860, property deeds.
185 WaRO, DR360/80/17, Alcester settlements, 1704. WoRO, probate of John Farr, Alcester, nailer, 1730,
£206-8-7. Thomas Felsteed alias Cutler, cutler and shoemaker, followed his father in the cutler’s shop near
the church (see Chapter 2). A couple of gunsmiths double as locksmiths and clockmakers.
186 The terms, ‘nailer’, ‘nailsmith’ and ‘nailmaker’ seem to be interchangeable locally. Only two
nailmakers appear in the town’s records for Period C. (WoRO, marriage licence of William Wheatley,
Alcester, nailer, July 1783, and UBD 1792. One of these nailmakers was also a shopkeeper.) WaRO, 1851
census, Alcester, reveals only one nailmaker and two cutlers. (One cutler was born in Sheffield, the other
in Bristol.) There were no cutlers mentioned in Alcester from 1730 to 1851.
187 WaRO, DR360/92, Alcester constables’ accounts, 1661/2. Another gunsmith, Nicholas Hawes, was
also paid for work on the church bells at this time and was also describe as a ‘jackmaker’ in WaRO, WaQS
for 1661.
188 C. Upton, A History of Birmingham, (Chichester, Phillimore, 1993), p. 31. Buchanan, ‘Studies in the
localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries’, 19, p. 50, shows that guns were also made
in rural locations such as Eldersfield, Tenbury and Witley in west Worcestershire.
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