Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

earlier times, by the 1790s coaches on the north-south route and the east-west route may
have called at Alcester. 227
Although the town was never linked to the canal network, when the Stratford to
Birmingham Canal reached Hockley (approximately twelve miles away) in 1796 and the
Worcester and Birmingham Canal reached Hopwood (also about twelve miles away) in
1797, the cost of coal carriage to Alcester probably fell. However, although the canal
may have been used to carry Alcester’s agricultural and industrial produce, costs were
more favourable for farmers and manufacturers in parishes nearer the canal. 228
In Period D the number of workers in this sector remained small, but most sources
suggest an increase to 1840. Directories show that the variety and frequency of coaches
and carriers serving the town increased at this period, though only a few carriers or
coachmen were based in Alcester. 229
Some publicans also benefited from the increased
traffic, while the keepers at Alcester’s tollgates continued to make income from the tolls,
sometimes combining this occupation with farming or labouring. Associated trades
included horse-keepers, while one blacksmith was also a road-mender. 230
Alcester was linked to the waterway network by road carriers. 231
The railway did
not come to the town until the 1860s, but the railway age altered Alcester’s road traffic in
various ways. Income for turnpike gatekeepers was affected. Whereas the bid for
Alcester’s gate was £300 in 1789 and had risen to £371 in 1816, the coming of the
railways to Bromsgrove and Leamington in the early 1840s changed the finances
227 Although there is no written evidence of coaches stopping in Alcester until Wrightson’s Birmingham
Directory 1812, Berrow’s Worcester Journal 25 July 1799 mentions a coach from Birmingham to Evesham
and Tewkesbury; this probably went via Alcester. See Appendix 15a for later coach routes.
228 A. White, The Worcester and Birmingham Canal, (Studley, Brewin Books, 2005), pp. 43, 48.
229 See Appendices 14 and 15.
230 Horsekeepers cum ostlers appear in Alcester’s 1841 and 1851 census, which also reveal members of the
Ward family in Kings Coughton as roadmen or road-menders. Joseph Ward was also a blacksmith.
231 Robson’s Birmingham and Sheffield Directory 1839 gives Alcester as a destination for goods
transported by canal.
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