Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

The nineteenth century documentation provides a more accurate picture of the
occupational situation, but for three parishes in this zone we have occupational
information in parish registers of the late Stuart period.
Table 5.9 Occupational structure in specific groupings from Anglican baptism registers
in Zone B, Southern (Champion) Country 1697-1705 (as % of entries showing fathers’
occupations)
Occupations in
baptism registers
c. 1700
Long
Marston
1698-
1701
Long
Marston
1698-
1701
Welford Welford Weston Weston
1699-
1705
1699-
1705
1697-
1703
1697-
1703
(n) (%) (n) (%) (n) (%)
Clergyman 1 14.3
Innkeeper/victualler 1 1.4
Tailor 4 5.6
Yeoman/husbandman 5 83.3 12 16.7 3 42.9
Carpenter/joiner 5 6.9 1 14.3
Weaver 6 8.3
Baker/flourdealer 10 13.9
Maltster 2 2.8
Cooper 4 5.6
Blacksmith/farrier 3 4.2
Labourer 1 16.7 25 34.7 2 28.6
Unspecified male 7 21 4
Total males 13 93 11
Total fathers with
known occupations
6 100 72 100 7 100
Table 5.9 suggests an organic-based, predominantly agricultural economy circa
1700, though Welford already demonstrates some variety with more than a dozen
different occupations. 15
For four of the five Gloucestershire parishes we are fortunate in having some
indications of their economy at the start of the seventeenth century in the form of
15 Although this sample is small and therefore not statistically reliable, these figures do correspond with
information from other sources. None of these parishes is a quarrying parish, so the 28 labourers were
likely to be mainly agricultural. (Table 5.6 above suggests that in the whole zone including quarrying
parishes only approximately 1 in 32 labourers worked outside agriculture in the period 1813-1840.)
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