Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

labour and access to commons to eke out a living. 43
Earlier there is evidence that flax,
woad and rape were cultivated here, presumably on relatively small plecks. 44
In the nineteenth century in addition to the farmers records reveal a number of
other associated occupations: grazier, horse-dealer, pig-dealer, cattle-doctor, veterinary
surgeon and cutter (castrator).
More research would be needed in order to interpret accurately the figures in the
1831 census for occupiers of land employing or not employing labourers. 45 Many of this
zone’s parishes were probably involved in market-gardening at this period as small plots
continued to be converted to this use as hemp and flax growing declined. 46
Several
gardeners, maybe of the market variety, are mentioned in local records, while George
Ebenezer Knight, a Harvington innkeeper, was also a seedsman. Although marketgarden
plots were small, horticulture was labour-intensive, perhaps employing more
labourers per acre than some types of agriculture, as well as women and children, unseen
in the figures. No doubt some of the female agricultural workers listed in the censuses
worked on the market garden plots. 47
The information about labourers in the 1831 census shows that in most of the
parishes in this zone all the labourers were employed in agriculture. Bidford had the
43 Martin, ‘The social and economic origins of the Vale of Evesham market gardening industry’, pp. 42, 47.
44 GlosRO, probate of Thomas Collins, Welford, yeoman, 1729, £591-15-0, includes £5 worth of flax and
rent for the ‘Rapeground’. GlosRO, probate of Benjamin Medes, Weston, yeoman, 1729, £632-14-5,
reveals that he was growing 5½ acres of flax (worth £30) and had another 7 acres ‘sett for flax’ (worth £24-
10-0). Thirsk, Agrarian History of England, vol. V, p. 171, details the arrangement for growing flax in
Broad Marston, (Pebworth), on the Little Woad Ground, whose named suggests a former use for growing
woad. ‘Pleck’ is a local word for a small plot.
45 Appendix 7.
46 Martin, ‘The social and economic origins of the Vale of Evesham market gardening industry’, p. 43.
T. Rudge, A History of the County of Gloucester, (Gloucester, G. F. Harris, 1803), p. 110, says of Welford
that considerable quantities of flax used to be raised, ‘but the practice has been almost entirely
discontinued.’
47 Females referred to as ‘jobbing women’ may have been employed thus; for example, Betty Harwood of
Bidford in the 1831 census. The 1841 census also lists several female agricultural labourers and
‘fieldworkers’.
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