Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

vulnerable to slumps in the market. 85
However, those leaving probate show some
business acumen. For example, John Hill wished his estate to be sold and the profits
invested in government security stock. 86
Others too owned property, while some
weavers were also described as yeomen. 87
For the most part locally woven cloth was probably marketed through dealers in
nearby towns such as Alcester or Chipping Campden, a noted centre for wool. However,
one local family of weavers, the Grays, were also described as cloth-dealers in the
nineteenth century and may also have acted in this capacity earlier. 88
The Grays, based
in Pebworth and surrounding villages, had at least seventeen looms in the 1830s and also
put yarn out to others. Products made included canvas, table-linen, huckabacks and
cheese-cloths. Members of the Gray family travelled throughout the west midlands
selling their wares, and they also had a wholesale warehouse in London, where they
supplied cheese-cloths to dairymen. Females were employed to weave smaller cheesecloths.
89 In Period D sources suggest a relative decline in the textile trade. 90 However,
linen-weaving with hand-looms continued in a small way right up to 1890.
85 WaRO, DR911/20, Welford removal orders, record the removal in 1740 of a poor jersey-comber, Henry
Hill, from Bidford to Welford.
86 GlosRO, probate of John Hill, Welford, weaver, 1782.
87 GlosRO, probate of William Wells, Welford, weaver and yeoman, 1753. GlosRO, probate of William
Morris, Long Marston, weaver, 1750, also includes implements of husbandry.
88 No specific references to clothiers or dyers have been found in this zone. Although the Grays are
referred to only as weavers from 1730 to 1800, they were later also termed ‘cloth-dealers’ and employed
many hands. R. Austin, ‘Linen-weaving in North Gloucestershire’, Trans. of Bristol and Gloucestershire
Arch. Soc., 38, (1915), p. 214.
89 Austin, ‘Linen-weaving in North Gloucestershire’, p. 214. (N. B. A cheese-cloth weaver in a
neighbouring village, Bretforton, was mentioned in Berrow’s Worcester Journal 19 Oct. 1758.)
90 See Tables 5.2, 5.4 and 5.6. Table 5.8 (1841 census) gives figure of 0.6% of adult males in the textile
and paper trades (excluding tailors).
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