Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Perhaps the weaving of linen was always more prevalent than the weaving of
woollen cloth hereabouts, but earlier records do not usually specify the materials
woven. 91
Much of the flax and hemp grown in local plecks and fields was probably also
dressed locally. References to flax-dressers, although never plentiful, occur in various
villages before 1800, while Richard Sheaf of Broom was described as a ‘whitener’. 92
Others who processed flax are perhaps subsumed under descriptors such as yeomen and
labourers. After 1800 only one flax-dresser is found in this zone, and he was on parish
relief, perhaps symbolic of the decline in hemp and flax growing hereabouts. 93
However,
a new occupation appears in Bidford, that of oilcloth-maker. 94
Probate inventories up to 1783 contain references to spinning wheels, suggesting
that female family members busied themselves spinning. 95
As late as 1803 Rudge
informs us that flax-spinning was a winter occupation in Welford. 96
Perhaps domestic
spinning declined locally before the 1841 census, which does not record any spinners. 97
However, in Bidford in 1851 Hannah and Ann Workman were respectively described as
91 J. Fendley, ed., ‘Notes on the Diocese of Gloucester by Chancellor Richard Parsons c.1700’, Bristol and
Gloucestershire Arch. Soc., Record Series, 19, (2005), p. 47, mentions flaxen cloth production in Welford.
92 For example, WoRO, marriage licence of Richard Wormington, Salford Priors, flax-dresser, Sept. 1688,
and GlosRO, probate of Joseph Campden, Welford, flax-dresser, 1719, £12-6-1. GlosRO, probate of John
Godfree, Pebworth, flax-dresser, 1780, shows that he owned property. He may have supplied flax to the
weaving members of his family. William Eden of Pebworth was included in the list of Gloucestershire flax
growers for 1793, (GlosRO, Q/SR/1793/C). WaRO, CR1596/89/39 and QS76/3/6. WoRO, probate of
Richard Sheaf, Bidford (Broom), maltster and baker, 1820. Sheaf had several occupations, but as he and
another family member were also weavers, the descriptor ‘whitener’ suggests that he bleached cloth,
probably linen. (C. Waters, A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations, (Newbury, Countryside
Books, 1999), p. 249, also suggests that ‘whitener’ can mean someone who paints walls with white lime.)
93 WaRO, Long Marston 1851 census.
94 WaRO, Bidford baptisms 1841.
95 GlosRO, probate of Benjamin Souch, Pebworth, maltster, 1783, mentions spinning wheels. Gloucester
diocese inventories are often less detailed than those of Worcester diocese, which may account for the
paucity of references to spinning wheels in the Gloucestershire parishes.
96 Rudge, A History of the County of Gloucester, vol. 1, p. 110. Rudge actually states: ‘The lower classes
are generally employed in agriculture except in winter when the manufacturers from Stratford supply them
with flax for spinning.’ This implies that men as well as women were employed as spinners in the winter.
97 However, women’s occupations are not always recorded in 1841 and, if they were spinners in the winter,
they may not have described themselves thus in June at the time of the census.
164