Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

wool-carder and wool-spinner. In the same census a female silk-winder is listed in
Welford. 98
Before 1800 a handful of ropemakers (alternatively ropiers or ropers) were
clustered in riverside parishes. The raw material, hemp, was grown and retted by the
likes of Clement Horton, hemp-dresser. 99
The river boatmen could also bring in hemp
from elsewhere and would require ropes themselves. Perhaps the ropemakers also made
nets for local fishermen. Although ropiers required suitable premises for a rope-walk,
their specialist tools cost little. 100
In the nineteenth century this zone is devoid of
ropemakers.
Before 1700 there is no record of papermaking in this zone, but some time before
1729 increasing demand for paper led to the conversion of Bidford’s Grange Mill to
papermaking. Numbers of papermakers were always few, so they do not feature
frequently in the records, but Francis Hide, papermaker of Bidford, appears in probate. 101
Hide may have been the expert papermaker, while Thomas Slatter, who is also recorded
as papermaker at the same mill, may have been the manager or owner. Slatter was from a
family of millers and probably continued to grind corn as well. 102
In the second half of
the eighteenth century references to papermakers in this zone are lacking, but Harvington
98 Perhaps she supplied silk to nearby Blockley or Murcot, where there were silk-mills.
99 WaRO, Welford burials, 1698, burial of Clement Horton, Welford, hempdresser.
100 WoRO. probate of John Savage, Abbots Salford, (Salford Priors), ropemaker, 1671, £39-17-2. Tools
worth 6s 8d. WoRO, probate of William Blackford, Harvington, rope-maker, 1728, £171-10-0. Much
farm-stock and a ‘drinkhouse’ indicates that he pursued other occupations to supplement his income from
rope-making.
101 WoRO, probate of Francis Hide, Bidford, papermaker, 1729, £114-10-0. His inventory lists rags in the
storehouse and three tuns (£21) and the stock of paper and moulds and other implements (£15). He is
probably the same man who worked earlier at a paper-mill at nearby Wootton Wawen. (WoRO, marriage
licence of Francis Hide, Wootton Wawen, papermaker, 1726.)
102 D. Booth, Warwickshire Watermills, (Warwick, Midland Wind and Water Mill Group, 1978), p. 43.
Other members of the Slatter family were millers at Bidford and elsewhere. Harvington mill was probably
not converted to papermaking until later, but there was a paper-mill in the neighbouring settlement of North
Littleton in the eighteenth century.
165