Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

started new enterprises utilising local labour. Small needlemaking workshops now
spread to Welford. 149
From the 1840s to 1870s Henry Ellis of Bidford was a gunsmith
and glove-machine-maker. 150
Bidford also numbered a couple of ironmongers amongst
its many retailers. 151
Transport
In the early eighteenth century up to eighty pack-horses daily travelled to
Birmingham with fruit and vegetables from the Vale of Evesham. 152
No doubt some of
this produce and some of the carriers too originated in this zone. 153
In the 1770s Rudder
bewailed the defective roads locally, which were probably as bad or worse in earlier
times, but many important routes nearby were improved before the late 1720s. 154
Vale of
Evesham hosiery factors may have provided the impetus for many such improvements,
but now market-gardeners and village carriers could also access markets more easily. 155
149 WaRO, 1841 census.
150 WaRO, Bidford 1841 and 1851 census, White’s Warwickshire Directory 1850 and PO Warwickshire
Directory 1854. Also Bailey and Nie, English Gunmakers, p. 66. His wife Sarah was a gloveress.
151 WaRO, Bidford 1831, 1841, 1851 census.
152 Upton, The History of Birmingham, p. 85, and VCH Warwickshire, vii, p. 28. The primary source for
this evidence is not given in either book. Pack-horses were used as the road into Birmingham was
apparently not suitable for carts.
153 Although no carriers emerge from the records at this time, there is evidence of Welford carriers taking
produce to Birmingham in the next period.
154 Rudder, A New History of Gloucestershire, p. 413, where he pronounces the roads in Dorsington ‘very
bad’. Ibid., p. 789, talking of Welford he declares: ‘...the public roads in all this part of the county are very
incommodious and almost impassable in the winter season. They are either carried through miry lanes or
along headlands in the common fields so that the traveller is obliged to shape his course in a zig-zag
direction as the ground will permit.’ Slater, A History of Warwickshire, p. 95, discusses the turnpiking of
roads from Stratford to Shipston on Stour and to Birmingham. See Appendix 15: Turnpikes and coach
routes.
155 Martin, ‘The social and economic origins of the Vale of Evesham market gardening industry’,
p. 49, discusses road-building around Evesham up to 1728.
174