Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

transporting goods for others, some earned money from hiring out horses, for example
John Simmons, horse-keeper. 163
The toll-gates in this zone must have been manned, but few references to
gatekeepers emerge. They often combined this role with another and are perhaps
recorded under their other occupation.
This zone was not blessed with steam railways until after mid-century, but was
served by the horse-tramway from the wharves at Stratford to Moreton-in-Marsh from the
late 1820s. 164
Throughout the study period there must have been several boatmen transporting
their goods up and down the Avon, such as the bargee Edward Burch. 165
In addition to
Burch’s cargo of wool there must have been many other goods transported on the river,
notably incoming pit-coal. 166
Many boatmen, like their land-carrier colleagues, were
mobile but poor, so are elusive in local archives. 167
Sometimes goods were landed in
unauthorised places near Bidford which affected the profits of legitimate wharfingers. 168
163 WaRO, Salford Priors 1841 census.
164 SCLA, ER8/1, and J. Norris, The Stratford and Moreton Tramway, (Guildford, Railway and Canal
History Soc., 1987).
165 Johnson, Warwick County Records, 9, pp. 124-5, quoting quarter sessions concerning the barge riot
(mentioned above). Although Bidford may have lost some river-trade to Stratford after the navigation
improvements in the late 1630s, it is noticeable that some of the rioters in 1696 were Alcestrians,
suggesting Bidford’s role as an entrepot for Alcester.
166 Johnson , Warwick County Records, 9, p. 104, mentions an entrepreneur in nearby Stratford offloading
pit-coals there ‘against the form of the statute’ in 1695. The administration of the Avon navigation at this
period is discussed in Hadfield, and Norris, Waterways to Stratford, pp. 15-21.
167 WaRO, DR911/18/4, Welford settlements, 1706, records the settlement of a Bewdley waterman,
Richard Corker, in Welford, demonstrating movement between the rivers Severn and Avon. N. Cox et al.,
eds., The Gloucester Port Books Database 1575-1765, CD-ROM, shows Worcestershire craft trading right
down the Severn and along the coasts of Devon and South Wales. GlosRO, probate of Thomas Collins,
Welford, yeoman, 1729, £591-15-0, provides one fortuitous reference. Collins was owed a ‘desperate debt’
of £9 by John Willis, a bargeman.
168 SCLA, DR444/6/2/31/11.
176