Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

could have been ripe for industrialisation, the leather and textile workers retreated, and
the zone did not follow the same economic path as the neighbouring Needle District.
Although probate inventory values (in Appendix 3) suggest a growth in personal
wealth in the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, Bradbrook puts things into
perspective with his comments on the growing problem of Inkberrow’s poor circa 1700,
quoted above. 16
In common with the study area as a whole, the Central Belt enjoyed its
highest inventory values in the twenty-year period 1700-1719, after which the values
declined somewhat. This may well be indicative of difficult times economically during
and after the epidemics of the late 1720s.
Following the pattern of the two previous chapters, occupational analysis is given
below for this zone from probate and marriage licences, which, despite their
shortcomings, provide the most consistent sources for occupational information in most
parishes hereabouts before the nineteenth century. 17
Table 6.1 Male occupational structure (primary, secondary and tertiary) from probate
data in Zone C, Central (Wood-pasture) Belt, 1660-1858 (as % of males with known
occupations)
1660-99 1700-49 1750-99 1800-58
Primary 75.2 73.3 76.2 68.3
Primary without labs. 68.6 70.5 65.9 61.8
Secondary 19.9 21.2 17.1 19.7
Tertiary 4.9 5.6 6.7 12.0
Total males with known occupations (n) 226 286 164 246
Table 6.1 shows the domination of the primary sector in this rural zone. While
secondary wavers around 20%, the growth of the tertiary sector is demonstrated clearly.
16 W. Bradbrook, History of the Parish of Inkberrow and Local Government, (Evesham, Sharp Bros.,
1902), p. 49.
17 Discussion of these sources can be found in Chapter 2, and their bias in this zone is examined in Table
6.10 below.
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