Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

opportunities for casual work in the woods and quarries.
Henry Farr, an Inkberrow
labourer, also ran a shop, while some held property. 36
It is perhaps significant that more
labourers left probate in this zone than in any other.
Perhaps Eden describes Inkberrow’s more typical labourers in the 1790s:
‘Agricultural labourers receive from 6s to 7s. a week, with diet, or 9s. to provide
themselves. A yearly labourer, living and lodging in the house of his employer, is paid
from £8 to £12 a year; a boy from £4 to £6 a year…’. 37
Some labourers found
employment outside agriculture, for example in the local quarries, but Thomas Edkins’s
will states specifically that he was a ‘laborer at farmering bisness’. 38
Records reveal only two graziers in this zone in the whole study period, but there
are more references to fishermen, including the Sturdy family who fished the Arrow but
also had many other strings to their bow. 39
More surprisingly, a fisherman is present in
Inkberrow parish, which has no river. 40
Before 1800 there are sporadic references to gardeners, several of whom lived in
Arrow where they may have been worked in the gardens of Ragley Hall, while others
may have formed an extension of the Vale of Evesham’s market-garden industry. The
probate of Ragley Hall’s gentlemanly bailiff was handled at the PCC. 41
The odd pigdriver
comes to light, while gamekeepers were increasingly employed on the estates in
36 WoRO, probate of Henry Farr, Stock Green, (Inkberrow), labourer, 1763, £14-5-9, including shop goods
of £1-11-6.
37 Rogers, The State of the Poor (by Sir Frederic Morton Eden), p. 349. He also details harvest wages and
shows how the cost of provisions increased sharply in the mid-1790s.
38 WoRO, probate of Thomas Edkins, Aston Cantlow, labourer, 1759.
39 WaRO, Throckmorton MSS, CR1998/LCB/26 and Johnson, Warwick County Records, 8, p. 1 and 9, p.
121, quoting quarter sessions, 1682, 1696. William Sturdy was also a dealer, blacksmith, labourer, yeoman
and publican. WoRO, BA2289/8, Wixford churchwardens’ presentments, 1705, members of the Sturdy
family, fishermen, yeomen, blacksmiths and ale-sellers, are presented as papists. WoRO, probate of John
Sturdy, Wixford, yeoman, 1732, £19-18-6, includes ‘fishing netts and an old boat’.
40 WaRO, Coughton burials, 1723, burial of John Wilson, Inkberrow, fisherman. Perhaps he fished the
ancient fish-pond at Cookhill Priory.
41 TNA, PCC probate of Jonathan Platts, Ragley, Arrow, bailiff, 1793. He held land in Derbyshire.
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