Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

ooms and a buttery and cheese-chamber. One of his sons was described as a farmer, and
from other sources we find that the family owned pieces of land in the area, not listed in
the inventory, a reminder that inventories do not tell the whole story. Perhaps, rather than
poor labouring quarrymen, we should regard this family as shrewd businessmen investing
any profits from dairying, brickmaking and limeburning in the purchase of more plots of
land for farming or extraction of lime and clay. 58
A handful of other brickmakers appear
before 1800, apparently combining their brickmaking with farming. 59
They worked
wherever they could rent a little land which yielded clay, often in outlying hamlets. They
also had to be mobile to find work.
Lime-burners or lime-merchants occur in several parishes, while Morton Bagot
was also home to a plasterer. 60
No doubt the latter obtained his plaster from the
neighbouring village of Spernall, which had a gypsum or ‘plaster’ pit. Plasterers in the
Hollis family, who were associated with this pit, rather like masons, appear to have
extracted the raw material, supplied it to clients and applied it in buildings. 61
In Stuart times builders hereabouts were generally referred to either as carpenters
or masons. However, William Hopkins was both mason and plasterer, while William
58 WoRO, probate of John Walker alias Farmer, Newnham, (Aston Cantlow), limeburner and brickmaker,
1670, £7-1-6. Sometimes called Farriner alias Walker the family is mentioned in various property deeds at
SCLA and Birmingham Reference Library. The family continued quarrying for the next 100 years at least,
and one served as churchwarden.
59 WoRO, probate of Valentine Hinson of Shelfield, (Aston Cantlow), brickmaker, 1742, £38-12-0, and of
Edward Merrill, Radford, (Rous Lench), (no occupation given), 1714, £83-7-8. WaRO, Exhall settlement
examinations, DR200/43/14, mentions Justice Bosward, brickmaker, 1770.
60 WoRO, marriage licence of John Kettle, Tardebigge, husbandman, May 1753, was witnessed by John
Mitchel, Morton Bagot, lime-merchant. In WoRO, marriage licence of John Fulford, Morton Bagot,
shoemaker, Feb. 1755, the witness John Mitchel was described as a lime-burner. WoRO, marriage licence
of Edward North, Tanworth in Arden, Nov. 1743, witnessed by John Fullwood, Morton Bagot, plasterer.
Fullwood may have obtained his plaster at the gypsum mine at neighbouring Spernall.
61 WaRO, CR1998/26, Throckmorton MSS, 1672 and 1675. At Lady Day 1672 George Hollis was in
arrears with his 10s. rent for the ‘plaster pits’, but three years later he was paid 1s. for doing some work at
County Hall, Warwick. A local phenomenon is the use of plaster floors in farmhouse lofts, most likely to
store cheese. For example, WoRO probate of Henry Hill, Sambourne, (Coughton), (no occupation given),
1682, £228-02-02, includes items on the ‘plaster floors’ in his farmhouse. There is no specific mention of
plaster extraction in Periods C and D although, according to local tradition, the pit was used until the midtwentieth
century.
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