Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

etween quarrying and non-quarrying parishes. 68
The 1841 census records 0.8% of adult
males in extractive industries and 4.5% in building. 69
When the Stratford upon Avon Canal reached this zone, some parishes were able
to exploit their stone resources more profitably. For instance, Wilmcote (in Aston
Cantlow parish), which lay on the canal, became a boom village with a new Anglican
church and new cottages for the quarry-workers. A railway was proposed (but never
built) to take stone to the canal from Temple Grafton, where some 16.4% of baptisms
record fathers in the quarry trade. 70
In Period D the lias-stone pits in the villages between Alcester and Stratford must
have provided work or income for many land-owners, farmers and labourers at this
period, as well as for those specifically described as quarry-men or quarry-labourers,
stonemasons, stone-cutters, stone-sawyers, stone-workers and stone-merchants. The
quarry trade was considered more suitable for males than females, but Mary Mills of
Wilmcote was a stone-dealer and lime-dealer. 71
Local stone was made into lime to
fertilise farmland and increasingly made into cement to supply the building trade. Other
occupational descriptors found at this time are lime-burner, soil-burner and cementgrinder.
Wilmcote cement works also had an engine-boy, an engine-man and various
clerks.
The Arden sandstone at Inkberrow also continued to be quarried, sold and used
for building by the Davis family and others. Some also turned their hands to sculpting or
68 Appendix 7.
69 Table 6.8. I have included masons in the building sector even though many of them also quarried.
According to the 1841 census some young males were employed in these sectors, but no females.
70 VCH Warwickshire, iii, p. 96, and WaRO, Temple Grafton baptisms 1813-1840.
71 SCLA, ER11/23/21.
209