Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

monumental masonry, while the sundial on Dormston church bears the inscription
‘Thomas Davis sciagrapher’ (sundial-maker). Stone was also used for paving or roadbuilding
by paviers, road-labourers and ‘stone-breakers on the roads’. 72
Whereas the baptism registers give evidence of quarry-workers in some seven
parishes in this zone, clay extraction for bricks was less widespread, brickmakers
occurring in baptism registers of only four parishes. 73
In contrast with quarrying
parishes, the brickmaking parishes are mainly in the west of this zone. Brickmaking was
not as big an employer as quarrying. However, at the end of this period some local
brickmakers may have used the new brickmaking machines, increasing output
significantly. George Sheffield exemplifies how brickmakers had to adapt, moving from
place to place as pits were exhausted or better opportunities offered. 74
Textiles, clothing and paper
As in the Champion Country, there is evidence for a small cottage textile industry,
with weavers appearing in many of the parishes. 75
Tables 6.2 and 6.4 are somewhat
contradictory, but from combined sources the evidence suggests that, as elsewhere in the
study area, the textile trade declined over the two centuries. The trade was never
dominant hereabouts, and by Period D baptisms suggest that a mere 0.4% of fathers were
72 WaRO, Arrow baptisms, 1813, records William Huxley, pavier, and Aston Cantlow 1851 census.
73 For parishes with quarries or brickworks see Appendix 18.
74 WoRO, Rous Lench 1841 census. George Sheffield was later in Bidford (in Zone B) and is discussed in
the extractive industries and building section in Chapter 5.
75 Buchanan, ‘Studies in the localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries 1600-1650’,
Trans. of Worcestershire Arch. Soc., 18, p. 40, shows that the Worcestershire parishes of this Central Belt
formed an important weaving area, as weaving moved out of the towns between 1550 and 1650. V. Skipp,
Crisis and Development: an ecological case study of the Forest of Arden 1570-1674, (Cambridge, CUP,
1978), p. 57, notes that by 1650 weaving had become ‘the strongest single industrial pursuit’ in his
Warwickshire Arden parishes which lie just to the north of this zone.
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