Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

middleman between Worcester clothiers and rural weavers. 81
Nobody else in this zone is
described as a clothier, but the likes of Joseph Attwood, cloth-shearer, perhaps finished
and marketed cloth for local weavers. He farmed in a small way himself and had £125
owing to him upon bond, suggesting that he financed others. His one score of sheep
could provide wool, but he also stocked linen and hurden. 82
Records also reveal one dyer
and one ‘pannifex’, who perhaps finished locally woven cloth. 83
In the 1670s the local
textile trade was obviously considered lucrative enough for the Throckmortons to build a
new fulling-mill on the Arrow at Spernall; this mill operated into the first quarter of the
next century and maybe longer. 84
In view of the excellent pastures for sheep, described by Rev. Heath above, it is
no surprise that some local weavers worked with wool, but flaxen yarn was also used. 85
Some weavers specialised in certain materials or products, for example, Aston Cantlow
was home to a hair-cloth weaver and a linen-weaver. 86
Extant weavers’ inventory values
81 WoRO, marriage licence of George Hobkins, Halifax, May 1696, was witnessed by William Webster,
Eland, Yorkshire, clothier, and John Rice, Arrow, carpenter. Hobkins married a girl from Arrow, also
called Hobkins. WoRO, marriage licence of George Smith, Kington, weaver, May 1711 and of George
Smith, Kington, clothier, (widower), July 1712.
82 WoRO, probate of Joseph/Joshua Attwood, Aston Cantlow, cloth-shearer, 1670, £175-12-0.
83 WaRO, DR360/86/1, Alcester settlement, 1656, witnessed by Thomas Field, Arrow, ‘dier’. WoRO,
marriage licence of James Walker, Inkberrow, ‘pannifex’, Nov. 1694. ‘Pannifex’ may mean cloth-worker
or could simply be an alternative for ‘textor’, (weaver).
84 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/26, Throckmorton MSS. One Spernall fuller died in 1705. WoRO probate of
John Stringer, Spernall, fuller, 1705, £79-8-0, and WaRO, Spernall burials 1705. As the mill and
machinery are not mentioned in his probate, he presumably did not own them. He may have rented them,
or been a paid employee of the owner. He also ran a public house on the premises. According to
Buchanan, ‘Studies in the localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries’, 17, p. 42, fullingmills
were also used by tanners.
85 Berrow’s Worcester Journal 24 February 1785 carries a notice about flaxen yarn left with a Bradley
Green weaver.
86 WoRO, probate of John Maning, Oldberrow, ‘searcwiver?’ (occupation not clear), 1667, (no inventory).
This may mean ‘searceweaver’, an alternative term for haircloth-weaver. SCLA, DR333/49/20, deed
regarding property in Great Alne circa 1740, mentions Thomas Bullock, Aston Cantlow, ‘hair-clothweaver’.
Hair-cloth was used for sieving, for instance in the dairy trade. WoRO, probate of Isaac Pardy,
Aston Cantlow, linen-weaver, 1737, £19-10-0. Buchanan, ‘Studies in the localisation of seventeenth
century Worcestershire industries’, 19, p. 46, notes an Arras worker at Abbots Morton between 1600 and
1650.
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