Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

underwoods on their property, probate inventories show that many woodworkers also
farmed, their farming assets typically outweighing their woodworking tools and stock in
value. 135 No doubt many coppice workmen and woodcutters are hidden under the
descriptor ‘labourer’, as the woods did not provide a full-time occupation for them. 136
However, besom-makers are found, who perhaps cut twigs on the common and sold their
brooms in local markets. 137
Coopers, turners, millwrights and sawyers also appear in small numbers in this
zone. 138
In Period D Oversley was home to a plane-maker and to the Huxley family of
timber-merchants, hoopmakers and lath-renders. 139
Raw materials were supplied by the
likes of Haselor’s ‘woodard’ (woodward) and Great Alne’s woodman. 140
The sawyers,
(sometimes described as timber-sawyers to distinguish them from the stone-sawyers),
may have still sawn timber by hand at this time, though it is possible that some sawyers
had started to use steam-saws.
135 After probate inventories cease circa 1760 it is less clear how many woodworkers farmed.
136 Crafts such as basketry and lath-cleaving were also often undertaken by labourers.
137 For example, Henry Pool, Inkberrow, besom-maker, mentioned in WoRO, Feckenham baptisms, 1705.
D. Brown in C. Dyer, ed., The Self-contained Village?, (Hatfield, University of Hertfordshire Press, 2007),
p. 121, describes similar workers on the commons elsewhere.
138 WoRO, marriage licence of John Manning, Oldberrow, sawyer, Dec. 1731. WoRO, QS305/18,
QS313/31, QS314/32 and QS315/28, concerning removal of the family of John Clark, sawyer, from
Kidderminster to Bromsgrove to Inkberrow to StokePrior.
139 WaRO, Oversley, (Arrow), 1841 and 1851 census and Arrow baptisms 1844 (when George Huxley was
resident in Alcester). WaRO, 1851 census includes Sarah Huxley, lath-cleaver.
140 WaRO, Haselor 1841 census and Great Alne 1851 census.
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