Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

From 1813 to 1840 baptism registers show that needlemakers spread into certain
parishes for the first time, but only achieve a high of 1.5% of fathers in this zone in the
1820s, declining to 0.7% in the 1830s. 151 A few children and women needlemakers
appear in the censuses and the odd fish-hook-maker, but these are rare compared with the
huge numbers in Zone D. 152
Other metalworkers were always present but in such small numbers that they do
not feature in probate or marriage licences in some periods. 153
For example, in Stuart
times a locksmith was based at Arrow only a mile or so from the market town, thus
benefiting from a large customer-base. 154
In the eighteenth century specialist
metalworkers hereabouts included John Newey of Shelfield, nailmaker, and John Ballard
of Abbots Morton, toymaker. 155
Ballard had been apprenticed to a Black Country
toymaker and had then presumably returned home when his apprenticeship ended.
Obtaining raw materials may have been problematic for Ballard and also for the zone’s
clockmakers. Although the latter did some brass-founding, they perhaps mainly
assembled parts rather than making whole clocks themselves. 156
The cost-effectiveness
of making toys, clocks or watches in remote villages is questionable, but perhaps the
151 Table 6.6. No needlemakers feature in probate or marriage licence data for this zone in Period D.
152 Table 6.8 (1841 census) records 1.0% of adult males as needlemakers and the same percentage for adult
females whose occupations are recorded.
153 See Tables 6.2 and 6.4. Other records help to fill in the gaps. Table 6.6 shows a mere 0.1% in the
1830s, while Table 6.8 (1841 census) gives a figure of 0.2%.
154 WoRO, marriage licence of Henry Tombs, Arrow, locksmith, Jan. 1691/2.
155 WoRO, marriage licence of John Newey, Shelfield, (Aston Cantlow), nailmaker, Nov. 1710. WoRO,
Abbots Morton burials, 1730, burial of John Ballard, toymaker, and TNA, IR1/43, (apprenticeship books,
1714), which shows that John Ballard, son of Elizabeth Ballard of Abbots Morton, widow, was apprenticed
to Thomas Allen of Bilston, Staffordshire, toymaker. At this period ‘toys’ meant trinkets rather than
playthings.
156 WoRO, probate of Richard Houghton, Oversley, (Arrow), clockmaker, 1771. His son (another Richard)
carried on the trade in Oversley. According to W. Seaby, ‘A Warwickshire clockmaker: Richard Houton of
Oversley Green, near Alcester’, ADLHS, OP6a, (1977), pp. 1-7, at least four Hou(gh)ton clocks survive.
WaRO, CR1886/BL/1883, a deed concerning property in Ardens Grafton, mentions William Halford,
watchmaker of Hilborough, Temple Grafton, 1717. The Halfords also had connections with St Albans and
Oxford. The Hunt family also made clocks in Exhall in the eighteenth century, (listed in McKenna, Watch
and Clockmakers of the British Isles: Warwickshire, p. 29).
224