Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

In Period C although quarrying and weaving provided some alternative
employment, agriculture continued as the main employer for adult males. As areas
around Birmingham industrialised, the produce of this sub-district became even more
valuable in feeding the masses. Some parishes in this zone became involved in a small
way in the needle and paper-making industry, while the usual rural tradesmen and
craftsmen continued. Rev. Heath’s report emphasises the part played by women in the
textile trade. The earnings of women and children must have been a vital life-line for
many desperate families. Apart from the few saddlers and the ubiquitous shoemakers,
the leather industry declined in the mid-eighteenth century. There are signs that
skinner/glovers, such as William Greenhill and tanners such as Oliver Williams, now
found it more viable to run their businesses in the market towns rather than here in the
countryside. 221
As transport links improved in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
farmers and quarry owners benefited from a more extensive market.
The greater
exploitation of quarries in certain places, such as Wilmcote and Temple Grafton, not only
provided alternative employment for locals, but also attracted quarry-workers from
outside the zone, for instance North Oxfordshire. 222
As employers of male workers the
textile trade and leather trades continued their decline, though the Hill family and their
associates found a niche market in the manufacture of hurden scouring-cloth, and many
womenfolk, particularly in the west, were employed in the glove-trade. Needlemaking
spilled into the zone, but never took hold as in Zone D.
221 William Greenhill, glover, moved from Great Alne to Alcester between 1713 and 1729. (WoRO,
probate of his brother Thomas Greenhill, Great Alne, shoemaker, 1713, and TNA, IR1/49, dated 1729).
Oliver Williams, tanner, moved from Abbots Morton to Bromsgrove circa 1770 (see the leather section
above).
222 WaRO, 1841 and 1851 censuses.
237