Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

CHAPTER SEVEN
ZONE D: THE NORTHERN (NEEDLE) DISTRICT
As described in Chapter 2, this sub-district, like Zone C, traditionally enjoyed a
wood-pasture economy, but, because of its involvement in the needle trade, it is
distinguished from Zone C in this study. 1
This northern sub-district consists of six
parishes including Feckenham, which may have been a small market centre. 2
The large
parish of Tardebigge included Redditch, which at the start of the study period was a small
hamlet, but by Victorian times was a vibrant manufacturing town, specialising in the
manufacture of needles and associated products. To a greater or lesser extent the other
parishes in this zone also embraced the needle trade, as explained below.
The presence of craftsmen of many types in Feckenham Forest is noted in
medieval times, and Camden mentions the continuing diminution in the number of trees
in Feckenham Forest as wood was burnt to fuel the salt industry of Droitwich. 3
Large
tracts of commonland were colonised by incomers in the early modern period, the
number of households increasing by more than 50% from 1563 to 1670. 4
This influx
1 See Appendix 1: Parish Gazetteer, Appendix 1a: Map of parishes in the Study Area and the section ‘The
Division of the Study Area into Sub-districts’ in Chapter 2.
2 Beoley and Feckenham were in Worcestershire. Coughton, Studley and Ipsley were in Warwickshire,
although Ipsley was transferred to Worcestershire in the twentieth century. Part of Tardebigge parish lay in
Warwickshire, but the majority of the parish (including Redditch) lay in Worcestershire.
3 J. Birrell, ‘Peasant craftsmen in the medieval forest’, Ag. Hist. Rev., 17, (1969) and Camden, Britannia, p.
518.
4 P. Large, ‘Economic and social change in North Worcestershire during the seventeenth Century’, PhD
thesis, University of Oxford, (1980), p. 173, discusses how copyholders began to look more to their own
interests rather than those of the whole manor, so poor settlers were marginalised to the edges of the
manors.
239