Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

when there were 3314 inhabitants. Alcester’s population in the same year was 2399.
Although Redditch was still officially a hamlet within Tardebigge parish, it had outgrown
Alcester some time in the previous forty years. 11
Opinions about Redditch at the time
differ widely. Pigot describes it as a ‘a very respectable and thriving hamlet’, and local
poet, John Hollis, claims ‘finer village was never seen’. 12
By contrast, Walter Savage
Landor of nearby Ipsley Court, wrote: ‘never was an habitation more thoroughly odious –
red soil, mince-pie woods, and black and greasy needleworkers.’ 13
Although the whole of this zone grew by specialising in the manufacture of
needles and associated products, the focus of the trade shifted over time, as explained
later in this chapter. Circa 1720 the local needle trade was still very much a nascent
cottage industry focused on Studley and more particularly Sambourne. By the reign of
Queen Victoria needlemakers were numerous and widespread throughout the zone, but
Redditch with its manufactories and warehouses was now the undoubted focus of a
thriving industry catering for an important national and international market. Smith
noted the expansion of certain Nottinghamshire towns in the period 1770 to 1840 as
larger scale production techniques were introduced into the textile trade, producing for an
ever-expanding market. 14
Use of water-power and later steam power, division of labour,
and better organisation within the trade combined with improved commercial links
enabled Redditch and its satellites to grow rapidly over the same period, but here the
products were not textiles, but needles.
11 See Chapter 3, Tables 3.13 and 3.4.
12 Pigot’s Worcestershire Directory 1822. Descriptions by John Hollis of Tardbigge circa 1820 quoted in
Richardson, The Book of Redditch, p. 128.
13 Walter Savage Landor in a letter to his sister, 1830, quoted on the website
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/webbsredditch (10 a.m., 20 Aug. 2008).
14 C. Smith, ‘Population growth and economic change in some Nottinghamshire market towns’, pp. 29-43.
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