Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

pigs and considerable cheese production. 61
Some yeomen-graziers probably fattened
cattle for the increasing markets of the midland hardware district and maybe for London
too. 62 In the 1760s the zone’s farmers were also sending grain to Bristol for export. 63
Inventories reveal the continued introduction of agricultural improvements, but any
benefits must have been checked by cattle plague and uncertainty in corn prices. In the
1740s Sambourne manor court tried to stem the spread of infection amongst animals on
the common. 64
With everyone’s animals running together it only needed one
irresponsible owner to jeopardise everyone’s stock.
Specialists in this occupational sector before 1800 include castrators, huntsmen,
gamekeepers and warreners. Game was an important factor in the local economy, not
just for sport, but for food. Warreners maintained the medieval warrens, (for example at
Sambourne), which produced rabbits on a large scale. 65
References to gardeners are not
as plentiful in this zone as for example in the Champion Country. Perhaps, rather than
being market-gardeners, most of the gardeners hereabouts were employed by the big
61 J. Yelling, ‘Livestock numbers and agricultural development’, in Slater, Field and Forest, pp. 286-7,
shows that livestock numbers hereabouts in the late seventeenth century were similar to those in the
Champion Country, but with slightly more cattle, horses and pigs, and a dramatic increase in sheep
numbers. WoRO, probate of John Allen, Hewell Paper Mill, (Tardebigge), yeoman, 1720, £745-13-7,
suggests cultivation of hops at Redditch Hopyard on a fairly large scale, as he owned £18 worth of hoppoles.
Vegetable, root crops and fruit were probably also grown, though not mentioned in inventories.
Perhaps this zone was one of those Midland areas which was adaptable and could switch between arable
and pastoral as the market dictated, as described in Daunton, Progress and Poverty, p. 28.
62 WoRO, probate of Thomas Fincher, Sambourne, (Coughton), yeoman, 1727, £749-0-0. He is described
as a grazier in WaRO, Coughton register, 1720. Some graziers and drovers also doubled as butchers and
are discussed in the food and retail section below. In probate inventories often no distinction is made
between dairy and beef cattle, so it difficult to ascertain which were predominant.
63 Adam’s Weekly Courant 14 October 1766.
64 SCLA, DR5/2590, Sambourne manor court papers, Nov. 1744.
65 WaRO, Coughton parish register, 1748, burial of Thomas Barlow, cutter. (Later cutters are also referred
to as castrators.) WaRO, Studley parish register, 1707, burial of Thomas Slipper, keeper. WoRO, marriage
licence of George Dugard, Ipsley, ‘viridarius’, 1718. This Latin descriptor may mean hay-trusser, grasscutter,
gardener, verderer or park-keeper. WaRO, CR1998/LCB/26, Throckmorton MSS, (1673), records
the supply of 292 rabbits to boost stocks at Sambourne. HeRO, E12/VI/KC/67, Foley MSS, the agreement
to sell the trees on Sambourne Heath to the Foleys, stipulates that the charcoal burners, etc, should be
sufficiently distant from the warren so as not to ‘injure or anywayes mak spoile of the coneys in the
warren’. WaRO, Coughton burials, 1721 and 1749, mention warreners.
265