Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

glaziers working in churches and public buildings. 83
Glass may have come from
Stourbridge, while the nearest source of lead was probably Derbyshire. 84
After 1750 the
plumbers, glaziers and painters were perhaps not of such high status as formerly.
Despite the spread of brick and tile for building, before 1800 ordinary homes and
outbuildings were frequently still timber-framed with wattle and daub in-fill and thatched
roofs. The descriptor, ‘thatcher’ is rare, and the one thatcher’s inventory gives little
information about his trade apart from the ‘8 thrave of wheat[straw]’ in his barn. 85
Just
as other workers often carried out thatching tasks, similarly, plastering was often
undertaken by masons, although one ‘plasterer’ was assessed for probate in 1712. 86
Building workers never formed a large share of the workforce, but according to
probate and marriage licence records there was a slight increase in Period D in line with
the many new building projects in the district. 87
This increase continued during the
period according to baptisms, while the 1841 census shows 2.9% of adult males in the
building trade. In probate and marriage licences the extractive sector always comprised
83 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/40, Throckmorton MSS, records an Alcester painter at work at Coughton Court.
Presumably, as in later times, glaziers also undertook painting jobs. WaRO, DR536/1, Studley
churchwardens’ accounts, 1665-1696, record payments to glaziers, Thomas Langston and William
Churchley. From 1697 Churchley is contracted to keep the church windows in good repair for the annual
fee of 6s. 8d. In 1740 Edward Field glazed the new workhouse in Studley in 1740. (WaRO, DR 536/32.)
84 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/40, Throckmorton MSS, (1660s), records lead being fetched from Derbyshire and
also from Evesham, where it had probably been brought by boat, perhaps from Cornwall.
85 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/26, Throckmorton MSS, (1672-5), has references to thatching and paying
carpenters for rods, which form the upright of the wattle. Payments are made to various people for
thatching houses of paupers, for example in Feckenham (WoRO, BA4284 (vii), Feckenham overseers of
the poor accounts, 1781, p. 219). The Jones family of carpenters and thatchers appear in WoRO,
Feckenham parish register c.1680-1710. WoRO, probate of John Harrison, Tardebigge, thatcher, 1688,
£34-10-0. N. B. A thrave was a collection of 12 or 24 bundles of straw.
86 Thomas Eades, a Sambourne mason, was paid for plastering Studley church in 1745. (WaRO, Studley
parish register). WoRO, probate of John Hollis, Sambourne, (Coughton), plasterer, 1712, £56-10-6. He
lived about a mile from Spernall ‘plaster pit’, which had long been leased and worked by his family. He
left the lease of a Spernall property (probably the plaster pit) to his son, who lived on the premises. The
‘plaster pit’ was in Zone C and is discussed in that section.
87 See Tables 7.2 and 7.4 above. The number of inhabited houses in 1801 was 1266, rising to 2260 in 1831.
In addition there was building work for roads, canals, railways and commercial property, notably needle
factories at this time. Building and extractive workers were few in the early Coughton, Feckenham and
Studley parish registers.
269