Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

material was being woven by the likes of William Milward. 113
Only one clothier is
mentioned in this zone at this time: John Thicks, who had links with the Stourbridge
area. 114 To support the linenweavers many folk probably grew and processed flax (and
also hemp) as part of their agricultural activities. 115
No ropemakers have emerged from
the local archives before 1750, but shortly after the Restoration the warrener, Humphrey
Fulks, received £1-6-0 ‘to buy two dozen of hemps to make nets [for catching rabbits]
and to pay for the spinning’. 116
Occasionally flax-dressers and woolcombers surface
from the archival depths, but their numbers suggest that both activities were carried out
here on a smaller scale than in the market town of Alcester. 117
In Period C contemporary newspaper references suggest that flax, hemp and linen
played an important part in the economy of this zone. 118
The local industrial colonies
with their abundant labour force were typical of flax and hemp-growing settlements.
Tardebigge was home to a bleacher cum farmer, while another Tardebigge farmer was
one of the biggest flax-growers in Worcestershire, with fields of flax in adjacent parishes
113 TNA, IR1/54, inland revenue apprentice books, William Milward, Beoley, stuff-weaver.
114 WoRO, probate of John Thicks, Tardebigge, (late of Kinver), clothier, 1758. Perhaps his cloth-dealing
business had been at Kinver, rather than Tardebigge, where he had perhaps retired. He was literate and
made bequests suggesting that he was wealthier than the average weaver.
115 Buchanan, ‘Studies in the localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries’, 18, p. 39,
shows a concentration of ropemakers near Bromsgrove who could no doubt supply the Needle District.
116 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/26, Throckmorton MSS.
117 WoRO, marriage licence of Robert Woodard, Morton Bagot, June 1697, witnessed by John Bate,
Beoley, flax-dresser. Large, ‘Economic and Social Change in North Worcestershire during the 17 th
Century’, p. 38, quotes hemp and flax-dressers causing problems in Tardebigge’s streams. WaRO, Studley
burial register 1758 burial of Joseph Clark, woolcomber.
118 Berrow’s Worcester Journal 3 April 1777 reports the theft of quantities of flax and hempen cloth from
John Tolley of Lower Bentley, Tardebigge, suggesting that he was a flax-dealer. Berrow’s Worcester
Journal 24 June 1784 reports the theft of ‘flaxen cloth out of a ground where it was laid to whiten’
apparently in Feckenham. There were probably more bleachers, whitsters or whiteners in this zone, but
Bromsgrove and Stoke Prior were the main local centres for linen, flax and hemp. Many thefts from
whitening grounds in those parishes are recorded in Berrow’s Worcester Journal.
274