Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

wheelwrights also turned their hand to making coffins and no doubt other items too. 180
Ploughwrights too had to diversify. For example, two Feckenham ploughwrights also
made wagons and wheels and supplemented their income with farming and a public
house. 181
Nobody is described as a ploughwright after the 1770s. Perhaps ploughs were
no longer made hereabouts or perhaps the growing emphasis on wheeled transport caused
ploughmakers to be subsumed under the descriptor ‘wheelwright’. 182
Some of the above woodworkers apparently produced enough treenware, barrels,
vehicles, wheels or ploughs to sell outside this zone, perhaps to areas such the Champion
Country where there were fewer such woodworkers.
The Moore family of millwrights who had been based in Alcester in Stuart times,
changed their base to Ipsley where they served the locality throughout the eighteenth
century. No doubt they enjoyed increased business as mills were geared up for
needlemaking. They were followed in the nineteenth century by an ever-increasing band
of millwrights.
In 1689 Sambourne Manor Court forbade the sale of gorse to anyone outside the
manor, recognising its importance as a fuel for the residents. 183
Other fuel mentioned in
inventories include ‘faggots’, ‘kids’, firewood and also ‘coals’, which may mean charcoal
or ‘pit-coal’. 184
Although not mined in the study area, pit-coal was readily available.
Accounts of the Throckmorton family reveal coal being purchased in Stourbridge, some
180 For example, WoRO, BA4284, Feckenham overseers of the poor accounts, record payments to the
wheelwright for coffins in Period C.
181 WoRO, probate of Benjamin Watts, Feckenham, ploughwright, 1729/30, £77-7-6, and of Joseph Watts,
Feckenham, ploughwright, 1749, (described in his wife’s probate as a wheelwright).
182 In Zone C references to ploughwrights also cease in Period C.
183 SCLA, DR5/2504. Sambourne manor court papers, 1689. Not only would it be vital as free fuel for the
poor, but it was also a staple fuel for bakers’ ovens, of which there were several in Sambourne.
184 HeRO, E12/VI/KC/67, 78, 79, 80, 95, Foley MSS, mention ‘shrags’ and ‘brackins’, which appear to
mean types of kindling or firewood.
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