Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

twenty miles distant from their home at Coughton Court. Even humble shoemakers had
‘pit-coals’ to heat their homes. 185
However, the existence of numerous local coppices at this time suggests the
harvesting of wood for various purposes including charcoal. Indeed the Throckmortons’
steward paid a score of local people for large quantities of ‘coal’ to fuel the brick clamp
during restoration work. 186
On an even grander scale, the iron-making Foleys contracted
to purchase 5183 trees on the ‘great waste’ of Sambourne Heath at the cost of £1050,
perhaps mainly to fuel their many iron furnaces. Charcoal hearths and cabins for the
workers were set up in situ as it made sense to reduce wood to charcoal at source. 187
Although charcoal-burning was present in Feckenham Forest from medieval
times, references to charcoal-burners or (wood-)colliers are rare. 188
Despite some
speculative mining in this zone, as described above, the ‘colliers’ mentioned in Studley
parish register in 1669 and 1705 are most likely wood-colliers. 189
Though references to
charcoal-burners are rare, their product was both vital and lucrative for the ironproducing
west midlands region. Some woodlands were managed with such a cash crop
in mind and were harvested every few years according to the type of wood required.
185 WoRO, miscellaneous probate (811/2308) of Christopher Dewhurst, Studley, cordwainer, 1664, £8-13-
4.
186 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/40, Throckmorton MSS, 1665. Some may have been delivering pit-coal, but
others (e. g. in Haselor) were more likely to have been supplying charcoal.
187 HeRO, E12/VI/KC/67, 78, 79, 80, 95, Foley MSS, 1676. The work was apparently done between 1676
and 1679. The Foleys also purchased wood from Beoley, as quoted in R. Schafer, ed., ‘The records of
Philip Foley’s Stour Valley Ironworks, 1668-1674’, pt. 1, Worcestershire Historical Soc., 9, (1978), pp. 42-
43. L. Armstrong, Woodcolliers and Charcoal Burning, (Horsham, Coach Publishing, 1978), p. 74,
explains that the ratio of the weight of wood compared with the charcoal reduced from it could be as high
as 7:1, so charcoal was much more economical to transport than the raw material.
188 Birrell, ‘Peasant craftsmen in the medieval forest’, p. 97.
189 WaRO, Studley baptisms 1669, baptism of child of Rice Davis, Skilts, (Studley), collier. His Welshsounding
name and the very fact that his occupation is recorded in a decade when the register does not
normally give such information suggest he was unusual, perhaps an itinerant. One assumes that he was
working (and living?) temporarily in the woods at Skilts in Studley parish, accompanied by his pregnant
wife, who then gave birth. WaRO, Studley burials 1705, ‘buried Francis Serjeant, son of a collier’. VCH
Warwickshire, iii, p. 179, mentions charcoal-burning at Skilts in Studley around this time.
286