Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Maybe labourers or woodmen undertook some of this work, and long intervals between
bouts of coppicing also help to explain the lack of references to charcoal-burners in local
archives. 190
The enclosure act for Redditch Common and Webheath in 1771 names
many coppices which may have been the source of raw materials for underwood crafts,
but also for charcoal-burners. As noted before, the latter belong to an elusive race, but
Isaac Pugh, wood-collier, appears as a witness regarding an assault in Tardebigge. 191
In
the nineteenth century as the mineral economy spread the use of pit-coal, it is perhaps
surprising that a trio of wood-colliers were still plying their trade on the Ridgeway at
Crabbs Cross. 192
However, charcoal was still considered more suitable than coal for
certain uses. 193
Metal
The big difference between this zone’s economy and that of the other zones was
the dominance of the needle industry and its associated trades hereabouts. The
development of the needle trade is dealt with below, but firstly I will examine other
metalworkers in this zone. Although there were a handful of plumbers, as seen above,
before 1700 this zone had no braziers, pewterers, whitesmiths or tinmen, so local
customers who needed products made from non-ferrous metals had to use the services of
travelling tinkers or market town braziers. 194
In the eighteenth century we find the odd
190 The HeRO, E12/VI/KC/67, 78, 79, 80, 95, Foley MSS, show that sometimes rather than being carefully
coppiced places like Sambourne Heath were systematically cleared of trees.
191 WoRO, QS552/74, Midsummer 1798. As Rice Davis in the previous century, he may have been of
Welsh stock.
192 WaRO, Ipsley baptisms 1817. WoRO, Feckenham baptisms 1843 and marriages 1855 and Feckenham
1851 census.
193 R. Hayman, ‘Charcoal ironmaking in nineteenth century Shropshire’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 61, (2008), pp.
80-98, shows that charcoal was still used a great deal in certain types of iron production.
194 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/40, which shows the Throckmortons using Richard Parshouse of Alcester to instal
a furnace in the malthouse.
287