Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Hemming family in Studley, which combined metalworking, animal care, a general store
and a pub, appropriately named The Farriers’ Arms. 200
The actual numbers of blacksmiths and farriers probably increased in Periods C
and D to keep up with demand from increased horse-traffic, although this is not borne out
by the selective probate and marriage licence records over the two centuries, in which
blacksmiths waver between 1.1 and 3.8% of adult males. 201
The 1841 census records
some 1.9% of adult males as blacksmiths. 202
Just outside the study area to the north and west, in Bromsgrove, Northfield and
the Black Country nailmaking was a long-established cottage employment. 203
Before
1750 a handful of nailsmiths are also found in Coughton, Feckenham and Tardebigge. 204
No doubt these nailmakers operated within a similar system to their Black Country
counterparts, whereby a factor or ironmonger would put out wire for the nailers to forge
into nails and would collect the finished products later. 205
One Redditch nailer cum
shopkeeper held freehold and copyhold estates in the locality and may have been of the
right status to be a nail-factor himself. 206
As nailmaking did not require much in the way
of capital or special equipment, it is not surprising that few nailers left probate
documents. 207
Although there were probably more poor cottagers making nails on this
200 WoRO, probate of Thomas Hemming, Studley, farrier/shopkeeper, 1761 and WaRO, Studley parish
register, 1760-1. Berrow’s Worcester Journal 6 March 1777.
201 Tables 7.2 and 7.4 above.
202 This agrees quite well with baptisms 1813-1840 in which blacksmiths comprise between 1.2 and 2.3%
of fathers. (See Tables 7.6 and 7.8).
203 Buchanan, ‘Studies in the localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries’, 19, p. 49.
204 In Coughton baptism register c. 1700 some 7.8% of fathers were nailmakers (slightly exceeding
needlemakers at this period).
205 Rowlands, ‘Continuity and change in an industrialising society’, in Hudson, Regions and Industries, pp.
110, 120.
206 WoRO, probate of Thomas Beavan, Redditch, (Tardebigge), shopkeeper/nailer, 1749.
207 Two nailers who left probate both lived near enough to Bromsgrove to be part of the that town’s
nailmaking network. (WoRO, probate of Edward Barber, Tardebigge, nailer, 1664, £35-6-8. The ‘peare of
bellows and other implements in the shopp’ only amounted to ten shillings. Also, WoRO, probate of Henry
Reeve, Feckenham, nailer, 1679-80, £25-16-8.)
289