Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

meetings and dinners. 342
Throughout the two centuries many victuallers combined
innkeeping with other jobs. From the 1830s the traditional publicans were joined by
beerhouse-keepers and beer-retailers, while the 1841 census also records a handful of
lodging-house-keepers.
Innkeeper Richard Harbach’s probate inventory mentions a furnace, maltmill and
brewhouse, indicating that, like many victuallers, he brewed his own beer and made
malt. 343
No specialist brewers appear in the records before the 1820s, but many
households brewed their own beer. Specialist maltsters are found and, as in other zones,
many farmers and tradesmen hereabouts made malt, a lucrative sideline. Even the
Throckmorton family invested in the building of a malthouse at Coughton Court in the
1660s, and a decade later we find their malt being sold as far away as Stourbridge. 344
Many people who dealt in malt also worked in allied trades, for example Thomas Uncles,
miller.
Beer and ale were not the only alcoholic drinks made or consumed locally. At
least one Feckenham farmer thought it worthwhile building a new horse-driven perrymill
circa 1800. 345
Richard Hillar of Feckenham, described as a wine-cooper and
victualler, had a brewhouse, a cellar for cider and ale and a separate wine cellar. 346
Robert Boulton of Feckenham had a brewhouse, but also stocked wine, perry, cider and
342 For example, SCLA, DR5/4278, Sambourne manor court, April 1684, records the adjournment of the
court leet to William Churchley’s house, the Falcon, Hadenway, Sambourne. His wife Mary, (formerly
Bolton), also received payment for manor court dinners. (For example, WaRO, CR1998/26, Throckmorton
MSS, Dec. 1672.)
343 WoRO, probate of Richard Harbach, Feckenham, innkeeper, 1681, £47-4-7.
344 WaRO, CR1998/LCB/26, 40, Throckmorton MSS.
345 Dating from 1790 to 1810 this perry mill is now re-constructed at the Avoncroft Museum of Buildings,
Bromsgrove.
346 WoRO, probate of Richard Hillar, Feckenham, wine cooper, 1702, £29-19-8. He was described as
victualler in Feckenham burial register. Wine-cooper may have been a synonym for vintner, but if he made
coopery ware, perhaps it comprised small barrels suitable for customers to store their wine after it had been
decanted from the larger barrels in which it was imported. His cellars contained brandy, bottles of claret
and white wine, ‘half a pipe of sack’ and some large, empty hogshead and half-hogshead barrels.
319