Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

smithy. 362
His mercery shop must have been one of the earliest retail shops in the
industrialising hamlet of Redditch. Hemming’s shop was not the only retail premises in
the important village of Feckenham. William Bond, son of a Feckenham yeoman, was a
grocer and also sold tobacco-stems and clothes. His trustees included two Worcester
men, a tobacconist and a mercer, from whom he probably obtained his stock. 363
In Period B a handful of retailers could be found serving the growing industrial
colonies in this zone, for example the Procter, Beck and Bennet families of Redditch. 364
Feckenham, fulfilling its niche as a small market-centre, also had its shops, including
mercers and a linen-draper. By the second half of the eighteenth century most
settlements in this zone were served by butchers, bakers, general shopkeepers, mercers
and grocers. The shops were run by a variety of people from labouring folk to wealthy
butcher-graziers and mercers. 365
In Studley the 1797 list of those registered to use
weights and measures included six shopkeepers (three of them female), one baker and
one butcher. The list also includes two ‘dealers in coals’. 366
Demand for coal was now
sufficient for such specialist coal-dealers. Various sources reveal other dealers and
deliverers. Swann of Tardebigge, described as a factor, perhaps acted as agent and dealer
362 WoRO, probate of Samuel Hemming, Feckenham, innholder and mercer, 1687, £197-9-9, and of
Walter Moore, Redditch, (Tardebigge), blacksmith, 1681, £286-9-10.
363 WoRO, probate of William Bond, Feckenham, grocer, 1699, £161-16-0.
364 WoRO, probate of Thomas Procter, Ipsley, yeoman, 1727, £23-4-6, and of Elizabeth Procter, widow,
Redditch, (Tardebigge), widow, 1728, £18-5-6. (The shop may have been in the part of Redditch, which
lay on the boundary of Ipsley and Tardebigge parishes. Their inventories list shop goods and grocery.)
WoRO, marriage licence of Thomas Rawlins, Tardebigge, baker, 1708, witnessed by William Beck,
Tardebigge, mercer. WoRO, probate of John Bennet, Redditch, (Tardebigge), (no occupation given), 1740,
£120-7-9. He stocked all manner of cloth and yarn as well as items such as candles, tobacco, sugar and
treacle.
365 Amongst the wealthy are Thomas Moore and John James. Moore, butcher, grazier and yeoman, also
acted as steward to the earl of Plymouth. Berrow’s Worcester Journal 10 Sept. 1767 and WoRO, probate
of Thomas Moore, Tardebigge, (no occupation given), 1768. TNA, PCC probate of John James, Studley,
mercer, 1775.
366 WaRO, QS89/2.
323