Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

There are ten occupations in common amongst the three larger parishes compared in
Table 8.18. These larger communities include all four common occupations (farmer,
carpenter, shoemaker, labourer) from Table 8.17, but were also more likely to support a
blacksmith, wheelwright and mason than smaller communities. Perhaps surprisingly, tailor
still does not appear in all parishes. Coughton’s needlemakers perhaps fulfil the niche of
the weavers in the other two parishes, as alternative non-agricultural employment. As with
the parishes in Table 8.17, some differences can be explained by geography and others by
personal circumstance or other factors.
Life and work contrasted greatly in settlements of different sizes or of a different
nature, such as industrial or purely agricultural communities. Where occupations are given
in pre-1813 registers, it is also possible to compare changes over time, and to compare
communities with large or small acreages of common or waste land, and note changes
before and after enclosure. Sambourne and Studley, with large commons, differ from their
neighbour Coughton, which was a more closed community. 24
The reasons for contrasting occupational structures in different communities is
complex. More microcosmic analysis would raise further questions, but would also furnish
some answers to explain the differences. Analysis of trade directories and Victorian
censuses would also help to chart the differing occupation structure in rural parishes later in
the nineteenth century as the general trend away from self-containedness continued.
24 Table 7.20 in Chapter 7 compares these communities.
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