Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

enjoying its status as a market town, and to group the other parishes into three further
zones. 65 Ten parishes near the river Avon comprise the north-eastern extension of the Vale
of Evesham, famed for its fertile land. Traditionally these parishes shared the mainly
arable, ‘champion’ characteristics of the Vale and of the South Warwickshire Feldon
district further east. For this reason this zone will be called Zone B, the Southern
(Champion) Country. 66
During the period of this study some of this zone’s parishes were
in the county and diocese of Gloucester, while the other parishes were in Worcester
diocese and either in Worcestershire or Warwickshire. 67
All the parishes further north could be categorised as wood-pasture, but it was
decided to divide them into two further groups. Nineteen parishes lying in the
Warwickshire Forest of Arden and the Worcestershire Feckenham Forest will be referred
to as Zone C, the Central (Wood-Pasture) Belt. Six parishes in the extreme north of the
study area became the focus of needlemaking. For this reason this sub-district will be
called Zone D, the Northern (Needle) District. 68
Populations for each parish and zone are discussed in Chapter 3, and Chapters 4
to 7 provide commentaries on the occupational structure of each of the Zones A to D
respectively. Although these subdivisions were chosen with some deliberation, there is
65 To avoid confusion the term ‘area’ will be used to refer to the whole study area, while the smaller
groupings of parishes will be referred to as ‘zones’, ‘sub-districts’ or ‘sub-divisions’. The word ‘region’
will refer to the west midlands region of which the study area forms a part. See Appendix 1 and Appendix
1a.
66 The distinction between champion and woodland landscapes in the west midlands appears in many
works, e. g.: J. A. Yelling, ‘Livestock numbers and agricultural development, 1540-1750: a study of East
Worcestershire’, in T. Slater and P. Jarvis, eds., Field and Forest, an Historical Geography of
Warwickshire and Worcestershire, (Norwich, Geo Books, 1982), p. 283.
67
Appendix 1 and Appendix 1a give detailed information about all the parishes zone by zone.
68 The term ‘Needle District’ has been used by other writers in the past to include a wider area including
parishes outside my study area: for example the directories known as the Needle District Almanacs
produced in the nineteenth century.
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