Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

of the other metal trades, and needlemakers were perhaps slower to abandon agriculture
than their Black Country cousins.
In a wider context my findings regarding occupational structure may be compared
with surveys of other regions, for example those undertaken by the Cambridge Group. An
industrialising zone such as the Needle District exhibits similarities to certain other
industrial areas. The PST figures for Studley and Coughton in the eighteenth century make
an interesting comparison with West Yorkshire at that time, with similar percentages. 34
Other parishes in my study exhibit relative occupational stability like Masten’s
Hertfordshire parishes, while Sambourne’s lack of suitable water-power led to partial deindustrialisation
like certain Northamptonshire parishes. 35
My study takes the figures back
earlier than most completed projects by the Cambridge Group, but as their projects and
other surveys are completed there will be more studies with which to compare my own
findings about early industrialisation. 36
Although there will undoubtedly be exceptions, the PST make-up of many places
may well prove to have been established earlier than once thought. My Table 8.1 above
shows little change in secondary from the early figure, while the tertiary sector was wellestablished
before 1700 and continued to grow throughout the study period, though the
greatest growth was apparently between Periods C and D. 37
34 Compare my Table 7.24 above with Table 1 in L. Shaw-Taylor and A. Jones, ‘An industrializing Region?
The West Riding of Yorkshire c. 1755-1871’ on the Cambridge Group website: www.hpss.geog.cam.ac.uk
The occupations behind the percentages are of course quite different. I am grateful to the Cambridge Group
for permission to quote their findings in this preliminary report and in the reports referred to below.
35 V. Masten, ‘Male occupational structure in Hertfordshire’, and L. Shaw-Taylor and A. Jones, ‘Male
occupational structure in Northamptonshire 1777-1851’, both on the website: www.hpss.geog.cam.ac.uk
36 P. Kitson, ‘The male occupational structure of Bedfordshire c. 1700-1871’ on the website:
www.hpss.geog.cam.ac.uk produces PST figures c. 1725 similar to my own for 1700-1749 in Table 8.1
above.
37 For example, see Table 8.1.
368