Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Buchanan has shown that to a large extent the localised patterns of
Worcestershire’s industries were already moulded by 1600 - for example, metal trades in
the extreme north of the county, and leather, specialist woodcrafts and textiles in the East
Worcestershire woodland parishes of the study area. 74
Various factors could have caused
the study area (particularly parishes in Zone D) to follow a developmental path similar to
that of the Black Country. However, Large comments that, after the disafforestation of
Feckenham Forest, ‘the emergence of intensive farming restricted the nascent rural
industries’. 75
The industrial tide was checked, and, in response to the growing demand
for food from the metalware district and the burgeoning national population, agriculture
regained ground.
Since the development of industry in these rural parishes is a central theme in this
study, it may be apposite here to discuss opinions on early industrialisation and the model
of ‘proto-industrialisation’. Various writers have noted the spread of industrial pursuits
in the countryside. Zell discusses this phenomenon in his study of the Weald in the
sixteenth century, where the iron industry and cloth-making were important. 76
He notes
that the decline of both industries in the seventeenth century caused de-industrialisation.
By contrast other writers have noted that elsewhere early industrial by-employments
sometimes grew into full-fledged industrialisation.
74 Buchanan, ‘Studies in the localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries’.
75 P. Large, ‘Economic and social change in North Worcestershire during the seventeenth century’, PhD
thesis, University of Oxford, (1980), p. i.
76 M. Zell, Industry in the Countryside, (Cambridge, CUP, 1994), pp. 228-246.
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