Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

CHAPTER FOUR
ZONE A: ALCESTER, THE MARKET TOWN
Camden says of Alcester: ‘from a very great town, ‘tis reduc’d to a small market’,
while an ecclesiastical terrier in 1707 described Alcester as ‘a very populous, great and
large market town’. 1
Camden may be overestimating Alcester’s past glories while the
ecclesiastical terrier inflates its contemporary importance, but after the Restoration, albeit
only a minor market town when compared with Birmingham, Bromsgrove and other
rivals, Alcester appears to have been a busy local centre, processing local agricultural
produce and catering for the retailing needs of the farming folk of the hinterland.
Like the neighbouring market towns of Evesham and Stratford, Alcester lies
between the wood-pasture area to the north and the champion area to the south, a
strategic position for the exchange of produce from the varying economies. Alcester, like
many a small market town, was inextricably intertwined with its rural surroundings,
depending on the ‘seasonality, economy, employment and environment’ of the agrarian
life. 2
‘In the predominantly agrarian economy of sixteenth and seventeenth century
England, the most important industries were those associated with agriculture.’ 3
Alcester
had its own farming folk and workers in the leather and textile trades dependent on local
agricultural produce, but it also had a place in the mineral economy, with an established
and growing band of metalworkers. With its concentration of innkeepers, retailers,
manufacturers and craftsmen, Alcester could be considered urban, when compared with
the surrounding villages. Smith notes that during the period of urbanisation from the
1 W. Camden, Britannia, (London, Times Newspapers, 1971), p. 505. This is a reproduction of the 1695
edition, edited by Gibson. The 1707 reference is from D. M. Barratt, ed., ‘Ecclesiastical terriers of
Warwickshire parishes, vol. 2’, Dugdale Soc., 27, (1971), p. 194.
2 The quotation is from H. R. French, ‘Urban agriculture, commons and commoners in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries: the case of Sudbury, Suffolk’, Ag. Hist. Rev., 48, (2000), p. 171.
3 L. A. Clarkson, ‘The leather crafts in Tudor and Stuart England’, Ag. Hist. Rev., 14, (1966), p. 25.
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