Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

gained currency in non-legal parlance. Allied occupations in Period D include pigdealers,
graziers and seedsmen cum gardeners. 49
For the first time the 1831 census allows us to divide labourers into agricultural
and non-agricultural. The split in Alcester was fairly even, with 57 labourers in
agriculture (54.3%) and 48 in other work (45.7 %). 50
Non-agricultural labourers
probably included general labourers and those in the building and brickmaking trades.
Extractive industries and building
In Period A Alcester’s many half-timbered buildings with thatched roofs
survived, but re-building and re-facing with brick and re-roofing with tile had begun and
continued throughout the eighteenth century. 51
Despite the many thatched roofs in
Period A, references to thatchers are rare, although they occur in various sources until the
end of the eighteenth century. Thatching was also undertaken by others, for example
labourers or carpenters. 52
According to Clarkson, the building industry vied with the leather trade as the
second or third most important industry in England in the seventeenth century. 53
However, references to building sector workers in Alcester are relatively few before the
censuses. Table 4.4 suggests a temporary increase in the mid-eighteenth century and
many sources suggest an increase in the percentage of building workers in the final
49 Milksellers and veterinary surgeons are discussed below.
50 This split has been used to allocate labourers in baptism data, as in Table 4.6. Perhaps surprisingly,
Table 4.8 (1841 census) shows no young males as agricultural labourers. Perhaps the needle and building
trades paid better. If the descriptors in the 1841 census are accurate, non-agricultural labourers now
outnumber those in agriculture amongst all males.
51 VCH Warwickshire, iii, pp. 10-12, discusses many buildings in the town. For example, Churchill House
near the church, has a fine red-brick front of 1688.
52 See the extractive and building section for Zone D in Chapter 7. Although the number of thatched roofs
on houses in Alcester no doubt decreased in the eighteenth century, outlying farm buildings and also ricks
would still have been thatched.
53 Clarkson, ‘The leather crafts in Tudor and Stuart England’, p. 25.
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