Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

In Period A glaziers benefited from the increasing popularity of glazed windows
in domestic houses, and they also undertook glazing and leadwork in the church. 59
In
this early period references to glaziers were more common than to plumbers or painters,
although throughout the period of study all three jobs were often undertaken by the same
people. Of the three plumbers who advertised in 1792 one also kept a pub. 60
By the
nineteenth century there were several plumbers, glaziers and painters, one of whom,
James Fryer, advertised as an ‘ornamental painter’. 61
Other workers in the building trade
include three plasterers. 62
The handful of ‘stonemasons’ and ‘stonecutters’ must have used stone quarried
elsewhere; some were probably monumental masons. 63
Stone, not readily available in
the parish, was generally used sparingly for foundations and the like, 64
but throughout
the study period brickmakers and tilemakers extracted clay and made their bricks,
generally in outlying parts of the parish. 65
In the first half of the eighteenth century the
Fulford family, prospered from the trend to use brick and tile, which they made at their
kiln on commonland at Alcester Heath, where they leased rights to dig clay and to set up
huts. 66
Amongst the handful of brickmakers working in the parish in Period C one
59 G. E. Saville, ‘Look at Alcester, no. 2’, ADLHS, OP10, (1979) shows that in the first half of the
seventeenth century glass windows were so new that they were listed in inventories. WaRO, DR360/63,
Churchwardens’ accounts, refer to glazing and lead-work in church, e.g. 1658, 1661, payments to Thomas
Litherland.
60 UBD 1792. WaRO, jurors’ lists, 1772-1799, QS76/3, contain two mason/bricklayers and one glazier.
61 West’s Warwickshire Directory 1830.
62 All after 1750.
63 These were all after 1800.
64 VCH Warwickshire, iii, p. 9, states that the lower storey of the market house was built of stone c. 1618,
but the upper storey was of timber, c. 1641. One house on the High Street was known as the Stone House,
showing that it was unusual.
65 G. E. Saville, King’s Coughton: a Warwickshire Hamlet, (Kineton, Roundwood Press, 1973), p. 29. And
see Appendix 18.
66 Various sources including WaRO, CR1886/BL/1890.
87