Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

the knitters, other occupations in the textile trade were still in evidence in the late
seventeenth century, 73
but Table 4.2 shows the town’s involvement in textiles dwindling
in Periods C and D. Table 4.4 suggests that the decline amongst male workers of
marriageable age in textiles had set in before the mid-eighteenth century, while Table 4.6
indicates that the town’s already shrunken textile sector continued on its downward path
in the nineteenth century. The 1841 census shows 6% of adult males in textiles or
clothing manufacture, but the figures for women (15.8%) and for young males (10%)
show their important roles in these sectors. 74
Throughout the study period various processors of wool are recorded in the town,
no doubt dealing as middle men between sheep-farmers and weavers as well as sorting
and processing the wool. 75
Robert Weigham, woolwinder, was worth some £57 when he
died in 1710. 76 Some wool-merchants also doubled as fellmongers and skinners. 77
Long-established in the town, wool-dealing at Alcester market was traditionally
supervised by a manor court official, the wool-weigher. 78
To support the wool-merchants there must have been a considerable number of
weavers, but records reveal few in Alcester. In the whole study period only one weaver
featured amongst Alcester’s testators, namely Francis Browne, who possessed five
73 VCH Warwickshire, iii, p. 13, states that of those contributors to the 1663 Hearth Tax whose occupations
can be traced a quarter worked in ‘some branch of the cloth trade’.
74 Table 4.8.
75 Variously described as woolcombers, woolwinders, woolmen and woolstaplers, they appear in larger
numbers before 1750 than later.
76 WoRO, probate of Robert Weigham, Alcester, woolwinder, 1710, £57-5-6. Another woolman, Abraham
Clark, also described as a skinner, is discussed below in the section on leather.
77 For example, William Hawthorn alias Phillips, is described in various records between 1658 and 1689 as
fellmonger, glover, woolman, maltster. (SCLA, DR165/1247/5-8, WaRO, CR1886/416/47/2, etc.).
WoRO, probate of William Hawthorn alias Phillips, Alcester, maltster, 1689, includes £150 of wool.
WoRO, probate of Abraham Clark, Alcester, maltster and skinner, 1702. H. C. Johnson et al, eds.,
Warwick County Records, (Warwick, E. Stephens, 1936-1964), 8, pp. 85, 133, (quoting quarter sessions
1684-5, for non-attendance at church), mentions Abraham Clark, woolman and skinner. Two woolstaplers
appear in Alcester’s probate records (both before 1800).
78 G. E. Saville, ‘The story of Alcester market’, ADLHS, OP26, (1982), p. 8. (There are references to
Alcester’s wool trade at least as far back as 1570 in Saville, Alcester – a History, p. 76).
89