Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

looms, one twisting-mill and other tools worth £10-6-8. 79
Other weavers were present,
but, at the poorer end of the spectrum, did not figure prominently in the records. 80
Alcester, like many market towns of the time, perhaps also supplied yarn to the weavers
of its hinterland, and then finished, dyed and marketed their cloth.
Where the textile industry of Alcester and its hinterland fitted into the bigger
picture is not clear. Some Arden parishes may have had more connections with the
Coventry trade, making cloth called ‘tammies’. The Champion Country parishes may
have made ‘Gloucester whites’ and marketed them through the Gloucestershire textile
centres. The weavers to the west of Alcester may have been bound up in the Worcester
trade, making use of finer wools from the Cotswolds and the Marches. Alcester itself
may have had a role as an entrepot in any of these different textile markets. 81
In the first half of the eighteenth century Alcester was still attracting migrant
textile workers, such as threadmen and feltmakers, from nearby towns. 82
It is not clear
whether the threadmen made woollen or flaxen thread or both. Felt, worsted, jersey and
perhaps other woollen cloths were manufactured in the town, giving rise to a variety of
specific occupations, such as shearmen, clothworkers, feltmakers, jersey-weavers and
79 WoRO, probate of Francis Browne, Alcester, weaver, 1707, £88-13-0.
80 In 1662 the manor rolls mention ‘all the weavers’ (WaRO, CR1886/1315), but none appears in probate
records until Francis Browne in 1707. Edward Abraham is referred to as a ‘webster’ in 1662 (WaRO,
DR360/86/3).
81 Buchanan, ‘Studies of the localisation of seventeenth century Worcestershire industries’, 18, p. 34,
describes an Inkberrow man in Quarter Sessions claiming to have bought wool at Alcester at 10d. a pound.
The type of wool was not considered to be the sort purchased from a glover, but we do not know what
sheep and wool were prominent in the area. J. de L. Mann, The Cloth Industry in the West of England from
1640 to 1880, (Oxford, OUP, 1971), pp. 17-42, indicates that much cloth marketed through Worcester and
Gloucester was dependent on the Levant trade.
82 For example, WaRO, DR360/80/ 13, 21 and 33, Alcester settlement papers of James Harris, from
Warwick, ‘thredman’, 1700, Christopher Chambers from Bromsgrove 1711, feltmaker, and William
Alexander from Stratford 1719, feltmaker. (Some feltmakers including Alexander were alternatively called
hatters. No doubt hat-making was one of the principal uses of felt). WaRO, DR360/65, records the
settlement of Charles Hawker from Childswickham, Worcestershire, in 1707. He is variously described as
(jersey-)weaver and jersey-comber. TNA, IR1/42, 45 and 46 show that he was taking on apprentices.
90