HALESWORTH
AN ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Denis Bellamy
&
Ruth Downing
2006
(2nd Edition)
“But social history does not merely provide the required link between
economic and political history. It has also its own positive value and peculiar
concern. Its scope may be defined as the daily life of the inhabitants of the
land in past ages: this includes the human as well as the economic relation of
different classes to one another, the character of family and household life,
the conditions of labour and of leisure, the attitude of man to nature, the
culture of each age as it arose out of these general conditions of life, and
took ever-changing forms in religion, literature and music, architecture,
learning and thought”.
C.M. Trevelyan (1944)
2.2
Halesworth and the ‘nook’ communities
4.3.1
James Aldred; manufacturing draper
4.6.2 The malting infrastructure
4.7 Trading on a restless coast
4.7.2
Malting; an historical milestone
4.8
Other manufacturing businesses
5.6.2 Use of directories for research
5.6.3
Halesworth in directories
5.7 Ebb and flow of traders through directories
5.7.1 Population dynamics of householders
5.7.2
Retail establishments: 1838-2005
5.8 A microcosm of consumerism
Chapter 6
Peopling the Townscape
6.1.1
Aldreds, Nurseys and Crisps
6.10
The Bon Marche comes to town
6.10.3
Origins of the Lincolne family
6.11 The Sheriffe family: landed
proprietors and investors
6.14.1
The Pound Street Chapels
6.14.2 A personal view of Roe & Co.
6.15
The force of individuality
6.15.1 A resource to feed the imagination
6.16 Chediston Street’s legacy
7.1.1
Consumerism and recreation
7.2 Symbols in the environment
7.2.2
Townscapes as interactive museums
7.3
Partnership for sustainability
7.5
A new culture partially revealed
This booklet is a local history of urbanisation as an introduction to
the topic of ‘cultural ecology’. Cultural
ecology is a subject for living in an overcrowded world. It is defined as the sum of all social
processes resulting from technological innovations, by which nature and people
are organised for production in a society based on ecological principles. In this context it is a tribute to local
cleverness and power by which a steady stream of Halesworth entrepreneurs
singled out a small market town in their quest for a better life. In hindsight
it was from this time we clearly all became part of nature in relation to our
devastating ecological impact upon the biology of land and sea. However, since the first humans began forest
clearance, all local human gatherings became ecological societies, but this
truth has only just broken through into human forward thinking in relation to
the impending catastrophe that faces the whole of humanity through
human-induced climate change. In this respect, ‘Halesworth; an ecological
society’ is a text of its time. The
aims are:
·
to
bring together information already available on the history of Halesworth, and
place it in the context of the 19th century development in retailing
that ushered in an ‘age of plenty’;
History used to be only about the
political arena of wars and the roles of famous leaders and thinkers. This national emphasis has changed, and
since about the middle of the last century, people described as social
historians have begun to look more closely at the experiences of "ordinary
people" and everyday life.
Recently, this view has been embedded in the concept of social history
being a continuation of a process of human evolution. Evolution is seen as a phenomenon of continuous change in which,
during the last two million years, we humans have imposed our will on the
environment as an outcome of our characteristic social nature. In this perspective we can see that for the
last two centuries we have been living in societies dominated by applied
ecology. According to this idea, the
history of every society, such as the increased prosperity of a concentration
of people in towns like Halesworth, has been a continuous process of resolving
the ecological problems of organising nature and people for production. These problems have been resolved by meeting
social needs that require the transformation of natural resources into goods and
services. ‘Ecology’ is thus defined as
a social concept where economic, ethnic, and gender conflicts, amongst others,
lie at the core of planet Earth’s serious, and some say terminal, environmental
problems. This is the reason why we
have undertaken to place the local history of Halesworth in this broad context
of ecological societies.
The concept of ‘ecological societies’
has great potential value and benefit for anyone interested in people of the
past who inhabited the houses and walked the streets of their hometown. This approach to local history was given a
boost by the coming of the new millennium, when it was realised there was a
link between the now distant past and the immediate future. A common feeling
was that a community with a solid history has a stable platform upon which to
become involved with future socio-economic developments, particularly in
relation to conservation of the built environment. Every building is part of a rich and complicated tapestry of
life. However, such is the speed of
change, that in a fraction of a lifetime, old buildings, open spaces and
curious nooks and crannies can be replaced with cash-generating placeless
development. A good grounding in social
history contributes to a community’s adversarial strength in putting a case for
conservation.
When this "new" social history
began to emerge in the 1960s, it was at first very much analytical; scholars
began to ask specific questions. How
much social mobility was there and why? What were the experiences of racial minorities,
immigrants, and women in British society? How did workers respond to the
industrial setting? How did migrants respond to the new industrial cities? But social historians also looked at the
institutions used by ordinary folk; in the City People study of
nineteenth century New York, the roles of the department store, metropolitan
daily newspaper, vaudeville house, and baseball park, were considered critical
to the emergence of a common urban culture by the many diverse people who
inhabited the city.
This was history written "from the
bottom up" becoming respectable.
Instead of the traditional academic approach from "top-down,"
social history has increasingly broadened to characterise the large mass of
those who appear only dimly on the pages of standard histories. At the same
time, social history has now fragmented into a number of discrete sub fields
including ‘family’, ‘women and gender’, ‘cities and suburbs’, ‘immigration’,
‘racial minorities’, ‘childhood’, ‘ageing’, ‘agricultural life’, and ‘workers’.
Since social history focuses on
experiences that touch the lives of everyone or their ancestors, it is of
immediate interest to most people. It provides them with a sense of where they
came from and how they came to be where they are. There is a knowledge gap to
be filled for the creation of a sense of continuity with the past in a rapidly
changing world. This is especially true
for children, raised in an age of atomic and neutron bombs, ‘global villages’,
television, VCRs, videogames, PCs, instant food, and moon travel. There is a gap in understanding the lives of
their parents and grandparents, whose childhoods included none of these
contributions to modern civilization.
In an age where ‘sustainable development
is a global catchword to the future, and ‘conservation’ is a widespread
behaviour to preserve heritage assets, social history provides the context and
explanation necessary to move into the future. It encourages the inclusion of
all peoples of a community, not just elites or founders. While the latter are
important, their roles are often exaggerated.
A broader coverage of all groups and organizations permits a more
accurate and complete record; it also encourages a wider participation in the
process of feedback and updating. This process of inclusivity is greatly aided
by the spread of computer literacy and links between families through the
Internet. Social history then, is a key
to the greater democratization of local history and local historical
organizations; broader participation also means more resources including
members, volunteers, contributions, new ideas and viewpoints. Democratic participation in compiling and
extending local history into the immediate present offers the participants
attractive possibilities of nostalgia, and at the same time the opportunity to
explain how and why their lives have changed, and how in many respects they
have remained constant. Many social historians are first and foremost people
talking about their own patch. Their work is deeply rooted in a local context
and their studies depend heavily on, and contribute to, knowledge of place.
Perhaps the most exciting approach used
by social and local historians is oral history, an effort that is now largely
restricted to the twentieth century. Oral history is valuable in a number of
ways. It fills in gaps that other sources cannot; it personalizes history; and
it involves people (both interviewee and interviewer) who can broaden the base
of a local historical organization.
We began to gather information about
Halesworth’s past in the context of social history as a resource for
communities planning their future. The
town really chose us for this project in that we both have long ancestral links
with Blything and Halesworth itself. We
have drawn on the work of other local researchers, notably Nesta Evans, Michael
Fordham, Michael and Sheila Gooch, and Ivan Sparkes, and have incorporated some
reminiscences and new materials of local people, such as the Newby family. Our novel contribution is to use our combined
experiences as an academic and a local genealogist who have collaborated for
many years on international projects in environmental education. This has
enabled us to place Halesworth in the context of social ecology, to show how
people of the past, and their links through kinship and neighbourliness, have
contributed to changing urban society with new cultural expressions. This story is in no way definitive, but we
hope it offers a picture of a developing community in broad brush strokes in
which the accomplishments and trials and tribulations of individuals and
families is entwined with a broader national stream of world development. It is
offered as a basis for others to add to and refine. The scope is defined in the town’s brochure produced to celebrate
the Festival of Britain in 1951:
Many personalities during the
centuries have played their parts in the life of this small community. They
have flitted across its life like actors in a stage play, and books could be
written concerning their work. Humour, pathos, and honest endeavour have
mingled and the story is unending. Their names are legion and the results of
their efforts with us to day. We can give to all credit for their work and say
with the poet:
"
Something attempted, something done,
To earn the night's repose,"
Finally, the project is a celebration of
Suffolk’s contribution to the ‘age of plenty’.
This began at a time when William Etheridge of Fressingfield emerged in
1749 from the closed community of High Suffolk’s woodworkers to design the ‘Mathematical
Bridge’ across the Cam to the President’s Lodge of Queen’s College,
Cambridge. William had previously been foreman to James King, master carpenter
during the building of London’s first Westminster Bridge. He then went on as a master carpenter to
design a road bridge over the Thames at Walton and the new harbour
installations at Ramsgate. He was one
of the last engineers of the ‘age of wood’.
William is the fifth great uncle of Ruth Downing. A new industrial iron age was initiated in
Peasenhall in the 1820s when James Smyth, the village blacksmith, established a
factory for the mass production of the first commercially successful
horse-drawn seed drill. James was the
son of James Smyth the Elder of Sweffling and Hannah Kemp of Rendham. Hannah Kemp’s father is the fourth great
grandfather of Denis Bellamy.
DB & RD: 2006
“CHARLES BARDWELL (1779-1833): Bardwell was a linen &
woollen draper and silk mercer who occupied Thomas Bayfield’s premises (Market
Place) between 1823 and 1833. In 1829
the value of Bardwell’s property was assessed at £14, meaning that he was
supposed to take one apprentice from Bulcamp (workhouse). In 1831-33 Bardwell contributed a £1 each
year towards the cost of ‘Watching and Lighting the Town of Halesworth’.
…….Owing to illness in May 1833 he asked Mr Fyson of Yarmouth to purchase for
him in London a variety of fashionable silks, printed muslins and dresses etc.”
“ELIZABETH
SCRAGGS: Elizabeth Scraggs was a dyer living and working in Chediston St
between 1827 and 1844. In 1817 she
married James Scraggs of Halesworth……..In the Returns of Paupers James is
listed as having a wife and four children to support. Between 1836 and 1838 their house in Chapell Yard Chediston St
was valued at only £1”
The
Hemp Industry in the Halesworth Area 1790-1850; M
Fordham (2004)
The main components of history are not things but
people. This was the ‘discovery’ of
George Ewart Evans, who pioneered the study of the British oral tradition and
thereby revealed and archived the sociality of Suffolk’s rural life. In so doing he democratised the study of
history, and projected it into an ecological dimension by revealing ordinary
people’s living relationships with natural resources. Cultural ecology was actually first presented as a mental picture
by C.M. Trevelyan, ‘father’ of British social history. Since then, the term ‘cultural ecology’ has
expanded from the realm of the historian to cover the topic-web necessary to
link social activities with the origins of the natural resources that make them
possible. Culture is used in the sense
of a set of ideas, beliefs and knowledge, which unite society in a shared
course of action.
George Ewart Evans also worked at a time when there
was a revalidation of the historical artefacts of agriculture, such as
implements and buildings. There came a
shift in emphasis within museology from viewing them as the cultural heritage
of crafts-people who made them. Before,
they were seen as inert scientific specimens, now they are enormously charged
objects that stand as symbols of power relationships. Key concepts of social history are ‘kinship’, that is to say, how
different cultures interpret biological relationships, and ‘reciprocity’, the
idea that societies are bound together by the exchange of gifts, meaning
favours and services as well as material objects and money. Giving and taking are now central concepts
of economic development as the international community moves uncertainly
towards global legislation for a sustainable future. In this context there is an increasing historical emphasis on the
‘policy community’. Public policy is now the crucial way in which society is
kept together and connected. Members
of the conservation movement can be envisaged as a policy community that
emerged after the adoption of the World Conservation Strategy in the
1980s. Historians can now study a whole
raft of policy documents on sustainable development and conservation of resources,
and then look at how local officials interpret them and local recipients, as
stakeholders, respond to their transcriptions.
George Ewart Evans was situated deep in Suffolk
during the 1950s when mechanisation was taking over every aspect of rural life,
and shattering the racial and cultural unit that had defined English people
since the time of Chaucer. However, in
the face of change, his message was the paradox of sociality, namely that the
mass of people keeps a continuity, which is ever changing; yet forever
remaining the same. An important aspect
of this dynamic social continuity is the recurring hopes and aspirations of
individuals, which depend directly or indirectly, on local natural
resources. These environmental
connections provide the drive for family betterment that maintains statistical
inequalities in family fortunes. From
generation through generation, mechanisms that convert natural resources to
wealth also bring about inequalities in its systems of distribution. The existence of this socio-economic
phenomenon during the first half of the 19th century is evident in
the above quotations describing the relative wealth of two Halesworth families,
the Bardwells and Scraggs. A hundred
years later the Bardwells and Scraggs were long gone, but the prosperity gap
between Chediston Street and Market Place remained and had actually
increased. In fact it is a theme of
Michael Fordham’s work that the ups and downs of poverty have always provided
an undulating baseline to Halesworth’s rise to modern prosperity, and it was in
Chediston Street that its depths seemed always to be plumbed (Fig 1.1).
Fig 1.1 Past times in Chediston Street.
The relative situation of Charles Bardwell and
Elizabeth Scraggs actually identifies a point in time and space where the
‘birth of plenty’ sprang alive in Halesworth.
This was an era when people of small market towns throughout the land
were responding to a rapidly growing national economy. The birth of plenty actually opened up an
era where the two main pillars of cultural ecology were revealed as ‘giving’
and ‘taking’. These actions are really
two sides of the coin of world development, represented by the need to balance
the conservation of natural resources with their rate of exploitation.
‘Giving’ has a long history, which extends deep into
the Christian concept of ‘charity’ as an expression of care for all living
things, human love, and the giving of knowledge and resources. This revolutionary idea, which was
rediscovered by Wordsworth and Tolstoy, had been brought to the centre of
Christianity by Francis of Assisi six centuries earlier. It is as a concept that is most liberal and
sympathetic in the modern mood of sustainability; the love of nature; the love
of animals; non-violence, the sense of social compassion and, above all, the
spiritual dangers of prosperity and property.
The Franciscan idea of giving permeated the communities of Blything, for
we find that local people throughout the medieval period made bequests to the
Franciscan friars who had their local base in Dunwich. It has been taken up by
the post-modern conservation movement and expressed as ‘giving space to
nature’.
‘Taking’ is also deeply rooted in human nature,
where it is expressed through the satisfaction of the needs and wants of people
for natural resources to survive and better themselves. These days, the taking
of natural resources is represented by the forces of rampant consumerism, which
have complex sources of origins in the Dark Ages, when the ultimate prize of
life was the possession of worldly goods.
The Bardwells and the Scraggs of early 19th
century Halesworth lived barely a hundred yards apart, yet there was a great
economic chasm separating the shopkeepers and property owners who resided in
the Market Place from the artisans of Chediston Street, where two thirds of the
properties were valued at under £2 per annum. Bardwell’s transient existence in
Bayfield’s premises is also typical of the short life of many Halesworth
businesses that seldom survived across one generation. In this respect, there was a coming and
going and a rising and falling of families in their roles as shopkeepers,
craftsfolk and artisans, most of whom first appeared in the town as colonists,
seizing upon new opportunities for the exploitation of Halesworth’s potential
as a manufacturing and retail centre.
Very few families became natives.
For example in the space of a few years the property rented by Charles
Bardwell in the Market Place had passed through three families, Durban,
Woodcock and Baas. In this sense,
Halesworth was, as it remains today, a dynamic microcosm of retail culture, and
a model for evaluating factors that have contributed to its shifting sociality
and continuity. This dynamism has, for
two centuries, been expressed by the turnover and spread of families engaged in
the commerce of mass production linked with consumerism, a process that now
threatens the survival of all family retailers.
Any society has to make some provision for the very young and the very
old, for the sick and the disabled. In primitive societies it falls largely to
the family to make such provision, and in medieval Britain the Church shared
with the family and the craft guilds the responsibility for doing so. From the
16th century, the increased importance of economic causes of
distress and the declining authority of the Church resulted in the transference
of this burden to the community as a whole. The factory system, which destroyed
the home as an economic unit and the parish as an instrument of government,
ushered in an era of cyclical unemployment and urbanization, with concomitant
new problems of sanitation and new dangers to community health. Thus the social
forces, which encouraged the glorification of self-help, also promoted a
notable extension of state legislation concerned with social security.
The origin of such
legislation lies with the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry
VIII. Until then the almshouses and
hospitals of the Church had dispensed charity to those who did not benefit from
what protection the craft guilds could guarantee to their sick and aged
members, or to their families left destitute by the death of the breadwinner.
Bread giving was in fact a major charitable tradition in Halesworth. The Reformation itself coincided with a
variety of circumstances that increased the numbers incapable of supporting
themselves by their own efforts. In a loosely knit society with primitive
communications, re-employment could not keep in step with unemployment during
the economic upheaval accompanying the expansion of foreign trade, the
beginnings of capitalist farming and an influx of precious metals from the New
World. The lists of town paupers highlight the scale and how it was clustered
in areas like Chediston St and Pound St.
Relief,
however, was directed not at the population at large, but at the poor and
disabled. The method employed was to
place responsibility on the parishes, which were helped by a poor rate levied
on its working inhabitants. The
building of the great poorhouse at Bulcamp was the dread, not only of
Halesworth’s poor, but also clouded the lives of those of villagers for miles
around.
In the Halesworth of the 1851
census, the needs for charity were focused on unskilled and casual workers
struggling with low wages, the fear of accidents and diseases, and the dread of
slipping into that 'sunken sixth' of the workforce so close to the criminal
underworld, which Dickens wrote about. However, even in that
period, there was a resurgence of private charity and a resentment of state paternalism. To many merchants, particularly those who
had risen from little or nothing, paternalism was an anathema. Paternalism produced the poor laws, but
this generalised form of relief was no more acceptable to the town merchants
than indiscriminate monastic almsgiving had been. They set an example by
contributing more than half of the vast sums of money provided for private
charities, which were, in the long run, probably more effective than state aid
for the poor. Nevertheless, an increase of vagrants, beggars and petty criminals
forced itself on the attention of the authorities, which responded with hard
labour in Ipswich prison.
The original administrative unit for Halesworth was the ancient
pre-Norman unit of the Blything Hundred.
The
assimilation of Poor Law and Sanitation within a single framework, followed by
the transformation of the Local Government Board into the Ministry of Health,
defines the emergence of an essentially modern outlook on the functions of
government. This is an outlook that
transcends the traditional conflicting claims of social justice and social
privilege. It focuses on the satisfaction of basic human needs as the yardstick
of good government. An expanding
knowledge of the nature of human needs, also discloses vistas of unrealised
possibilities for rational co-operation between human beings. The latest expression of human needs is
‘sustainable development’, with its requirement for local and global
cooperation to protect the goods of environment for future generations.
A modern overview of ‘giving’
demonstrates that the medieval concept of charity is equated with what is now
organised as the machinery of social security.
However, people in the modern world are still embedded in a complex
system of giving, which involves government agencies, insurance companies and
charitable trusts. We are surrounded by
a network of cultural organisations set up to provide safeguards not only
against poverty, sickness or accident, but also to protect local and global
green/built heritage assets. Halesworth’s charity shops indicate how the desire
to give can permeate a community.
Commerce, that is the buying and selling of things,
is one of the oldest human social activities.
Historically it covers a vast range of scale, from the open stalls in
Halesworth’s medieval market place, selling homegrown produce and hand-made
wares, to the shelves of the Rainbow supermarket brimming with choice,
occupying several acres. Yet the same
human qualities appear at all these levels; the choices to be made between two
or more people vending the same objects, the different techniques of buyer and
seller, the urge to make a keen profit, or snap up a bargain, and the bustle of
the market place as a social milieu. The Bardwells and Scraggs also highlight
the other activity of towns, namely making things. Both families were connected with the linen trade, Bardwell as
seller and the Scraggs as dyers of locally made hempen cloth. The two groups, retailers and manufacturers,
have been an integral part of Halesworth’s economy down to the present
day. It is convenient to class them
together as ‘traders’, who mediate between the taking of natural resources and
the selling of goods made from them to meet the needs and wants of their family
customers.
In a national context, specialised traders had first
emerged as townsfolk in the 13th century. Their aim was to satisfy an increasing and never ending demand
for goods and service by people in the town’s immediate surroundings and within
the town itself. These were needs that
could not be met by the traditional intermittent retail outlets of fairs,
markets and itinerant hawkers. In the
last quarter of the 18th century, there was a massive expansion in
the number of small shopkeepers listed in Halesworth’s trade directories, which
from the early 1820s was associated with a widespread shift from the
self-sufficiency of rural families towards a dependence on what has been called
the ‘shopocracy’. This phenomenon,
described as the ‘birth of plenty’, was driven by an ‘economic engine’ powered
by the coming together during the 18th century of four basic
factors;
These were the necessary conditions for the 19th
century revolutions in manufacturing and retailing, which forced Halesworth
from a Suffolk backwater into the mainstream of East Anglian trade with the
Metropolis.
Specialisation of labour was the transmission drive
that increased the prosperity of artisans, and channelled power from
manufacturers to the dynamics of the retail trade. The retail machine was fuelled by the rising purchasing power of
families who were able to partake of the increased availability of cheap,
mass-produced goods. Bankers emerged as
individuals and partnerships from amongst those who had made good in trade, and
lawyers appeared to address the legal matters associated with increased numbers
of property owners, manufacturers and traders.
Halesworth was a Mecca for these two new categories of middle class
specialists, who established themselves in brick-built mansions midst the
timber-framed houses.
Evidence for the growing social diversity of market towns, and their underlying family dynamics, comes not only from the numerous trade directories that were published at this time, but is also quantified in census records, wills, newspapers and parish books. This information also illustrates the following important features of business development:
In relation to the above issues connected to the changing human condition within nature, ‘Halesworth’ takes a view that the prosperity of the town ebbed and flowed when it did because of its topographic history and who decided to live there. This views history as an unbroken tradition carried forward by a succession of people building on the contributions of previous generations. On the other hand, there was also a coming together of people in the late medieval period, which generated a new sense of community, based on a novel understanding of the needs they shared and increased knowledge of the available means for satisfying them. This perspective views history as a process of ecological transformation.
Both propositions highlight the need to define a subject that integrates the march of humanity with occasional changes in environmental awareness, to explain how culture has come to its present state from within a local ecological infrastructure. Halesworth, and hundreds of towns like it, are ‘images’ of commercial communities that help towards this understanding. The helpful characteristics are:
· the communities are small enough to function as historical models with many different levels of understanding;
· and they exemplify many different types of disruptive events, which differ in size, chronological breadth and capacity to produce long-lasting effects.
In both respects, these small town models have a bearing on the need to explain history as a blend of stable structures and discontinuities.
The main task of the ‘old
history’ is one of tracing a line of tradition to discover how continuities are
maintained between generations, and how a single historical pattern is formed
and preserved. The task of the new
history of cultural ecology is to define transformations that serve as new
foundations or the rebuilding of old ones in relation to the availability of
natural resources. The historical
continuities are the momentum of the retail trade and population growth. The discontinuities are changes in the
perception and use of natural resources (exploiting resources) and changing
attitudes to charity (conserving resources).
This holistic
knowledge framework is set out as a mind map in Fig 1.2.
In summary, ‘Halesworth’ deals
with historical causality within the town as a long-established retail
community, which in the mid 18th century became linked with national
discontinuities in the utilisation and scientific study of natural
resources. The account is built upon
two top-level concepts of
‘exploiting resources’ and ‘conserving resources’. Exploiting resources encapsulates ideas about human production,
and ‘conserving resources’ deals with ideas about nature’s production’ in relation
to people being a part of local and global ecosystems. Halesworth’s conservation culture began to
merge with, and influence, the long-established retail culture, which had been
based on the relentless exploitation of natural resources. At any one time culture is the outcome of the
interactions between the two activities, and at the present time cultural
ecology is having something of an upper hand in the way Halesworthians perceive
their town and its future. This
conceptual framework of ‘Halesworth’ is presented in Fig 1.3. The second level concepts in this mind map
define its chapters.
Figure 1.2 A map of
cultural ecology defined by its general concepts and levels
Figure 1.3
‘Halesworth’ topic map
1.5 Citizen historians
Questions about being a community in both past and present are fundamentally about its physical basis, and how people defined its boundaries. Answering them involves gathering information about the local terrain as part of a wider social whole. People interacting with terrain as a place to settle have added the human dimension to create a 'landscape'. Their comings and goings to partake of its resources have put down countless physical and biological markers of human development, and also created a notional layer to the landscape. The notional layer is often based on descriptions and opinions of people who have selected certain physical, biological and cultural elements to conceptualise and communicate 'the spirit of the place' through literature and art.
'Halesworth’ is an exemplar to show people
how they can begin to visualise, and value their community's past, as part of
its present system of economic development. Indeed, community appraisal first
began with visual appraisal. It was Ralph Jeffrey, inspired by a book by De
Wolfe written in 1964 on Italian towns, who was one of the first to advocate a
formal system of environmental appraisal
De Wolfe advocated that this should start with
people making a 'visual enquiry' to establish the local 'spirit of the place'
by posing leading questions centred on
The Halesworth Conservation Area was first
designated in 1970 and amended and enlarged in 1979 and 1997. The latest development is the publication in
February, 2006 of Waveney District Council’s Character Appraisal and
Management Proposals/Strategy. This
describes the conservation area and its designated buildings, with some aims of
management and suggestions for amending the boundaries and listing more
buildings.
Actually, there are as many ways of evaluating a
community as there are people in it, the particular problems that bug them, and
the passions that excite them. However, a community appraisal based on its
landscape fits the requirements of producing a neighbourhood knowledge system
in its broadest context. It involves the presentation of an environmental
ethic, supported with knowledge of the historical, economic, and ecological
basis of community life. This is the foundation for environmental value
judgements required to launch projects to change things for the better. It
involves promoting an understanding of processes and skills by which this can
be done by participating citizens. Community appraisal should therefore equip
people to answer, and act upon, the following questions;
Seen in this context, the practical objective of ‘Halesworth’ is
to spur people to get involved with their community’s past in the present by
collecting information, writing stories about their lives, and generally
opening their eyes to the variety of cultural detail that surrounds them. The
aim is to set them thinking about their future society, and how it should be
expressed physically and economically in the rest of the millennium.
Regarding cultural change, the following
checklist of questions has been found useful:
With the
addition of an occasional 'where?' to incorporate the spatial component, the
authors have found this checklist particularly useful when applied to the
various social dimensions of the history of Halesworth. From answers to these questions would come
the measurement of change, but full answers are not yet available for
historical analysts in many cases.
Nevertheless, the remembering of the questions in relation to the
availability of information has produced a provisional quantitative history of
the town. This traces its preindustrial
economy through the industrial phase, which peaked in the 19th
century to the present post-industrial society looking for ways to move into a
‘sustainable future’.
Sustainability
is not a scientific concept but a social idea. In this connection, it is not
really a unifying concept for planning, but is more a ‘generator of problems’,
which will only be solved by the community moving into a new cultural mode (Fig
1.4). To get there requires novel
community organisations by which the town’s stakeholders can control their
local authority representatives so that the collective will is carried
out. The great economic events of
industrialism happened mostly when the fate of communities was in the hands of
narrowly based local councils or cliques and ad hoc bodies like the Turnpike
Trusts and Navigation Commissioners.
Since the Reform Acts at the end of the 19th century there
has been a move towards regionalism, which is still in progress. A small outcome, that had a large local
impact, was the commandeering of Halesworth’s ancient market rights by the
District Council. A small, but
significant sign of the growth of communitarianism is that in response to local
demand they have recently been returned.
Fig
1.4 The Halesworth historical model of
social ecology
The stream ripples and glances over its brown bed, warmed
with sunbeams; by its bank the green flags wave and rustle, and all about the
meadows shine in pure gold of buttercups.
The hawthorn hedges are a mass of gleaming blossom, which scents the
breeze. There above rises the heath,
yellow mantled with gorse and beyond, if I walk for an hour or two, I shall
come out upon the sandy cliffs of Suffolk, and look over the northern sea.
George Gissing: ‘The
Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft’
In these three sentences George Gissing summarises the
essence of Halesworth’s setting as envisaged from the Town Bridge, where the
northern tributary of the River Blyth finally cuts its way free of Suffolk’s
great western Clay Plateau to seek the coast at Southwold. This relatively
small river runs due east from Halesworth to join the main channel of the Blyth
just outside the town, to continue through a broad expanse of drained marshy
pasture bordered by the low sandy hills of Blyford and Wenhaston. At Blythburgh the valley becomes a tidal
marsh with broad mudflats, and the river eventually enters the sea at Southwold
Quay.
Fig. 2.1 Topographic diagram of Blything Hundred.
The development of Halesworth in modern times cannot be
understood without reference to the topography of this part of Suffolk,
particularly the river valleys, which cut the land into east-west
segments. In this connection, the town
is part of a larger pattern of human settlement that from the earliest of times
has been dominated by the complex drainage system of the River Blyth (Fig
2.1).
In fact, Halesworth’s topographic situation is reflected in its
ancient political position towards the centre of the Blything Hundred, about 10
miles from the coast. The Hundred is an ancient sub-division of the county
occupying precisely seven veins of the Blyth that have carved a broad arc into
the glacial plateau clays of High Suffolk. This clay plateau is at its highest
(about 55 metres) and flattest along a part of the western watershed, which
separates the parishes of Ubbeston (Blything Hundred) and Laxfield (Hoxne
Hundred). As inhabitants of the Hundred, Halesworth families have an
historical continuity with the Saxon people, or tribe, that had its capital at
Blythburgh. In this connection,
'Blything' is equated with 'people of the Blyth', a designation that may well
go further back in time to a coastal sub-division of land held by the Iron Age
Iceni. Blythburgh is the site of the Hundred's 'moot hall' and first came to
historical prominence as the religious centre of a branch of the important
Wuffinga kingship centred on Sutton Hoo.
This royal connection is evident from the Christian burial at Blythburgh
of King Ana in 654. It is recorded as
having a market in 1086 and in this respect its community had a functional
significance equal to the other Domesday economic centres of Suffolk, which
were at Kelsale, Dunwich, Ipswich, Stowmarket, Eye, Hoxne, Bungay, and Beccles.
Blything Hundred is a
well-defined territory, stretching from the Hundred River at Kessingland south
to another Hundred River, which separates Thorpeness from Aldeburgh. Although the old ways and skills of the
Blything may no longer be part of daily life, traditions of the earlier people
of the river valleys are still embedded within the ancient topographical
features of plateau, river and stream, which give the lands a powerful
sanctity.
In general, the Hundred boundary follows the contours that define the
Blyth watershed, but at some places it is marked by streams (becks), which are
also parish boundaries. The western valleys of the Blyth descend from the
fringe of the sparsely populated plateau settlements on the boundary, and are
characterised by having relatively steep, jagged, water-eroded sides, through
which minor roads follow narrow gullies. In relation to their size, relatively
small watercourses occupy these gullies, an indication that they were cut by
the flows of much larger volumes of water in the past. Some of these gullies
(locally named 'gulls') probably represent old melt-water channels of the last
glaciation. In this respect, the Blyth river system delineates a late glacial
landscape, with the land divided into several water-cut ridges running from west
to east. Although this coastal area was
no doubt attractive to the first post-glacial settlers, the corrugated ice-melt
terrain has always been a barrier to long distance north-south communication
through its settlements.
Towards the coast beyond Halesworth, streams cut through
sands and gravels (the Sandlings), which some believe were deposited from a
south-running ancestor of the River Rhine.
The outlets of all the rivers, from Kessingland to Aldeburgh, are
partially blocked by sand and shingle bars, and at the coast they are separated
from one another by soft cliffs undergoing rapid erosion. Safe havens are at a premium for coastal
trade. Occasional woods, copses, small
fields and tree lined hedgerows, considerably enhance the local character of an
intensively used landscape, which, in the 11th century, was the most
densely peopled region in England, with Suffolk having more than four hundred
of its churches and the main patterns of county settlement already set
out.
Historically, Halesworth seems not to have had an important
political position in the communities of the East Anglian coastal belt. It is just one of many irregular-shaped
parishes that are tightly packed within the Blyth watershed (Fig 2.2). Although there are archaeological signs of
occupation in the town going back to Palaeolithic times, there is no evidence
for Halesworth having been a major settlement in pre-Roman, Roman or Saxon
periods. However, the site of the
present church within an ovoid precinct could denote an early Christian
enclosure. A circular or curvilinear boundary is a feature of early Christian
church/chapel sites in Britain’s Celtic West.
Also, in this context, a short distance to the southwest is the
settlement of Walpole; the prefix ‘WAL’ coupled with ‘PWL’ (lake) may denote a
British (Welsh) settlement surviving in what became a predominantly Anglo-Saxon
area. The Norman overlords did not
fortify Halesworth, and their local administrative centre for this part of the
Shire was just outside the Blything Hundred, at Carlton.
Fig 2.2 Parishes of Blything Hundred: pre 1855
From early
times, it appears that the settlement of Halesworth became important as a
stopover point in an old communication network extending from east to west across
the clay plateau to the coast. The
community lies on a branch off the main highway that follows the Waveney valley
from Bury to Yarmouth. This branch
turns off towards Halesworth at the market town of Harleston. As a minor route it crosses the Waveney to
traverse the great flat, open spaces of the glacial plateau at Metfield, where
it enters the Hundred, and then follows the northern-most tributary of the
Blyth down to Halesworth. After
crossing Town Bridge north of the church and market place, the road turns along
the northern sandy edge of the main valley of the Blyth through Blyford to
Southwold, a rare haven on the North Sea coastal shipping route between
Yarmouth and Ipswich. This particular
road from Harleston to Southwold, is evident on the earliest route map of the
area (dotted line; Fig 2.3). It has lateral branches at Halesworth, which go
north to Bungay, and south, via Walpole and Peasenhall, to Yoxford.
The remarkable
thing about Kirby’s road map, compared with modern maps is the large proportion
of villages that stand in isolation off the main roads. This is reflection of the poor quality of
communications and the self-sufficiency of the communities. A statute of 1555 made the parish responsible for
highways and this continued until about 1663. It was then that an Act of
Parliament decreed that ‘Turnpike Trusts’ should be set up. Until then,
surfaces were not too important because roads were only used by packhorses and
pedestrians during the summer. In 1706 Parliament created the first turnpike trust, a scheme by
which local business people could charge a toll for using a road, applying the
money received to maintain the road. After 1750 there was a ‘mania’ for
turnpikes. Just over eight hundred acts
were passed in the twenty years after 1751, and by 1830 there were some 1,100
trusts, created by around 4,000 separate acts, administering more than 56,000
miles of road. Whereas the first turnpikes had been in the counties close to
London, trusts after 1750 were set up mainly in the Midlands, and after 1790
were concentrated in the north of England, reflecting the changing pattern of
economic growth. Many of the trusts were fraudulently administered, and the
Turnpike Act of 1822 required trusts to keep accounts. Nevertheless, it has been
estimated that, by the 1830s, the turnpikes were investing about £1.5 million a
year in the United Kingdom road system.
Fig.
2.3 Kirby’s road map of 1736
The improved roads
allowed a significant increase of haulage traffic, passenger coaches, and a
national postal service. Local landowners, merchants, parish officials and
farmers were persuaded to become involved because it was to their benefit in an
expanding economy to have improved communications. Most of the western
Blything catchment is dominated by clay soils, which means that the Blyth river
system has always been prone to saturation and flashy river responses. Before hard road surfaces were introduced,
winter brought local upland travel to a virtual standstill. The Blyth valley marshes to the east of
Halesworth were a major impediment in all seasons. Before the marshes to the east of the town were drained for
grazing, the modern way south from the town to the main London highway was
through Walpole to Yoxford. In those
times, Bramfield was reached by a local ‘common lane’, from church to
church. This lane was then just a minor
parochial link between the two places.
The situation only changed with the creation of the Bungay/ Halesworth/
Darsham turnpike, which, after passing through Halesworth, turned left at the
top of Pound St (London Rd.) to Bramfield.
From Bramfield it continued along a track called Beech Lane, which had
been improved by the trust for wheeled traffic to access the main coastal
turnpike from Yarmouth to Ipswich at Darsham. (Fig 2.4). It is thought that the flint-walled house at
the junction with the A12 was built for the toll keeper. There was probably another tollbooth in
Bramfield to catch traffic to Halesworth that converged laterally on the
crossroads in the centre of the village.
The economic stimulus given to trade by the
turnpike movement cannot be underestimated.
For example, Arthur Young the national advocate for improved
agriculture, with the interests of the countryside always at heart, rejoiced to
note that when a good turnpike road was made it opened out new markets. New ideas circulated through the
come-and-go of more frequent travel, and rents in the district soon rose with
the improvement of agriculture. On the other hand, he saw and deplored the
beginning of that 'rural exodus', which has been going on ever since, at a
pace, which matches the speed of improved communications. In his Farmer's
Letters (ed, 1771) he wrote:
To find fault with good roads would have the appearance of paradox and
absurdity; but it is nevertheless a fact that giving the power of expeditious
travelling depopulates the Kingdom. Young men and women in the country villages
fix their eyes on London as the last stage of their hope. They enter into
service in the country for little else but to raise money enough to go to
London, which was no such easy matter when a stage coach was four or five days
in creeping an hundred miles. The fare
and the expenses ran high. But now! A country fellow, one hundred miles
from London, jumps on a coach box in the morning, and for eight or ten
shillings gets to town by night, which makes a material difference; besides
rendering the going up and down so easy, the numbers who have seen London are
increased tenfold, and of course ten times the boasts are sounded in the ears
of country fools to induce them to quit their healthy clean fields for a region
of dirt, stink and noise.
However, without improving communications neither the industrial
nor the agricultural revolution could have taken place.
Fig.
2.5 Settlement of Halesworth in relation to the 50 ft contour of the upper
valley of the River Blyth, and its crossing points.
The picture of Halesworth as an
out-of-the-way focus for pedestrian and horse-borne travel was actually
reinforced by the granting of a market in the 13th century. This weekly market determined its local
inward-looking mercantile function for the next five centuries. The road connection with Southwold provided
its life-blood, which was trade with the coastal shipping route between
Newcastle and London. The peculiar
historical situation of Halesworth, off to one side of the main east-west
routes into East Anglia, also accounts for the fact that, today, in order to
reach the town from the main road network, the traveller either takes a winding
dog-leg route across the clay plateau from Harleston, or, if coming from the
south, has to make a sharp turn to the west off a relatively uninhabited
stretch of the A12 at Darsham.
The position
of the settlement of Halesworth at the junction of the east-west and north
south communications through Blything has been critical to its history and
economic development. The key to
understanding the town’s strategic position is the 50 ft contour on which St
Mary’s church and the market place, as the first point of settlement, are
positioned. This is illustrated
diagrammatically in Fig 2.5. The 50ft
contour delineates the flood plain of the river at this point, and highlights
the fact that the largest flows of water descend from the clay plateau via the
southern valley. The roads along both
the north and south valleys immediately to the east and west of Halesworth more
or less follow the line of the 50 ft contour.
As stated above, the main north south route from Yoxford to Bungay
crossed the Southern Blyth at Walpole Bridge.
Bramfield (Mells) Bridge marks the site of an ancient crossing of the
river by the common lane that ran from Halesworth church to
Bramfield. As pointed out above, the modern
road to the bridge appears to have been a later development of a Turnpike Trust
to speed Halesworth traffic to the main London Turnpike at Darsham.
Routes from the northwest,
northeast, and north, focus on Halesworth’s Town Bridge below the church. This bridge marks the narrowest point of the
flood plain for crossing the Blyth, and the road from Harleston takes this
route from the church, down The Thoroughfare to the northern bank, where it
rises steeply again from the bridge up to the 50 ft contour. The approach to the bridge via the
Thoroughfare was constructed over marshy ground. In this respect, it was reported in the 1951 Festival of Britain
brochure for the town, that during excavations
in The Thoroughfare, when pipes for a sewer were being laid, huge quantities of
peat were brought to the surface. The town’s marshy heritage is still
evident in that the river is prone to flash flooding. The last major flood episode occurred on 12th October
1993, when the river overflowed its banks and extended from the bridge some 200
metres up the road to the south, flooding the car park, the park, and
properties on either side of The Thoroughfare. For most of its existence,
Halesworth was confined to the narrow strip of land between the church and
river and most of its medieval thatched buildings were packed tightly along The
Thoroughfare down to the Town Bridge.
It is here that most of its remaining timber-framed houses are found.
Halesworth is one of the smaller parishes of the Blything hundred
and is characterised for the most part by an angular boundary, which follows
hedges and ditches between fields. Only
its southern edge is marked by a natural feature, where the parish boundary is
delineated by the meanderings of the southern Blyth (Figs. 2.6-2.7).
Fig 2.6 Parish
boundary of Halesworth (shaded) in the 19th century.
Parish boundaries are the
outcome of more than a thousand years of socio-economic history. They came after the primary process of
English settlement, which was followed by adjustments from time to time by the
exchange of land with neighbours. In
modern times, boundaries were changed radically in response to urbanisation and
the coming of the railways. For
example, Halesworth’s boundary was altered after the northern route of the
railway had cut off small irregular portions of the parish from its main
body. The last major alteration to
Halesworth’s boundaries was in 1934 and this more or less gave the parish its
present form (Fig 2.7).
Fig
2.7 The position of Halesworth parish
(modern boundary) in relation to river, roads and farms.
WL = wetland; BCL= Bramfield common lane
Counteracting the forces of change was the need for geographical
cohesion on the part of the community.
A sense of place was maintained year on year by the ceremony of beating
the bounds. This was the annual
perambulation, led by the churchwardens, of young and old along an established
route that circumnavigated the parish.
Beating the bounds originated before the days of maps, and involved a
procession from one prominent feature to another, i.e. an ancient tree, a
stream or a hilltop.
Fig
2.8 Compartmentation of outlying titheable lands (modified from Warner, 1987)
Shaded
area tithable to Halesworth
When the first map of Halesworth was made in the mid 18th century, a detached portion of Halesworth was embedded in the northern parish of Spexhall (Fig. 2.8-2.9-210). Subsequent adjustments of this anomaly between Halesworth and Spexhall accounts for the narrow northern extension of the parish parallel to Stone Street, the main road to Bungay. However, to understand the origins of the parochial territory of Halesworth that subsequently conditioned its economic development requires examining its condition and that of its northern neighbours at the time of King William’s Domesday Survey.
Fig
2.9 Halesworth in Spexhall (1842)
The fields of
Halesworth’s northern extension are rectangular and appear to have been planned
with their common axis running north to south (Fig 2.9), more or less following
the line of Stone St. which predates them.
Nearer to the
centre of Halesworth, the boundary forms a projection, which contains the
homestead of Hill Farm (Fig. 2.10).
This ‘bulge’ is evidence of some kind of land deal in the past that took
place between Halesworth and Holton. It
could have been that Holton received a finger of land from Halesworth or that
Hill Farm was carved out of Holton.
There are no documented clues as what actually happened.
Generally, it
can be inferred from the way parish boundaries sometimes zigzag across the land
that negotiations over the enclosure of common land to make private fields,
and/or, the consolidation of estates on boundaries, which actually extended one
village and reduced another, was commonplace at the most distant points from
the centre of the village. All of this
might or might not be written down as a description of who owned which
fields. Mapping was a relatively late
process in community history and it not only fossilized community memory of
where one village ended and another began, but also signified ancient deals in
real estate, some of which have been traced back to Saxon charters.
Fig. 2.10 Parish boundary of Halesworth in relation to the Holton
and Wissett 1842
The Domesday Survey tells that most of Halesworth was then in the hands of a powerful Norman baron, Earl Hugh. He was pressing his claim on the remainder of the village, which was contested by another of King William’s henchmen, Earl Alan.
The following Domesday entry for Halesworth is substantial and describes three estates with manorial status. That is to say there were three lords with competing interests in land and people.
Aelfric held Halesworth TRE as a manor with 2
carucates of land. Then 4 villans, now 5.
Then 7 borders, now 10. Then as
now 2 slaves. Then as now 2 ploughs in demesne. Then 3 ploughs belonging to the
men, now 2. Then woodland for 300 pigs,
now for 100. Then as now 4 acres of
meadow. 1 mill, 1 horse. Then as now 6 head of cattle. Now 10 pigs. 18 sheep. Then it was
worth 30 (s). now 40(s).
In the same vill Ulf the priest held 40 acres of
land as one manor. 2 borders. 1 plough
in demesne. Woodland for 6 pigs. 4
acres of meadow. 14 sheep. 2
goats. It is worth 5s.
To this manor have been joined 4 free men with 60
acres of land. 2 borders. 2 ploughs in demesne. It is worth 10s. And
Bigod de Loges holds these 3 estates from Earl Hugh.
It is one league long and another broad. It renders 7 ½ d in geld. Count Alan claims the land of the aforsaid priest and those of 4 men through his predecessor and his own seisin and the Hundred testifies (for him).
Earl Hugh also had interests in four parishes adjacent to
Halesworth, holding Bramfield as one manor, with properties in Walpole,
Thorington, Wenhaston and Wissett.
There is no Domesday entry for Spexhall and its eastern neighbour,
Westhall. Omissions of villages that
were later described as long-established communities are unusual, but not
unknown in Suffolk. This simply adds
to the air of mystery surrounding the origins of Halesworth, not least because
19th century Halesworth shared a fragmented northern boundary with
Wissett, Spexhall and Westhall.
It has been said that the landscape of Suffolk is still essentially
a Saxon one. The description of Domesday Halesworth as being one league long
and another broad, fits with the relative dimensions of the 19th
century parish. A clue to the
settlement’s connection with Spexhall could be Halesworth’s ownership of Domesday
woodland that could provide pannage for 300 pigs. This is a substantial amount of land that was probably sited on
unoccupied claylands to the north of the town.
Another large area of pannage was included in the survey of Wissett,
again amounting to 300 pigs. These figures are not accurate counts of actual
animals but were taken by the King’s surveyors to represent orders of magnitude
for comparative purposes. In the 1839
Tithe Apportionment, two blocks of fields belonging to Halesworth were embedded
in Spexhall, and there was also a part of Spexhall that was titheable in
Westhall. These arrangements indicate that this flat, and still relatively
uninhabited landscape, which is part of the watershed between the Blyth,
Wangford Brook and Waveney, was pre-Conquest wood pasture, with common land
rights held by villages to the south.
Subsequently, the block of land straddling Stone Street, a supposed
Roman road, became shared between the three communities, each having specified
amounts of common land, and these commons were subsequently enclosed to give
the parochial boundaries as shown in the Tithe Maps. The virtual snapshot of
the northern edge of Blything in 1086 illuminates the process of clearing and
settlement of upland forest. The
process had long been a feature of the spread of the English, as families moved
west, exploring Suffolk’s network of streams to access the heavy clay
cornlands.
The parish touched most people's lives through its role as a form of local government and as a significant landscape feature, which defined a circuit of territory to which local people may have felt an allegiance. Evidence for the social meaning of boundaries is found in acts of boundary marking and related perambulation ceremonies and through written records, sometimes involving maps. In the primary definition a premium was placed on local knowledge, especially of the older parishioners. Acts of boundary recording could enhance a sense of parish consciousness and community.
The peculiar arrangement of Halesworth’s northern parish boundary as it was mapped in the early 19th century, in relation to Wissett and Holton, with the detached portion of Halesworth embedded in Spexhall, requires some explanation. The fact that Spexhall church appears to have originated to serve a chapelry of Wissett, suggests that Spexhall was actually a post-Conquest community created on the eastern plateau lands of Wissett. Wissett’s pannage for 300 pigs reinforces the idea that there was a large tract of woodland available to the parish that was probably the plateau land upon which Spexhall was eventually established as an independent parish, where it shared common rights with Halesworth and Westhall.
Fig.
2.11 Plateau-edge parishes of Brampton, Westhall and Sotherton
There are also intriguing arial relationships between the lands situated at the edges of several parishes immediately to the north of Halesworth. Uncertainties of ownership in these flat lands with no obvious physical markers, seem to have existed where Halesworth impinged on the territory of the three north-eastern parishes of Brampton, Westhall and Sotherton, to the east of Stone St. These three parishes are situated on the edge of the clay plateau with their communities focused in three small valleys with unnamed streams feeding the River Blyth beyond Wangford at Wolsey’s Bridge (Fig 2.11). If their churches are taken as the main points of settlement, it is clear that the 75 ft contour is a key to the original suitability of these valleys for their first communities. From the churches, the parish lands rise up the valleys to the west, where, in the case of Westhall, the boundary is for the most part aligned north to south, parallel to Stone Street, from which it was separated by about half a mile of territory belonging to Halesworth and Spexhall. The northern boundaries of Westhall and Brampton coincide with Blything’s Hundred boundary, as did Halesworth’s detached northern block of land.
Sotherton is the smallest of the three villages and
abuts onto Holton and Blyford. The contiguity and shapes of their 19th
century boundaries (Fig. 2.12) is strongly suggestive that they were originally
one community, with a western nook, or valley, which became a separate
village. Sotherton or ‘south
community’, which is mentioned in Domesday, is a candidate for an early
division of Brampton. Westhall has to
be ‘west’ of something, and indeed, it forms the western boundary of Brampton. The name ‘Brampton’ is common throughout
England and has been equated with ‘burnt place’ i.e. a community laid waste by
fire. This is a clue to a point in time
when a disaster overcame Brampton in Suffolk, after which three new nuclear
villages, Brampton, Sotherton and Westhall were created out of the one
territory. Regarding their origins, in 1086 Brampton had about three
times the farming activity of Sotherton, which from its holding of 100 hogs was
probably largely a woodland area. The
actual dimensions of Sotherton were given as 1 league long by half a league wide. Brampton’s size was not recorded.
Fig
2.12 The ‘nuclear’ communities of Wissett and Brampton
Warner, in his booklet, ‘Seven Wonders from
Westhall’ has mapped the probable 14th century distribution of
woodland in the three parishes (Fig 2.13).
His map shows a southern block straddling the boundary between Westhall
and Sotherton. This pattern of
distribution, taken together with the relatively large area of common land in
Westhall that was probably derived from woodland, indicates that Westhall was a
post-Conquest creation by the division of Sotherton and its settlement from
Brampton. Its relatively large area of
common land was probably a legacy from its origins as a block of wood pasture. From an examination of the plan and
Romanesque features of Westhall church, Warner favours a late 11th
century origin for its foundation as a stone-built chapel, which was
subsequently embellished with an apse with a well-carved ‘Norman’ chancel arch
and portal in the next century.
What have these ancient topographic features of the communities
north of the town to do with the development of Halesworth? First there is an etymological unity with
the name 'hal or hall' used to describe an out of the way place. The name Halesworth (various early spellings
are Halesuuorda, Haleurda, Healesuurda) may have originated as a local
description of 'the farming community (urda) of the nook (hale)'. Hal or hall
is common to the cluster of Spexhall, Westhall, Titshall (an isolated wood in
Brampton), Spexhall and Ilketshall. In
line with this, there is evidence that these communities spread out from small
well-watered valleys at the northern edge of Blything Hundred, up onto the
intractable wooded clayland of the high plateau. This plateau between the Blyth and Waveney catchments was
probably an impediment to north-south communication from the earliest
times. In this respect, Stone Street is
regarded as a local engineering initiative of the Romans to drive a route
across the impenetrable claylands between Halesworth and Bungay. This was probably in order to connect the
Romano-British farms of Blything with military installations on the Yare and
Waveney. There is still something of a
mystery about the so-called Roman Roads in and around Blything. Quite often, as in the case of Stone St, the
straight bits connect up bendy bits.
Where there are gaps, the maps often show a dotted line as if the
intermediate section had been destroyed, but without archaeological evidence
for the assumption. A more reasonable
conclusion is that the bendy bits were in existence as a network of local
community tracks before the arrival of the legionary task force, whose job was
to connect up with the next local network on a straight line across a stretch
of impenetrable terrain. After all, these
roads were probably required for the long-distance movement of agricultural
supplies rather than for the rapid deployment of military assets.
Fig
2.13 Disposition of parishes to the east of Stone St in relation to 14th
century woodland
(modified
from Warner, 1996)
Finally, the shape of Halesworth probably developed,
and was restricted, as the result of competition between the ‘nook’ communities
for the empty claylands. In this
connection, Brampton may be regarded as a prototype of Halesworth, with its
church sited above a stream crossed by a minor road. At Domesday it was about twice the size of Halesworth and like
Halesworth its lord successfully petitioned Henry III for a market and fair
(1251), as did the lord of Sotherton (1226).
The latter rights were later transferred to the secondary community of
Westhall. This signalled the beginning
of the decline of Sotherton relative to Westhall, and by the 17th
century it was only half the size of its northern neighbour. At this time
(1674) Brampton had 20 households, Westhall had 46, and Sotherton had 21. In
contrast, Halesworth had 226 households at this time, and the retail
revolution, which boosted the population of Halesworth, had bypassed its
northern neighbours, and even the coming of the railway did not significantly
enhance their agrarian economies. In
contrast to Halesworth, they remain to this day as sparsely populated, out of
the way places, and rare examples of extreme rurality.
We see society as a grouping that holds
individuals together and cements relationships between them. In England and the Anglicised areas of
eastern and south Wales, the basic unit of society was the lordship and the
manor. The manor, comprised 'demesne'
lands, 'anciently and time out of mind' reserved to the lord's use, freehold
tenancies and 'customary' land. Freeholders enjoyed a secure title, the rights
to sell, lease and bequeath their land, and the protection of the common law.
They held around a fifth of the land in many areas, and still more in some. The
lord's demesne had formerly been cultivated by serf labour. By 1500, it was
usually leased out to tenants for periods of years or ‘lives’ in return for an
initial 'entry fine' and an annual rent negotiated at the time of the granting
of tenancy. Customary lands, in contrast, passed by 'admission' and 'surrender'
in the manor court, on terms, which were subject to the 'custom of the manor'.
In the central Middle Ages, such land had been held by unfree serfs or
'villeins' - 'at the will of the lord and according to the customs of the
manor' — in return for the performance of labour services on the demesne and
the payment of various customary dues. By 1500 serfdom was largely, though not
entirely, extinct as a legal status. Some customary tenants remained tenants at
will, holding property from year to year, with no legal rights beyond that of
harvesting a growing crop if required to relinquish their tenancy. Most,
however, were 'copyholders', holding land by virtue of a copy of the entry on
the manor court roll recording their admission to the tenancy. Their common
designation covered a bewildering profusion of actual terms and conditions,
which varied according to the customs of individual manors. All copyholders paid an entry fine and an annual rent. But some manors
accorded rights of inheritance, while others granted land only for years or
lives. On some, entry fines or rents had become fixed. On others they remained
'arbitrary' and renegotiable when the current tenancy expired. The extent of
the proprietary rights enjoyed by such tenants thus differed greatly. A
copyholder of inheritance, with a fixed fine and rent, was virtually as secure
as a freeholder. Others might be much more exposed to the estate-management
policies of their landlords — though rarely to the extent that was prevalent in
Scotland. The rents and obligations owed by tenants were as variegated as their
forms of tenure. For freeholders they were negligible, involving only a small
payment in 'recognition' of a lord's jurisdiction and the obligation of 'suit'
at his court. English leaseholders paid money rents based on an assessment of
the current value of the land. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries leases were generally long and their terms were generous.
By the late Middle Ages, Halesworth’s manorial
structure was evident in three manors, Halesworth Manor itself, which comprised
a large proportion of the urbanised centre, Dame Margery’s Manor, which
consisted of only a few tens of acres and was probably taken out of Halesworth
Manor and subsequently merged back into it, and Rectory Manor. The latter comprised most of the newly
urbanised land to the north of the river.
Its lord was the Rector of Halesworth and its revenues went to the Church.
This may have originated in the 40 acres of land held by Ulf the priest at
Domesday. It appears that most of the
parish was, from early times, freehold land.
The
records of the transactions of the court of Rectory Manor from the 18th
and 19th centuries have survived, from which it can be seen that its
system of fines and admissions was a financial and administrative burden to the
tradesmen of Halesworth north of the Thoroughfare. An example of what they had to contend with may be seen in the
following extract of the minutes of the manorial court held in 1734. It records the transfer of a tenancy from
John Hawks to Thomas Brown for which the latter had to pay a fee to the Lord of
the Rectory Manor, even though the Manor did not own the property. It also records that this particular
manorial tenancy had been transferred to John Hawks from Nathaniel Short. The actual passage of the tenancy to Thomas
Brown involved Edmund Brown, a tailor, who was granted the legal right to
transfer the premises to Thomas Brown.
A general Court Baron there
hold for the said Manor the thirteenth day of June in the year of our lord one
thousand seven hundred and thirty-four before Thomas Betts Esq. Steward there.
Homage; John
Schimming and James Woolnough sworn.
At this Court comes here into
court John Hawks in his proper person, and doth surrender into the hands of the
Lord of the said Manor, by the said steward, by Thomas Rodd, all that copyhold
messuage or tenement situate and lying and being in Halesworth late in the
tenure and occupation of Nathaniel Short, together with a curtilage to the
same- belonging to which premises the said John Hawks was admitted tenant to
him and his heirs at a Court here held for the said Manor the nineteenth day of
October in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twenty-four upon
the surrender of Robert Bartrup- to the use of Edmund Brown of Halesworth in
the County of Suffolk, Taylor- and of his heirs and assigns for ever, who being
present here in court in his proper person- puts himself in Favour with the
Lord and prays to be admitted Tenant to the premises so surrendered as
aforesaid. To which said Edmund Brown the Lord of this Manor by his said
steward- doth grant and therof deliver seizin by Thomas Rodd to hold those premises
with the appurtenances unto the said Thomas Brown, his heirs and assigns of the
Lord at the will of the Lord- according to the custom of the said Manor by the
rents and customs and services thereoftofore due and of right accustomed, and
he pays to the Lord his fine and is admitted Tenant.
The
manorial system of Halesworth lasted well into the 20th century. As
late as 1939, Kelly’s Suffolk Directory states that “William Ram Esq. is lord of the manors of Halesworth and Dame
Margery’s (about 250 acres) and the Rector is lord of the Rectory manor (about
40 acres). The land is held by a number
of owners”
'Neighbourliness' was another keyword of
sixteenth-century social relations, expressing a critically important social
ideal. The relationship which it defined was based upon residential proximity,
interaction of a regular kind, and a degree of consensus regarding proper
conduct among residents within local communities. Communities were, as one contemporary put it, 'the first societies
after propagation of families wherein people are united ... in ... the mutual
comforts of neighbourhood and intercourse one with another'. Such focused
interaction and consensus were created partly by institutions, not least, as we
have seen above, those of lordship. The sense of collective identity of rural
communities was derived in part from the inhabitants' common relationship to a
lord, and it was further elaborated in the formulation of local custom. Custom,
it has been said, 'presupposes a group or community within which it is
practised'. Moreover, it helped to constitute such groups, expressing a
‘community of interest’ among neighbours, defining their relationships not only
to the lord but also to one another, and contributing to the formulation of a
sense of place and of an individual’s identity within that place.
All
this was evident in the ways in which the institutions of lordship and tenancy
were also institutions of self-regulation within the tenurial communities to
which most people still belonged. It was perhaps most visible nationally in the
organisation of common-field agriculture. In this system each tenant held
parcels of land scattered in strips across great open fields, while further
enjoying access to certain collective 'use rights' - to common pasture on the
fields after harvest and on areas of permanent common grazing land, or to the
resources of food, fuel and materials provided by the woods, common and
'waste'. The system had many variants within the common need for the cooperative
organisation of husbandry. From the
time of the first records of land use, the open-field system was not dominant
in Suffolk. Some authorities believe
this implies very early enclosure.
Others take its absence as evidence of continuity from the Saxon
settlement; in other words open field agriculture was never fully adopted.
Lordship and neighbourhood were also of
relevance to town society. Lesser towns were often 'seigneurial boroughs'
governed by seigneurial courts and owing their fee farm to their lord.
Neighbourhood was as characteristic of urban streets and parishes as of rural
communities. Towns, however, were also distinguished by their relative
independence and distinctive institutions. Urban autonomy had developed from the
basic right to hold markets and to possess institutions of self-government by a
process of slow accretion. Inevitably, it varied in its extent. But it could
produce a strong sense of civic independence, especially if a town had achieved
the accolade of incorporation, which conferred legal identity as a corporate
body.
Within that collective identity, the urban
community was comprised of a variety of component groups. Its core members of
these brotherhoods were the citizens or burgesses, who possessed the ‘freedom’
of the place, and the members of the craft fellowships. The latter were companies or guilds, which
had evolved from loose associations of men with a common occupation into
'organised communities with exclusive rights', controlling the affairs of
particular trades. These two categories overlapped. Citizenship was the
prerequisite for full participation in the economic and political life of the
town. It could be acquired by various means — including patrimony, marriage,
purchase or 'redemption' and apprenticeship.
‘Citizenship’, however, was usually contingent upon membership of a
guild. Variations in the size of citizen communities tended to depend upon
whether the franchise was available only to independent masters, or was
extended also to journeymen who had completed their apprenticeship. All in all, the guilds promoted a powerful spirit of fraternity and
mutual responsibility, which reflected medieval ideals of association. Such
values were shared by the rulers of the towns, whose exercise of authority was
informed by notions of stewardship and obligation to the wider community, and
who sought to harmonise the economic interests of potentially hostile groups in
the general interests of 'amity, love and quietness'. Nor were they alien to the
poor. Late-medieval urban society, it has been said: ‘while undoubtedly
stratified, resembled a trifle rather than a cake: its layers were blurred and
the sherry of accepted values soaked through them'.
Throughout discussion of local economic
institutions and relationships a particular idiom recurs in the terminology of
the records: one of 'kindness', 'friendship' and 'fraternity'. Neighbours were
enjoined to live in 'kindly intercourse' and 'friendly unity', and guild
members to be 'brothers', 'sisters' and 'friends'. This was in fact an idiom of
kinship, invoking the affective bonds of family relationships. Forms of
economic association thus overlapped conceptually with those of kinship, and
this fact inevitably raises the question of the significance of kinship in the
economic relations of the time. In one respect, kinship was of fundamental
significance in transmitting property between the generations, and facilitating
the entry of the young into independent adulthood. But what of the broader
roles of kinship, and in particular those of the networks of kinfolk, which
extended beyond the nuclear family household?
Throughout Britain, bonds of kinship also had a
significant role in the 'social uplands' of the aristocracy and gentry. In provincial
society, both intermarriage among the landed families of a county or region,
and the establishment of cadet branches, created series of overlapping networks
of connection, which were bound together not only by neighbourhood, but also by
blood. Such networks could involve extensive mutual co-operation. This can be seen in the acquisition,
management and defence of property, where a trusted core of 'friends' within
the gentry community acted as patrons, go-betweens, executors, arbitrators,
witnesses, trustees and, if necessary, armed supporters.
Urban
kinship could provide a bond of solidarity in both political and economic
affairs. Leading citizens were frequently closely interlinked by blood and
marriage. In trade, relatives provided an 'operational extended family' of
trusted individuals with shared commercial interests, who provided credit,
advice, support and contacts. Much the same could be said of the leading
members of the church, and professions such as the law. Thus to get on in
Halesworth, membership of one ‘party’ or another was a great advantage and
incomers had to break through the barriers of kinship.
The
particularity of happenings in Halesworth derived in part from the
distinctiveness of its customs, institutions, expectations and patterns of
relationships. But it was also shaped
by the manner in which they were linked into larger worlds.
For analytical purposes, four overlapping
spheres of commercial activity may be distinguished. The most basic of these involved
the intensive small-scale dealing, which took place among the inhabitants of an
immediate locality. In rural society this commonly involved a kind of
quasi-commercial extension of neighbourliness, well documented in those
numerous minor transactions - often involving credit - which are recorded in
wills and inventories. In the towns too, a good deal of the business of small
tradesmen was conducted with fellow townspeople within what remained highly
localised markets. As in the
countryside, Halesworth’s urban inventories and court records indicate that
many of these transactions were conducted on credit or 'trust', in a manner
that created a complex web of economic interdependence among known individuals
extending up, down and across local societies, which were more diverse but no
less intimate than their rural counterparts.
In all likelihood most small husbandmen and
tradesmen conducted the greater part of their commercial dealings within such
contexts. A second sphere of activity, however, was that comprising rural/urban
and inter-urban trade at the level of the district, 'country' or sub-region.
Despite their elements of autonomy, rural and urban economies were in no sense
separate spheres. It is helpful to
think not of town and country, but rather of interconnected socio-economic
areas that were centred on a town. All
towns depended on the countryside for supplies of food and raw materials and
for much of their custom. Country-dwellers needed the towns as trading forums
for their produce and as suppliers of specialist manufactures and services.
Moreover, similar reciprocities existed between urban economies, or rather
between those town-centred socio-economic areas. In both instances, the vital unit of analysis is that of the country town and its hinterland,
or 'market area'.
All market towns were essentially part of the
countryside, which they served and from which they gained most of their living.
They varied nonetheless in both their size and their significance in the
structuring of commercial activity within their 'countries'. The smallest have
been aptly described as 'market villages' i.e. villages with an overlay of
urban activities, and as 'foci in time', briefly galvanised into activity on
their market days. Nevertheless, they performed a vital role in binding the
settlements around them into larger economic units. Regular use of those
markets for the exchange of small surpluses provided them with several points
of entry into the larger economy of the district. Moreover, such periodic influx
from surrounding villages meant that even small towns were able to sustain a
range of specialist activities somewhat greater than that represented in the
average rural settlement. In a survey of occupations in the Babergh Hundred of
Suffolk in 1522, for example, the twenty-seven villages had between two and
fourteen male occupations each. The small towns of Boxford, Nayland, Lavenham
and Long Melford, however, had between eighteen and twenty-seven. Sudbury, the
most significant market town of the district, had forty-nine. Sudbury
provides an example of what have been termed 'district market towns': places
with a more extensive role in articulating the patterns of exchange of an
area. Some simply provided more services than any rival. Some had developed a
degree of specialisation in addition to their general trading functions. This is the pattern that singled out
Halesworth from this time.
The tithe system from time immemorial had caused much friction between
church and congregation. The harvest song—
' We've cheated the parson, we'll cheat him again, For why should the
Vicar have one in ten?'
expressed an anti-tithe sentiment as old as Anglo-Saxon England.
The tithe was levied from the tenant farmer, very often in kind: the tenth
sucking pig went to the parson's table; the tenth sheaf was carried off to his
tithe barn. Long before the Reformation it had been a cause of friction and
bitterness, Chaucer had praised the good parson who did not 'cursen for his
tithes,' that is, excommunicate the recalcitrant tithe-payer. The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 laid this
ancient grievance between the rural laity and their priests to rest. It stopped
payment in kind. Tithes were commuted for a rent-charge on land. In 1891 it was
made payable by the landowner, no longer by the tenant farmer except perhaps
indirectly through his rent. The squires, who were socially and politically
allied to the parsons, did not object to paying tithe as strongly as their
tenants. The Commutation Acts gave temporary peace to the countryside. It was
only later, when after 1918 so many cultivating farmers bought their own land
and having become landowners found themselves directly chargeable with tithe,
that a fresh agitation arose leading to fresh concessions at the expense of the
Church.
At the time of the legal process of Tithe
Apportionment in Halesworth, nine people owned most of Halesworth’s
agricultural land (Table 2.1). George
Parkyns of Chediston Hall was one of the town's greatest landowners. He was also by far the greatest landowner in
Chediston, where he exercised his role as lord of the manor from his imposing
mansion of Chediston Hall.
Table
2.1 Halesworth land holdings in Tithe Apportionment: 1839
Owner |
Size |
Farm |
Occupier |
Size
(acres) |
Charles
Woolby |
196.2.18 |
|
Charlotte
Hart |
196.2.18 |
John
Crabtree |
34.3.14 |
|
Himself |
7.0.27 |
|
|
|
William
Woodyard |
27.2.27 |
James
Johnson |
105.0.39 |
|
Himself |
105.0.39 |
George
Parkyns |
192.2.23 |
Chediston
Hall |
Various
occupiers |
6.2.36 |
|
|
|
|
0.2.36 |
|
|
|
|
124.1.18 |
|
|
|
|
60.3.13 |
Jacob
Pattison |
12.2.03 |
|
Stephen
Newson |
12.2.03 |
George
Suggate |
3.3.14 |
|
Rev.
Blois Samuel Turner |
3.3.14 |
Harley
Archer |
17.0.03 |
|
James
Crickmer |
17.0.03 |
Anne
Cole |
87.1.35 |
|
William
George |
65.3.15 |
|
|
|
James
Punchard |
21.2.20 |
Rev.
Jeremy Day |
123.1.21 |
Day’s
Farm |
Martin
George |
123.1.21 |
Other
land owned |
81.1.24 |
|
25.0.05 |
|
|
|
|
3.2.14 |
|
|
|
|
0.3.24 |
|
|
|
|
51.3.21 |
|
Isaac
Butcher |
22.0.04 |
|
Himself |
22.0.04 |
Such was the
hold that the territory of Blything had on its people through the socializing
of its primary production and routeways that had been carved out of a primeval
ecology of wet valleys and upland forest.
This provided a rich heritage of natural resources that Halesworth
gathered from its rural neighbours.
Every world-economy is a sort of jigsaw puzzle,
juxtaposition of zones interconnected, but at different levels. On the ground, at least three different
areas or categories can be distinguished: a narrow core, a fairly developed
middle zone, and a vast periphery. The
qualities and characteristics of the type of society, economy, technology,
culture and political order necessarily alter as one moves from one zone to
another. This is an explanation of very
wide application….
F.
Braudel (1979)
A potted history of European economic development would have it that as
the peasants cleared the land; as people became more numerous, they harnessed
the power of wheel and windmill; communications were established between
regions once completely foreign to each other; barriers came down. Countless towns sprang up or revived
wherever there was a crossroads of trade, and the creation of these urban
islands were undoubtedly the crucial factor that launched the competitive capitalist
European economy. Between 1250 and 1350 Europe was suddenly covered with towns,
which were the major pieces of an expanding international economic jigsaw. Rural production and exchange was dominant
and rurality was the norm for Halesworth’s vast periphery of Hundred and
County, within which its new urban economies were developing. Halesworth’s tradesfolk consolidated their
urban future within Blything Hundred by virtue of its roads to the river
crossing, its market, its workshops and the money that accumulated through
buying and selling goods from town and country within half a mile radius from
the parish church. Its market place ensured its food supply, as peasants came
regularly to town with their produce. Its market stalls offered an outlet for
the growing family surpluses of the surrounding lordly domains and for the huge
amounts of produce emanating from the ‘lordship-zone’, which came from the
payment of manorial dues in kind.
After about 1150, Europe moved beyond direct agricultural consumption
of peasant rurality and family self-sufficiency, to the stage of indirect
agricultural consumption created by the exchange of surplus rural production in
urban markets. At the same
time, towns attracted all the skilled crafts, creating for themselves a focused
monopoly, through guilds and apprenticeships, of the manufacture and marketing
of industrial products (Fig 3.1). Only
later would this kind of pre-industry move back into the countryside. In short, economic life, especially after
the thirteenth century, began to take precedence over the earlier agrarian
functions of the towns. Towns became
retail islands in a sea of rurality.
Their influence spread over a very wide area as the crucial move was
made from a domestic to a market economy.
In other words, the towns were beginning to tower above their rural
surroundings and to look beyond their immediate horizons. This was a great
economic leap forward, the first in the series that created European society
and launched it on its successful capitalist career. There is only one event even
remotely comparable to this: the creation by the first European settlers in
America of the many transit-towns, linked to each other by road and by the
requirements of commerce, communication, and defence.
The guild system was the socio-economic high point of medieval urban
commercialism. The Guild Hall was a
central point of business and local politics.
Its importance was expressed in silver plate and pomp and circumstance,
particularly in a town like Halesworth, where there was no mayoralty. The trade guilds had an
enormous amount of power, membership being required for social, economic, or
political advancement. Some of the most important guilds had legal enforcement
rights, and could forbid traders or artisans to operate within their
jurisdiction on penalty of confiscation of their wares and tools. Several, such
as the ‘Fishmongers’ and ‘Glovers’, could, on their own authority, search
private homes to seize inferior goods. Farmers were not permitted to form a guild
for fear of price fixing food, the mainstay of the whole economic edifice.
Fig 3.1 The economic course of
urbanisation
For those who wish to commune with this idea of the Halesworth
closed-guild fraternity, the ‘woolshop’ and the ‘paper-shop’ next door now
occupy part of the main structure of the town’s old Guild Hall in the
Thoroughfare. When its main wooden
frame was erected, probably in the second half of the 15th century,
its very size would have dominated the town’s main street. The building has been much altered since
then. There are fragmentary records
of the
activities of three guilds that used the building: the 'Guild of St John the
Baptist', the 'Guild of St Loye and the ‘Guild of St Anthony'. The former was the guild of tailors, and St
Loye or St Eloi is the patron saint of blacksmiths. St Anthony represents the grocery fraternary. Each guild, had a location in the parish
church, the prominence of its altar being related to the guild’s wealth. The Guild of Blacksmiths seemed to be
Halesworth’s richest fraternity, which appears to have occupied the South
Chapel, now the Lady Chapel dedicated to St Loye. This raises the question of whether Halesworth’s Blacksmith’s
Guild was serving a wider company of smiths with their premises in the
surrounding villages. Another aspect of
guild history is that by the Tudor period the system was debased by the Crown,
and had become largely ceremonial and a source of Crown revenues. It was common for honorary memberships, called
the ‘Freedom of the Company’, to be awarded to town notables, and it may be
that the chapel in St Mary’s Church represented the hub of local worthies who
formed ‘a late medieval church party’ to counterbalance the power of the town’s
three manorial lordships.
The guilds heralded the approach of capitalism in industry as distinct
from commerce. The movement of people to the towns and the natural increase of
population made the older established craftsman look to his rights and view
with jealousy the increasing number of entrants into the crafts. In their hey-day
the guilds had been largely classless bodies. A youth served his
apprenticeship, perhaps remained for a year or two as a journeyman, and then
set up shop for himself as a master craftsman. Even before 1400, this routine
had ceased to work smoothly. There were complaints that the guilds were raising
entry fees and in various ways restricting admission to the craft. Frequent
disputes between masters and journeymen over such matters as hours and wages
showed the existence of a clash of interest. The journeymen reacted to the new
conditions by forming guilds of their own. These yeomen or journeymen guilds
foreshadowed the modern trade union. At first, the older guilds tried to suppress
them, and were aided in this by the municipal authorities and the State itself.
Indeed an Act passed in 1548 resembles in many ways the famous pre-trade union
Combination Law of 1799. It recites that journeyman guilds:
"have made confederacies and promises and have sworn mutual oaths,
not only that they should not meddle one with another's work and perform
and finish that another hath begun, but also to constitute and appoint how much
work they should do in a day and what hours and times they shall work, contrary
to the laws and statutes of the realm."
Sometimes the masters compromised by assigning certain functions to the
journeymen guilds, which, made them in effect subordinate parts of the craft
guild itself. The significance of the yeomen guilds is that they mark the
beginnings of the capitalist system in industry. Under the craft guild system
the market was generally a local one, and division of labour between crafts was
based on the production of finished commodities. A single craft stood between
the raw material and the consumer. The weaver obtained his yarn from the housewife,
the traditional spinner or spinster, and made cloth, which he sold, to the
consumer. This simple state of affairs could not be permanent.
The guild system, which was closely intertwined with the Church, was
dismantled at the Reformation, but the master/learner relationship continued,
and is recorded in the lists of Halesworth’s apprenticships. A list of masters with apprentices dating
from the turn of the 18th century is presented in Table 3.1.
Table
3.1 List of Halesworth masters with apprenticship indentures 1793-1840
(SRO:124/G5/1)
Archer,
Harley tailor 1800
Archer,
Harley tailor 1820
Berry,
Joseph shoemaker 1815
Botham,
Benj. tailor 1837
Bush,
Henry tailor 1793
Calver,
John glover 1814
Card,
William bricklayer 1801
Carles,
Wm. shoemaker 1833
Carr,
Isaac cordwainer 1826
Carr,
Isaac shoemaker 1821
Chapman,
John shoemaker 1817
Collett,
Henry tailor 1809
Croft,
Daniel shoemaker 1818
Cross,
Sam shoemaker 1823
Cross,
William currier 1812
Cullingford,
James whitesmith 1826
Easterson,
Thomas whitesmith 1822
Estaugh,
Wm cordwainer 1798
Jeffreson,
Charles glover 1822
Johnson,
Sarah dressmaker 1836
Kindred,
George tailor 1839
Mayhew,
James farmer 1832
Newson,
Sam. shoemaker 1818
Read,
Jacob basketmaker 1812
Robinson,
William tailor 1826
Robinson,
William taylor 1813
Rose,
Edmund carpenter 1820
Rose,
James blacksmith 1840
Rounce,
Thom. plumber 1840
Sawing,
John cordwainer 1832
Sawing,
John shoemaker 1833
Sawing,
John shoemaker 1839
Sawing,
John shoemaker 1837
Smith,
George blacksmith 1840
Smith,
Nelson wheelwright 1836
Sones,
Zachariah baker 1832
Spall,
David bootmaker 1836
Taylor,
Wm carpenter 1819
Took,
Robt. baker 1837
Wilson,
George shoemaker 1841
Woodyard,
Charles bricklayer 1838
Wright,
Benj. tailor 1800
Wright,
John tailor 1832
It is not known whether this
is a comprehensive list, but it probably represents a random sample of trades
that were active in Halesworth at the time.
If so, then there was a dominance of shoemakers (a quarter of the total)
and tailors taking apprentices (a fifth of the total). This is not surprising when it is remembered
that the purchase of shoes and clothes were a major reason why countryfolk came
to town.
There were two forces at work creating a more complicated economic
system. First, there was the widening market. So long as trade was confined to
the town it was easy for the craftsman to keep in touch with his customers. A
wider market made this difficult, if not impossible. The final consumer of his
goods might be in another town or another country. The craftsman could not hope
to keep in touch with him or to carry through the whole transaction himself. By
himself he would be unable to finance the complete transaction from the buying
of the raw material to the selling of finished goods, because this would
involve laying out money over a lengthy period of time. In other words, the
time had come when there was room for someone with capital and knowledge of the
market to act as intermediary between producer and consumer.
Another circumstance operated to the same end. Division of labour tended to disintegrate the processes of
production. The making of a single commodity came to be split up into several
processes, each being occupied by a single craft. Thus we find distinct crafts
of bleachers, weavers, dyers and drapers in Halesworth’s hempen cloth industry.
The production of cloth thus became the work of a group of separate crafts,
many of which never came into direct contact with the consumer or each other.
This involved successive sales of partly finished goods to the next person in
the process chain. This stage of
industrial development furnished the basis for the capitalistic control of
Halesworth’s industry. On the one hand, the subdivision of processes made the
craftsmen more expert at their jobs, but it also created the necessity for some
sort of co-ordination between the crafts. It was at this point that the capitalist
merchant-employers, like James Aldred of Halesworth, came on the scene. He
combined the functions of merchant and employer. He purchased the raw material,
gave it out to the craftsmen, and then sold the finished article. The craftsmen were in fact his employees.
Situated at the edge of the industrial age, Halesworth was a world of
its own, protected by its privileges, an aggressive world and an active force
for unequal exchange. A key question
is, can the prominent role of a town be accounted for by its having been able
to expand and develop in an already-structured rural world, rather than in a
vacuum like the towns of the New World (and possibly the Greek
city-states)? In other words, did it
have resources available to work on, at the expense of which it could
grow? Regarding small English market
towns like Halesworth, their very sieve-like social structure is evidence that
they were ‘filtered out of the countryside’. The Halesworth parish boundary was porous in all
directions to the town’s consumers and its producers who served their
needs. The topographic boundary was
hardly noticeable. This social dynamic is first brought to life in a 16th
century description of the town. There
were at least two farmsteads close to the church, with access from Pound St and
the Market Place directly onto their fields.
The backs of the houses on Chediston St and the Thoroughfare looked over
closes that had been reclaimed by drainage from riverine fen. Indeed it may be
said that the ‘townsfolk’ were ‘countryfolk’ who had a taste for property
development and trade.
Through their interactions with land and property they are examples of the embryonic consumer society, which has since driven world development. The universal trait of people to want to better themselves has led to most cultures in the developed world taking the Halesworth route from sustainable self-sufficiency to rampant consumerism. On the way, the consumer movement produces local features in the landscape that, as well as being landmarks of craft and art, may also be considered as symbols of the win-at-all-cost ethic, a form of behaviour that in the long run proves unsustainable. People become rich because they are already fairly rich. However, entrepreneurs grow old, technology reveals its inefficiencies, and wealth is passed to children who spend, rather than invest.
In this respect, local consumerism may be summarised in
relation to four stages in the growth of personal economic independence:
- being able to survive;
- being comfortable;
- being able to make an impression;
- being well-known for 'being well-known'.
Halesworth’s basic rural penumbra has continued well
into the 21st century and the ‘walls’ of dense housing estates that
now block out the countryside to the north and south of the town only came with
the last decades of the 20th century expansion of its population,
which was driven by central government, rather than the investment of local
individuals. Yet, it is still possible
to walk east from the church and within less than five minutes be contained
within the rural scenery of wet riverside pasture, embedded in a dominant
wetland ecology, that has changed little in three centuries. The following section is an exploration of
the rural/urban interface as far as it reflects the boundary between producers
and consumers, starting with the 1841 Tithe Apportionment of Chediston, a
village that is representative of the rural/urban interactions of countryfolk
and townsfolk at this time.
Unlike
Halesworth with its ever-shifting tortuous boundaries, Chediston seems to have
retained its pre-Conquest social topography down the centuries. It is a somewhat rectangular parish, with a
long axis stretching two miles from Halesworth’s Chediston Street to the west
up the valley on either side of the northern Blyth. Its angular shape, which follows the east west orientation of the
Blyth tributaries, has prompted speculation about its origins as an Iron Age
tribal estate with boundaries marked by streams and watersheds. Its breadth, of about half a mile, is marked
by two ancient boundary stones, symbolic ‘gate posts’ to an important valley
route, pioneered by Mesolithic peoples, to the lands of the upper Blyth at
Metfield. Both stones are rare glacial
erratics. ‘Ched’s Stone’ is situated on the northern parish boundary, which
runs parallel to the northern watershed of the Blyth. ‘Rhoca’s Stone’ (Rock Stone Manor) stands opposite, by the
Cookley parish boundary to the south.
The eastern boundary of Chediston runs with that of Halesworth, more or
less between the valleys of the northern and southern Blyth.
Fig
3.2 Chediston Hall
The first description of the parish in modern times is given in White's
Directory for 1844, which lists the population as 433 ‘souls’ within a parish
consisting of 2378 acres of land, of which nearly two-thirds were arable on a
rich loamy soil. The manor and a great part of the parish
were then owned by George Parkyns, who had purchased the Chediston Hall estate,
and the lordship from the Plumer family in 1833.
Walter Plumer seems to have taken an interest in the manorial lands of Chediston in the 1730s. In addition to purchasing the lordship of Chediston manor, in 1739 he also purchased the Manor of Halesworth from Thomas Betts. At this time the Plumer family seems to have had property in Newmarket, but their ancestral home was in Hertfordshire. In any event they were absentee landlords, and Chediston was just another real estate asset. After Walter’s death the property passed to his brother William. William died in 1767 and his son, also named William, succeeded. For most of the 18th century the Hall seems to have been rented to the Beales and Baas families.
The first Beales of Chediston was recorded in a church memorial dated
1787. The first memorial to a Baas
appears in 1806. The last Baas to rent
the property was Robert, a member of the Yarmouth branch of the family, who
took up the tenancy in 1811. The last of the Plumers, Jane, the wife of William
the Younger, died in 1831 and Chediston Hall was bought by George Parkyns two
years later. After the sale Robert Baas
moved out to Halesworth. The property
was described as ‘a large and elegant mansion in the Tudor style, ornamented
with towers, turrets, pinnacles, and an embattled pediment, standing on a bold
elevation to the north of the river, facing south’ (Fig 3.2). This
raises the question as to when this property was built. The style is a Tudor/Gothic hybrid
with elements that place it in the third quarter of the 18th
century. This was when William Plummer
the Younger was active, and appears to have been the period when the Baas family
first appeared in Chediston. In other
words the hall was built to rent.
In White’s 1844 directory George Parkyns was listed
at Chediston Hall. The entry mentions
that all the mature timber in the park had been recently cut down, and new
plantations had been made by Parkyns as part of a scheme to enlarge and
beautify the Hall’s surroundings. The
park actually extended into the northwestern quarter of Halesworth. George Parkyns was also impropriator of
Chediston’s St Mary’s rectory, from which he received £230 a year, as a
commutation of tithes chargeable on those estates in the parish that did not
belong to him. He also received arbitrary fines from
copyholders of the manor; the manorial system was still operating profitably
here.
The living of the Church of St. Mary was a vicarage,
valued at £6. 7s. 6d., and was united with Halesworth rectory in the patronage
of Mrs. E. Badeley, and incumbency of the Rev. J. C. Badeley, with an old
parsonage house and 50 acres of glebe. This completes an account of those at
the top of Chediston’s wealth pyramid.
The bottom of the village’s social pyramid rested on
the Town Estate, consisting of a farm of 30 acres, which was let for £26
a-year. This property had been vested
in village feoffees since the reign of Henry VII for repairs of the church
and other charges imposed on the parishioners.
There was much giving in the parish.
The Almshouses for five poor families were a gift from Henry Claxton, in
1575, and had been rebuilt in 1832. Attached to them was a piece of
land let for 20s a year. The poor parishioners had an annuity of 20s. out of
land at Cookley, left by the Rev. Thomas Sagar, and about £17 a-year from Henry
Smith's Charity for distributions of bread.
The ownership of land is revealed in the Tithe
Apportionment of 1840 (Fig 3.3). At
this time, there were 22 landowners and about a half of them owned more than 40
acres. George Parkyns was by far the
greatest of the landlords with an estate of 1000 acres, which was about two and
a half times more than John Birkett who was next in the landowning hierarchy
with 379 acres. Not only did Parkyns
own almost a half of Chediston’s agricultural land, but he also ran the biggest
farm, of about 400 acres. John Birkett
did not live in the parish and his land was let to four tenants. The next level of farming, carried out by
‘yeomen’, was represented by five families, Read, Archer, Fiske, Tallent and
the Robinson brothers, with enterprises ranging in size from 144 to 182 acres.
Land of less than an acre was usually categorised as house with gardens or yards. This description actually defined a total of 3.6 acres owned by George Parkyns, which probably indicates his importance as the squire with socio-economic control over most of the villagers.
Parkyns bought out the Plumer interest, but it is not known how the Plumers came to own so much of Chediston’s land. They were probably occupying fields and cottages that from time out of mind had been attached to its main manor. It is likely that the demesne was located where Chediston Hall and its park were sited. Although the Plumer/Parkyns property made up a large proportion of the parish, the question should be put in terms of when, to what extent, and how, did the rest of the manorial lands change from copyhold to freehold. From the unified timber styles of the farmhouses set out up the valley in a regular sequence on either side of Chediston Beck, it can be assumed that its farms were planned around the late Tudor period. Hedgerow dating indicates that many of their field systems are between 500 and 700 years old. Unfortunately, the manorial rolls for Chediston have not survived to answer questions about the history of land distribution. All we can say is that by the 1840s the lives of the four hundred or so inhabitants of the village were, because they were tenants, in the hands of twenty-two people. The histogram of landownership points up the social dominance of the Parkyns and the Birketts (Fig 3.3).
Fig
3.3 Distribution of land as recorded in the Chediston tithe apportionment of
1840
In 1851 the population of Chediston was represented
by 89 households. A summary of the
major categories of people in the village derived from the census is set out in
Table 3.2 Most of the households were
headed by farm labourers, who worked for the eighteen farmers of the parish, at
an average ratio of 4 labourers per farmer.
There was a strong element of self-sufficiency in the village, with the
needs of the inhabitants for house maintenance, beer, clothes, shoes and
groceries being met by village retailers.
The agricultural production was mostly wheat and barley. The only industrial enterprise was a
substantial milling business towards the head of the valley, employing three
men.
Table
3.2 Categories of people listed in the
1851 census
Designation |
No. |
Comments |
Gentlemen |
1 |
|
Farmers |
20 |
1
retired; 1 also a miller; 1 also a wheelwright; 1 also a grocer |
Farm
labourers |
80 |
4
were paupers |
Farm
bailifs |
2 |
|
Thatchers |
2 |
1
retired |
Millers |
3 |
working
for a farmer who was also a miller |
Publicans |
1 |
|
Carpenters |
2 |
|
Tailors |
1 |
|
Shoemakers |
3 |
|
Milliners
and hat makers |
1 |
|
School
teachers |
2 |
|
Nurses |
1 |
|
Curates |
1 |
|
House
servants |
31 |
|
Grooms |
3 |
|
Coachman |
1 |
|
Dressmakers |
3 |
|
Tea
dealer |
1 |
|
Annuitants |
1 |
|
Boys
|
57 |
10
years and under |
Girls |
60 |
10
years and under |
Scholars |
23 |
5
of these were over 10 years |
Persons
not born in Suffolk |
16 |
|
Paupers |
15 |
7
living in the Almshouse |
There were just over a hundred young children in the
community, of which around 20% were scholars.
Their need for education was met by a parochial school staffed by two
teachers.
Table
3.2 Farmers listed in the 1851 census
Red
House |
Read
Thomas |
Head |
Mar |
32 |
|
farmer
197acres 6men 5boys |
Suffolk
Wilby |
|
|||
|
|
Matthews
John |
Head |
U |
62 |
|
farmer
120 acres 2men 2boys |
|
|||
|
|
Fisher
John |
Head |
Mar |
33 |
|
farmer
295 acres 9 men |
|
|||
|
|
Gibson
William |
Head |
Mar |
57 |
|
farmer
59 acres 2men 2boys |
|
|||
|
Cottage
Farm |
Balls
James |
Head |
Mar |
58 |
|
farmer
82 acres 3 men |
|
|||
|
|
Balls
Robert |
Head |
Mar |
31 |
|
farmer
12 acres & wheelwright |
|
|||
|
|
Burrows
James |
Head |
Mar |
53 |
|
farmer
16 acres & grocer |
|
|||
|
|
Ingate
Charles |
Head |
Mar |
47 |
|
farmer
140 acres 4 men 1 boy |
|
|||
|
|
Sones
John |
Head |
Mar |
76 |
|
farmer
55 acres 1 man |
|
|||
|
|
Bishop
Thomas |
Head |
Wdr |
67 |
|
Est.
agent farmer 90acres |
||||
|
|
Turner
Thomas |
Head |
Mar |
37 |
|
farmer
56 acres 2 men |
|
|||
|
|
Sones
Mary |
Head |
Widow |
|
36 |
farmer
68 acres 1 man |
|
|||
|
|
Robinson
George |
Head |
Wdr |
60 |
|
farmer
250 acres 7men 2boys |
|
|||
|
|
Woolnough
George |
Head |
Mar |
36 |
|
farmer
60 acres 1 man |
|
|||
|
|
Archer
Harley |
Head |
Wdr |
72 |
|
farmer
190 acres 3men 1 boy |
|
|||
|
|
Seaman
Mary |
Head |
Widow |
|
52 |
farmer
135 acres 4 men 1boy |
|
|||
|
|
Read
Samuel |
Head |
Mar |
83 |
|
farmer
27 acres 1 man |
|
|||
|
|
Burrows
Charles |
Head |
Mar |
62 |
|
farmer
26 acres 1 man |
|
|||
Leaving aside two widows, who were each running
their deceased husband’s farm, 40% of the farmers in the 1851 census were born
in Chediston. During the passing of 15
years that had elapsed between the Tithe Apportionment and the 1851 census,
many farming families had disappeared and only six turned up in the census with
same surnames as those of farmers in the Apportionment. This high rate of turnover of farms was
borne out by the lists of farmers in Whites directories for both Chediston and
Halesworth (Table 3.3). These phenomena
are indicators of the tenuous connection of families to the land.
Table 3.3 Farmers
of Chediston and Halesworth in White's Directories for 1844 and 1855
Chediston 1844 |
Halesworth 1844 |
Chediston 1855 |
Halesworth 1855 |
Archer,
Harley |
Butcher,
Isaac |
Balls,
James |
Cole,
John |
Bishop,
Corbyn Johnathan |
George,
William |
Balls,
John* |
George,
Martin |
Bishop,
Thomas |
Haward,
Robert |
Balls,
Robert |
George,
William |
Blaxhill,
Samuel |
Johnson,
J Exors |
Beckett,
J.* |
Hart,
C |
Booth,
William |
Ling,
William |
Bishop,
Thomas |
Johnson,
James |
Denny, John |
Punchard,
Thomas |
Bryant,
Thomas |
Punchard,
James |
Fisher,
John |
Smith,
John |
Burrows,
Charles |
Punchard,
Thomas |
Fryett,
Lydia |
Webb,
John Julius |
Burrows,
James |
Woodgate,
William jnr |
Gibson,
William |
Woodyard,
William |
Crabtree,
John* |
|
Ingate,
Charles |
|
Gibson,
William |
|
Ingate,
Charles jnr |
|
Ingate,
Charles |
|
Read,
Samuel |
|
Ingate,
William |
|
Read,
Thomas |
|
Ingate,
John |
|
Robinson,
George |
|
Mathews,
John |
|
Seamans,
James |
|
Read,
Samuel |
|
Sones,
John |
|
Read,
T. Cracknell* |
|
Winter,
Robert |
|
Read,
Thomas |
|
Woolnough,
James |
|
Robinson,
George |
|
|
|
Soanes,
John |
|
|
|
Seamans,
Mary |
|
|
|
Turner,
Nesling* |
|
|
|
Woolnough,
George |
|
* Not in the 1851
census
The distribution of land between farms in 1851
followed the same pattern at the time of the Tithe Apportionment (Fig
3.4). At the top of the new 1851 social
hierarchy was Thomas Rant, gentlemen, who had replaced George Parkyns at
Chediston Hall. His family consisted of
his wife, his sister and three young children.
Thomas was born five miles away in Mendham and his father seems to have
brought money into the area that originated in a family business in
Norwich. This enabled his son to live
as a gentleman, particularly as Parkyns seems to have retained most of his land
in trust. If the Rants farmed at all, they did not operate on the Parkyns
scale. Their domestic needs were
serviced by seven house servants (equivalent to about 25% of all the servants
of the parish). It may well be that the
Rants actually rented the Hall because George Parkyns’ Trustees retained his former
role as impropriator of the rectory and lord of the manor, and thereby
continued to collect the appropriate annual dues in Parkyns name. The Trustees were still described as lords
of the manor and chief landowners in Kelly's 1896 Directory. Thus, Parkyns ghost continued to dominate
Chediston’s rurality through many generations of tenant farmers and cottagers.
From the 1850s, Chediston’s
population began to decline and at the end of the century it had fallen by
about 16%. There was little or no
development in the village except for the erection of a Primitive Methodist
chapel 1863. Indeed, the Directory
descriptions of the village remained the same until the 1920s, by which time
the population was only 60% of its peak in the 1850s. The only noteworthy events seemed to have been the restoration of
the church in 1895, and a new bell added to the church peal in 1911. Chediston Hall survived the war in the hands
of the military, only to be completely
demolished in the 1950's and its park ploughed up.
Fig
3.4 Farmers listed in the 1851 census for Chediston and the size of their farms
The visual character of a village is expressed in the lie of the land, and its compartmentation into fields and building plots. This in turn is a topographical pattern generated by the wealth of individuals and their determination to make an impact. At the start of the 19th century, just 22 people owned Chediston’s 2378 acres. From this point, the fine detail of who and how the land was held sets a scenario for all the local players in the early Victorian parish power game. It summarises three social inputs to the average village economy, directed respectively by 'capitalist developers', 'owner-occupier workers', and the freehold clergy (Fig 3.5). From the Tithe Apportionment of 1840 we can define the next economic layer of owner-occupier farmers, the larger tenant farmers and salaried professional farm managers, who were dependent on an estate-owning capitalist. Then there were tradesmen such as millers, blacksmiths and innkeepers, and finally the great pool of labourers for hire.
Fig
3.5 The 'players' in the rural parish 'power game'
Chediston's owner-occupier farmers, represented by
the likes of the Bishops (80 acres), Suggates (116 acres) and Robinsons (200 acres), ran enterprises that
depended to a considerable degree upon family labour, with a low capital
input. 'Yeoman' is how they would have
described themselves in earlier decades, a designation which usually referred
to owner-occupier farmers who got their whole living from the land. There is no evidence of any capitalist
developers i.e. absentee landowners who improved their farms then let them out
to enterprising tenants. Although no
records exist to throw light on the financial base of the Chediston yeoman, it
is known that from early times that peasant and small farmers gradually came under
the control of the financier.
Borrowing and lending were not new phenomena in the 19th
century. The very structure of agriculture was based on waiting between sowing
and reaping, and, therefore, credit transactions were common even in medieval
times. All sorts of devices were used to circumvent the legal prohibition of usury.
There were the great financial dealings of kings and nobles, monasteries,
bishops and the papacy, which strike the eye at once. Even a cursory glance at the life of a medieval manor or borough
shows credit transactions springing spontaneously from the ordinary necessities
of humble people, who may curse the lender but who cannot dispense with loans.
In the towns there were always individuals who specialized in finance, but
throughout the country districts money lending was simply a by-employment of the
larger yeoman farmers, the parson or the innkeeper.
Down the road in Halesworth, in contrast to
Chediston, the urban power game was played out between merchants and
shopkeepers and their craftsmen. Though in general craftsmen generally worked
at home or in their own workshops and with their own tools, they were dependent
for employment on the merchant who paid them on a piece work basis. There were of course many intermediate steps
and many variations in the development of this system. For example, a small dealer or merchant
might get his raw materials on credit from a larger dealer, or the larger
dealer such as a maltster, might work on a credit system with London
merchants. But the general principle
was the same. The merchant controlled
the direction of the commercial side of this industry, and he was ultimately in
control of production as well.
It is all too easy, when
contemplating historical personages, to stick to the notional attachments to
place, which give them a romantic air. The reality was that they were often
powerful, and ruthless players in the social game.
Nothing will bridge the gulf which stretches between
the Victorian farmer and his labourers except the discovery of a personal
account written about what it was really like to spend from January to the
middle of March, dawn to dusk, bush draining a huge expanse of clay land. So
far, Chediston has not, nor has any other village as far as we know, yielded a
literate labourer witness. The gleanings of George Ewart Evans in Norfolk, and
Alan Jobson in Suffolk, both taken from oral reminiscences collected in the
1960s and 70s, of those born at the end of the last century, provide us with
filtered fragments which just about reach a generation long gone.
Luckily, in Rider Haggard we have an East Anglian
farmer who documented the social gap, although he was not able to fill the
void. He lived on the clayey drift edge, just across the Waveney border in
Norfolk, a landscape not so different from Chediston. The journal he wrote for
the year 1898 chronicles his daily observations of what it was like to be a
tenant farmer on 350 acres. He admired the skills and strength of his hired
workers, their stoicism and their character, but with all his imagination as a
novelist he could not get into their situation. Perhaps there is nothing to say
except the bald facts of their labouring, which Haggard really admits when he
says 'such toilers betray not the least delight at the termination of their
long ill-paid labour'. Indeed, why should they be keen to articulate the
'poverty, pain, and the infinite unrecorded tragedies of humble lives'.
Haggard employed fifteen men on his farm and gives
meticulous descriptions of their many skills, such as dyke-drawing, the
toughest of all the winter jobs. This is an account reminding one that,
ploughing apart, most of Britain's landscape was fashioned by men with spades.
Haggard's labourers worked a twelve-hour day in summer and every daylight hour
in winter, and without holidays. Minimal though their education was, it taught
them that there are places in the world besides their own parish, and made them
aspiring and restless. More and more of them disappear, making for the army,
the colonies, the Lowestoft fishing smacks, anywhere preferable to a farm. It
grieved him. Published as 'A Farmer's Year', Haggard's journal praises
agriculture as man's natural activity, the noblest of tasks, and he cites its
improved conditions. Now and then, he joined in the labouring, although this he
found separated him further from the workers than if he had merely sat on his
horse and made notes. Whatever he saw, felt, or did, is written down with total
candour, and the outcome is that he revealed what many farmers today would
recognise as the lost soul of British agriculture. How else could we possibly
interpret the following-
"It is curious how extraordinarily susceptible some of
us are to the influences of weather, and even to those of the different
seasons. I do not think that these affect the dwellers in towns so much, for,
their existence being more artificial, the ties which bind them to Nature are
loosened; but with folk who live in the country and study it, it is otherwise.
Every impulse of the seasons throbs through them, and month-by-month, even when
they are unconscious of it, their minds reflect something of the tone and
colour of the pageant of the passing day. After all, why should it not be so,
seeing that our bodies are built up of the products of the earth, and that in
them are to be found many, if not all, of the elements that go to make the
worlds, or at any rate our world, and every fruit and thing it bears? The
wonder is not that we are so much in tune with Nature's laws and phases, but
that we can ever escape or quell their mastery. This is where the brain and the
will of man come in."
Indeed, it is 'the brain and will of man' that have
produced the technician in an air-conditioned capsule, pulling a multi-furrow
plough across an empty landscape as fast as the wind. The paradox is that the soul
of agriculture has gone the way of Rider Haggard's hired ploughman, who behind
striving horses, "wrapped in his thick cape against the sleet, wrestled
the complaining plough beneath his hands'. The soul of agriculture is the
spiritual enthusiasm of articulate landowners and urban critics of the rural
scene. It is difficult to discern in the general picture of the countryside.
This is created by brain and will, with the broader brush strokes of jobs and
incomes. In this respect, Haggard's ‘isolated existence of town folk’ has now
spread to villages, where even a child's journey to school involves being
encapsulated from the elements. The speed of this change is remarkable. People
farming today, who started out milking individual cows into a pail from a wooden
stool, have ended up being told what to do by their internet agronomist and a
computerised combine harvester. Everything about farms is seen to be dangerous-
children are worried about poisonous flowers, won't get their feet dirty, and
daren't stroke the sheep or pat the cows. Farmers have changed from being 'dear
Farmer Giles' to a wicked sub-set of society that poisons the land, and whose
animals you've got to let out from behind bars.
The turning point for Chediston, as in most other
parts of rural Suffolk came in the 1960s.
The typical ‘80 acre farmsteads’ came on the market with the retirement
of the pre-War generation who had just about been converted from horse to
tractor. At that time most of
Chediston’s farms were mixing dairying with arable, and kept pigs and
chickens. Farms were amalgamated and
the 800 acre farm became the norm.
Redundant homesteads were sold off to dentists, doctors and computer
programmers. In the urge for higher productivity, land was drained and hedges
removed. Livestock that could not be
intensified was removed from the balance sheet. Animals no longer diversified the farming scene. The last of Chediston’s dairy herds was sold
off in 1997. Although pigs remain, they
are produced unseen in intensive enclosed prefabs. Barns are being converted into houses and the land of the retired
1960s generation is being farmed by contractors, who can descend on the fields
to complete harvesting, ploughing or sowing in less than a day. There has also been a decided shift towards
farmers functioning as landscape and wildlife managers, for which environmental
goods the government pays out money that was formerly attached as a subsidy to
increase the output of agricultural products.
Historically, Chediston is part of a long-enduring
basic unit of rural settlement. No human group can live, and above all survive,
to reproduce itself, unless it contains at least four or five hundred
individuals. Until a hundred years ago that meant a village, or several neighbouring
villages, in touch with each other, formed both a social community based on
kinship, and an area distinguished by cultivation, land-clearance, roads, paths
and dwellings. This has been described as a 'cultural clearing' - which for the
first migrants encountering Suffolk's coastal topography, meant an open space
literally hacked out of the forest.
Within the charmed circle of these thousands of
small units, history passed in slow motion, lives repeated themselves from one
generation to the next; the landscape obstinately remained the same, or very
nearly so. Pre-industrial Chediston is reflected in its tithe map as a
patchwork of ploughed fields, meadows, gardens, orchards and hemp-plots; herds
grazed in the wet valley bottoms; and everywhere there were the same
implements: pick, shovel, plough, and mill, all manufactured and maintained by
the blacksmith's forge and wheelwright's shop.
At the level above these little communities, linking
them together whenever they were less than completely self-sufficient, came the
smallest possible economic unit: a complex consisting of a small market town,
perhaps the site of a fair, with a cluster of dependent villages around it.
Each village had to be close enough to the town for it to be possible to walk to
and from market in a day. But the actual dimensions of the unit would equally
depend on the available means of transport, the density of settlement, and the
fertility of the area in question. The more scattered the population, and the
more barren the soil, the greater the distances travelled.
With respect to Victorian Chediston, this represents
the extreme rurality of agrarian production from which Halesworth’s colonists
were escaping. Now, we have a social
movement in the opposite direction. Modern life is too close for comfort. Our diaries are overloaded; our commuter
trains are packed; our heads are fit to burst with media-delivered trivia. Once taken for granted, space in all its
forms, physical mental, and spiritual have become a precious commodity. There is widespread desire to escape from
the over-crowded spaces produced by urbanism, and the term ‘emptiness’ has been
used as a rural equivalent to the lodestone of wilderness. An ‘emptiness’ is the end point of extreme
rurality, where it is possible to walk all day through arable fields as fertile
as modern industrial agriculture can get, yet, as in a desert, we never make
social contact with another person, and the skylark is a rarity.
The field paths, bridleways and minor roads of the
vacant uplands along the old boundary of Blything Hundred are such an
emptiness. The flat claylands are
vibrant with the secret life of surging monocultures, but the inward looking
walker is alone with the big skies in surroundings from which all traces of its
past navigators have been obliterated.
“Now far out in the yawning emptiness we stopped to
watch the sun go down and saw the earth’s shadow flung out against the eastern
sky. Then the moon rose, floating into
view like a second sun and flooding the land with an unearthly glow. This must be the quietest place on earth…
Even the wind had died and the sharp night air was cold and clean. Standing in that profound silence I cupped my
hands behind my ears. But all I could hear was the beating of my heart”.
This could have been an experience in the
desertified Nasera Orok, the sacred Black Rock of the Masai overlooking
the Serengeti plains. Actually it was
an out-of-car experience on the Hundred boundary of Blything at churchless
Linstead Magna, an upland emptiness that has always existed there.
“Wool
and woollen cloth represented the bulk of English exports in the last centuries
of the Middle Ages and the rise in the proportion of woollen cloth to raw wool
in export figures can be taken as an index of the increasing weight of
manufacturing in the economy. The
transition from a stage characterised by massive exports of indigenous raw
materials to a stage increasingly characterised by manufactured goods made from
raw materials is a typical step on the road to economic development”.
The increased consumption of goods and services is ultimately what
economic growth is about. Economic growth cannot affect our spiritual welfare.
It can be diverted to purposes which are damaging to others, such as the
construction and use of weapons, or which are positive in the long run but have
no immediate effect on welfare, such as investment. This leaves increased
consumption as the only end for which economic growth is much use, at least to
the people who are involved.
After 1815, relatively little was spent on weapons and war. Other forms
of government expenditure also remained low. Investment, which rose as a
proportion of income until the mid-nineteenth century, was stable thereafter.
By a combination of their own volition and the actions of the outside world,
the British people spent most of their extra income from economic growth on
consumption. The basis of consumption for most people in this
period was food, drink and clothing. Although the middle classes didn't stint
themselves on food, they still had much more disposable income than other
purchasers. In the eighteenth century, their consumption of semi-durables like
china was an important component of demand. The proliferation of cheap
Staffordshire pottery in the early nineteenth century shows that these tastes
extended down to the working class when they could afford to indulge them.
Clothing was the most important semi-durable, although with the reduction in
the cost of material, the actual proportion spent on it may not have changed
much. Of equal or greater importance than semi-durables as an item of
consumption was housing, spending on which was growing rapidly throughout the
period. The substantial detached villa of the middle-class Victorian family
must have been much more expensive than the neat Georgian terrace.
In poor societies, people inevitably spend much of their income on food.
For poorer members of the working class in the early part of the period, this
proportion was around three-quarters. Much of this expenditure went on bread,
and it was a measure of English wealth as compared with the Continent that the
English mainly ate wheaten bread, made as white as possible by milling out the
husk. This was more expensive but offered a higher protein content than rye
bread. More important to the consumer, it was digestible. When bread was the
main item of diet, an excess of fibre, the Holy Grail of modern diet, was as
unpleasant as its absence can be deleterious. By contrast, in Scotland,
originally a much poorer country, oats had been and remained an important part
of the diet, their persistence in the menu showing the importance of custom as
well as income in dietary habits. Although bread was the mainstay of the
working-class diet in the eighteenth century, tropical luxuries were
penetrating working-class homes, as they were middle-class consumption.
Consumption of sugar and tea in particular was burgeoning. The relative wealth
of Britain at this time, and access to cheap supplies of these commodities from
the cleared colonial upland forests, fixed an enduring taste for them in this
country, which was marked by the rise of the grocery trade. The first record of a grocer in Halesworth,
who probably vended dry goods, is in the Parish Register for 1680, but long
before this the guild of grocers had been one of Halesworth’s important
medieval craft fraternities.
As income increased, diet diversified.
Although food and drink still dominated working-class budgets, food
alone accounted for over 50 per cent of working-class spending by the end of
the nineteenth century. Tea and sugar consumption also went on rising
throughout the century. Contrary to the fears of contemporaries worried about
its effect on the health of the nation, tea is simply a mild stimulant.
However, most foodstuffs were not bought for health but to provide variety,
although they might bring nutritional benefits. Meat, milk and butter
consumption all rose steeply in the later nineteenth century. Not shown in the
statistics, but often referred to in accounts of working-class life, were
tinned salmon and pineapple. The fish canning industry was one of the first
developments of Victorian mass production adding value to cheap perishable,
seasonal mass-catches, such as pilchards.
There is substantial oral evidence that much of the benefit of
this diversification went to working males in the family, who were thought to
need meat in particular. The continued heavy spending on food has been
represented as an adherence to traditional patterns of consumption, but a
moment's thought shows that diversifying a diet consisting largely of bread and
potatoes would be anyone's priority in the same position. This diversification
could only be achieved by buying more expensive foodstuffs such as meat. It was
human nature rather than tradition that accounted for the continued
predominance of spending on food in family budgets. In 1851 there were three
butcher’s shops in Halesworth that seem to have possessed their own integral
abattoirs. This situation may be contrasted with Prime’s open stalls in the
Market Place, and adjacent abattoir, in the 16th century.
Fig 4.1 Advertisement in the
Halesworth Times (18th December. 1855)
Alcohol consumption rose until the 1870s, to a level of 270 pints of
beer and 1.5 gallons of spirits per person, per year; most was consumed by
adult males. Beer was by far the bigger
market in volume, but spirits and wines come close with regards alcohol
consumption (Fig 4.1). In the 1870s, a
change in taste happened. The rising real wages of the next twenty years were
not marked by any further rise in alcohol consumption, and in the 1900s it
declined. At its peak in 1876, it took 15 per cent of consumers' expenditure. It was on the back of this growing national
habit that Halesworth’s brewers became bankers and entrepreneurs.
The making of cloth, like the growing of food, is one of the earliest
economic activities of human societies. At a primitive economic level, the raw
materials are produced in the ordinary course of farming, and the same labour
which handles the wool, flax or hemp also tills the fields. For many centuries
there was therefore a very intimate connection between the making of clothes
and the growing of food. Moreover, so long as the tool employed, distaff,
spinning wheel or loom, was simple and could be worked by hand, the industry
remained dispersed in the countryside. There was no great advantage in its
urban concentration. In the Middle Ages, the woollen industry was carried on in
most counties of England; and as early as the reigns of Henry I and II there
were weavers' guilds in London, Oxford, Lincoln, Nottingham, York and
Huntingdon. Most villages had at least one weaver, and every cottage had a
distaff. Spinning was an occupation that employed the leisure hours of women of
all ages and classes.
The cloth used by the masses for clothing in these early days was
coarse. At quite an early date some districts, like the West Country and
Yorkshire, were specializing in weaving, possibly because of their suitability
for sheep rearing and to the number of streams which supplied abundant water
for the main processes of cloth-making. By the fifteenth century the woollen
industry was so important that export of cloth, handled by a national
corporation called the Merchant Adventurers, had become the chief item in
England's foreign trade. In 1355 between five and six thousand cloths were
exported; at the end of the fifteenth century the Merchant Adventurers alone
were shipping abroad annually some 60,000 cloths; in 1509, 84,789; and in 1547,
122,354. By
the middle of the sixteenth century, the value of England's total exports in
normal years stood perhaps at some £75,000 per annum. Woollens of one sort or
another accounted for over 80 percent of all exports, with raw wool down to a
mere 6 percent. Most of the English trade was still limited to Europe. The
English mercantile marine was as yet of small consequence, perhaps about 50,000
tons, and much of the country's foreign trade, even when handled by English
merchants, was carried by foreign vessels, many of which used the East Anglian
ports of Lynn, Yarmouth, Southwold, Aldeburgh, Woodbridge and Ipswich.
New fashions influenced and were influenced by the clothing industries.
In the seventeenth century Lancashire was laying the foundations of the cotton
industry. At first, raw cotton from Cyprus, Smyrna and the Levant was spun, and
a coarse cloth called fustian, half cotton and half linen, was made. Before
1700 the various East India companies and the interloper traders were pouring
Indian cottons and silks into Europe, and there was hardly a country that did
not view with alarm the decay of its native woollen industry. English pamphlets
were loud in their denunciations of the foreign trash.
"Cotton is as fine and soft as Wool, it
may be spun as small or as large, it may be Milled and Drest, it may be Dyed
and Stained, and when the English merchant shall send over Cloth-Weavers and
Dyers, and Throwsters, as well as Silk, I question not but we shall have
Cotton-Cloth and Knaves enough to make it a Fashion and Fools enough to wear
it," said one writer.
Nevertheless the new cotton goods caught on. The extent of the
popularity may be seen from the inventory of a Preston draper in 1688. There
were for sale white calico buckram at under a shilling a yard; white calico,
printed and glazed calico at 1s. 1d.; brown calico at 10d.; black, blue, and
"coloured" calico at l d.; broad glazed calico at 1s.; stained calico
at 1s. 2d. and 1s.; narrow flowered calico at 9d.; and, finally, coloured
calico at 1s. 7d. In the 1660s to 1680s six drapers were operating in Halesworth, no doubt
vending these materials.
The calico-printing industry, fostered by the importation of plain
calicoes from the East, was a significant development of the closing years of
the seventeenth century. Hitherto, designs had been executed by hand and were
accordingly expensive. Now elaborate designs could be printed by wood blocks cheaply. Women's clothes
became brighter. About 1690 the woollen manufacturers began to agitate against
the use of Indian goods, and so strong was their influence that in 1701 an Act
was passed forbidding "the use and wear, in any form, of Indian and Chinese
silks, and of Indian printed or painted calicoes and striped or checked
cottons." This, it will be noticed, did not prevent the importation of
plain calicoes and the printing of them in England. The printing industry
naturally took full advantage of this Act, so much so that in 1707 the woollen
manufacturers were complaining of its competition as:
"more
prejudicial to us than the importation of painted calicoes was before the
passing of that Act. For whereas then the calicoes painted in India were most
used by the richer sort of people whilst the poor continued to wear and use our
woollen goods, the calicoes now painted in England are so very cheap and so
much the fashion that persons of all qualities and degrees clothe themselves
and furnish their houses in a great measure with them".
Printed calicoes were used for frocks, aprons, quilts, and other
articles purchased by the rural housewife. In the interests of the ancient
woollen industry, Parliament imposed excise duties on printed linens and at
double the rate on printed calicoes. From time to time, these duties were
increased, and though this checked the sale of such articles, the woollen
manufacturers were still dissatisfied. In the depression of 1719 the agitation
was renewed on an extensive scale. This culminated in
the Act of 1721 that prohibited the use and wear of any kind of calico, except
calicoes dyed blue, which were probably used for aprons and smock frocks. However, there was no stopping the producers
of cotton cloth, and under the stimulus of an expanding market and power
production, the chief change in dress material during the industrial revolution
was the substitution of cotton for wool and linen. The drapers of Halesworth played their part in disseminating both
home-produced and imported cloths as well as ready-made outfits (Fig. 4.2).
Fig. 4.2 Advertisement in the
Halesworth Times (18th December. 1855)
William Harrison, a parson, in 1577 recorded the improvement in
household conditions that had taken place since his father's day, ' not among
the nobility and gentry only but likewise of the lowest sort in most places of
our south country.'
' Our fathers [he writes] yea and we ourselves have lien full oft upon straw pallets, covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain or hop harlots and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster. If it were so that our fathers or the good man of the house had a mattress or flockbed and thereto a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the town that peradventure lay seldom in a bed of down or whole feathers. Pillows were thought meet only for women in childbed. As for servants, if they had any sheet above them, it was well, for seldom had they any under their bodies, to keep them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet and razed their hardened hides.'
Straw on the floor and straw in the bedding bred fleas, and some fleas
carried plague.
Harrison also notes that chimneys have become general even in cottages,
whereas ' in the village where I remain," old men recalled that in ' their
young days ' under the two Kings Harry,
'
there were not above two or three chimneys if so many, in uplandish towns, the
religious houses and manor places of their lords always excepted, but each one
made his fire against a reredoss in the hall where he dined and dressed his
meat.'
The increasing use of coal, siphoned off the east coast trade from
Newcastle to London, instead of wood for the domestic hearth coal made it more
disagreeable not to have chimneys, and the increasing use of bricks made it
easier to build them, even if the walls of the house were of some other
material. Harrison also records a
change during his own lifetime 'of treen [wooden] platters into pewter, and of
wooden spoons into silver or tin.' The age of forks was not yet come; where
knife and spoon would not avail, even Queen Elizabeth picked up the chicken
bone deftly in her long fingers. Until her reign ' a man should hardly find
four pieces of pewter in a farmer's house.' Of china there was as yet none.
Wooden household utensils, such as butter moulders, continued to be used for
centuries to come. Until relatively
recent times the home brew continued to be made with an assortment of specialised wooden aids, which are captured
in the following account by old Reuben Noy of Westleton, as related by Alan
Jobson.
"
All the things thet wur used in brewin' wur made o' wood, an' wunnerful clean
and smooth they wur. They cum fro' the coopers, barrels, tubs, pail, tongs or
rack, wedges, spickets and fawsets, even the funnels (' tunnels' we called 'em)
; an' thur wur the wilsh made o' osiers. Thet wur like a little wicker bottle,
an' wur used tew strain off the hops from the beer when thet wur runned off. We
used tew buy them from owd Daines o' Dennington, same as used tew make the
skeps and baskets in his little shop near the church."
Common houses and cottages were still of timber, or of ' half-timber '
with clay and rubble between the wooden uprights and crossbeams, and a
thatched roof. An idea of the character
of Halesworth in the age of wood may be glimpsed in the old photograph of such
a house and bakery that once stood at the bottom of Station Rd, next to the
Oriental Public House (Fig. 4.3). This property was destroyed by fire in the
1930s. Its latter day retail history as
a bakery can be traced from the 1844 to 1929 as follows:
Mills’
bakery represents the archetypal house of Halesworth’s age of wood, when
carpenter architects were erecting timber-framed houses throughout the
county. Halesworth’s survivors of this
16th century building boom are scattered along The Thoroughfare. Notably they contain the business premises
at Nos, 4, 5, and 6 (possibly originally one building), Nos 12-16, Nos 38, 42, and of course the Angel Hotel. The highest concentration of 16th
century buildings is in Market Place, where the town’s oldest domestic
structure is to be found. The latter is
part of a ‘hall and cross wing’ house with evidence of some 14th
century fabric (Nos 4-5).
Fig. 4.3. Nathan Mills’ Bakery, Station Road
Brick was replacing wood in Suffolk by the end of the 17th
century. It is from this time that
the designation ‘Red House’ became commonplace to emphasise the novel feature
of the first brick-built houses in town and country. There were two properties so named in Halesworth, ‘Red House’
close to the junction of Bridge St and Quay St and another ‘Red House Farm’, on
the boundary with Walpole. These have not been dated, but it is probable that
they were constructed in the mid-18th century. The large-scale use of bricks to rebuild
properties in the Thoroughfare awaited the growth of local brick making on an
industrial scale. Designations, such as
‘Tilehouse’, indicate that thatch was giving way to new ways of roofing.
In the first half of the 16th
century, the population of East Anglia gained from the initiation of a golden
age for English exports, later boosted by the chaotic devaluations of the
pound, which Henry VIII debased to finance his extravagant military expenditure
in France. Economic development of Halesworth
hinged on the east coast trading networks of prosperity emanating from the
London-Antwerp mercantile axis. This fact explains the tendency during that
period for eastern England to be the richer and more active area of the
economy, sucking in people, goods, and trade from other parts of the nation.
However, many provincial traders found themselves unable to compete against the
increasingly rich and powerful London merchants. The commerce of the old and
important west-coast port of Bristol declined, and a similar fate even befell such
long-established Eastern ports as Hull and Boston. Some were able to develop other types of trade, and in this
respect, Southwold was ideally placed to serve the coastal maritime traffic to
a local purpose, importing coal from Newcastle, and exporting cereal grains to
meet the demands of the rapidly growing London economy. The development of the
road from Harleston to Southwold via Halesworth was a measure of the importance
of Southwold in the regional economy.
Elements of continuity with the past were numerous and
significant, and yet in more than one sense, as early as the middle of the
sixteenth century, England looked very different from what it had been a
century earlier. There was more concern with property and the first
descriptions, of ‘who owned what’ in central Halesworth date from this
time. Literacy, to take one indicator
of development, was rapidly spreading among the population, and society as well
as the economy was undergoing a process of substantial change. The fact of the matter is that
the period 1550-1650 was characterised by England's entry into a new stage in
economic development, a stage in which other manufactures besides woollens
began to play a major role in the economy.
These new sectors had begun to expand and to achieve a steadily
increasing importance in the economy from about the middle of the 16th
century. The shift from one type of
economy to another occurred gradually, and even at the end of the 17th
century, woollen textiles still accounted for about 48 percent of exports.
However, change was evident in the increased production of iron, lead,
armament, and new types of cloth, glass, and silk. The rural blast furnaces of
England and Wales produced some 5,000 tons of iron per annum around 1550 and
18,000 tons per annum around 1600. The
output of lead reached 3,200 tons in about 1580, and that was not all. Joshua
Gee mentions that:
“the manufacture of
Linnen was settlled in several parts of the Kingdom.... Also the manufacture of
Copper and Brass were set on Foot, which are brought to great Perfection and
now in a great Measuere supply the Nation with Coppers, Kettles and all Sorts
of Copper and Brass ware. The making of Sail cloth was began and carried on to
great Perfection; also Sword Blades, Sciffars and a great many Toys made of
Steel which formerly we used to have from France”.
The following, a remarkable summary of a century of British
achievement, was written in the Edinburgh Review of 1813:
"The
lower orders . . . have still less good fortune (than the higher and more
instructed orders of society) to reckon on. In the whole history of the species
there was nothing at all comparable to the improvement of England within the
last century; never anywhere was there such an increase of wealth and luxury-so
many admirable inventions in the arts-so many works of learning and
ingenuity-such a progress in cultivation-such an enlargement of commerce -and
yet, in that century, the number of paupers in England had increased fourfold,
and is now rated at one-tenth of her whole population, and notwithstanding the
enormous sums that are levied and given privately for their relief, and the
multitudes that are drained off by the waste of war, the peace of the country
is perpetually threatened by the outrages of famishing multitudes".
This was by way of a provisional progress report on an
unprecedented mixture of industry and charity that was the British Industrial
Revolution. By the time of the 1851
census a well-defined phase of economic development was complete. Steam-power
and machinery were victorious. The technique of big-scale manufacture was in
large measure understood, and appropriate specialists to carry forward both
trade and industry were rapidly being produced through educational reforms.
Negotiation rather than violence came to workers' minds to take issue with
employers. The farm labourer had become stoical about the workhouse as the
probable home of his declining years; the resentment of the displaced hand-loom
weavers was passing with their final extinction; the country boys were
"off to Philadelphia" instead of their nearest town. The country, measured by days' journeys,
had grown nine-tenths smaller and safer.
Of importance to this discussion is the highly individualistic
culture, which prevailed in Halesworth for much of the period. Philosophers and
political economists of the national scene, like John Stuart Mill and Thomas
Malthus, as well as the later well-known populists like Samuel Smiles,
promulgated a philosophy of self-dependence as the key to improved economic and
social betterment. They believed that
personal success ought to be measured by a common standard, regardless of
means, and that those who succeeded in life did so because of their hard work,
thrift and ingenuity, while the poor suffered as a result of personal
fecklessness. In simple terms, it was the individual's responsibility to pull
himself up 'by the bootstraps' and exploit the opportunities available, rather
than rely on others, or the state, for succour. Self-help was the key,
encouraging those without adequate resources to believe that they could emulate
outstanding individuals like Richard Arkwright, the twelfth son of a barber,
who, by the time he died in 1792, owned large landed estates and had been knighted
for his services to industry after a career as a successful industrial
innovator.
One must treat much of this ‘get on your bike’ proselytising
about the benefits of self-help with great caution, because while it is true to
say that the myth of the self-made man and the ideology of self-help were
deep-rooted in British public opinion, there were actually very few recorded
cases of working class entrepreneurs in this period. In Suffolk there were only two native self-made entrepreneur
engineers, Richard Garrett of Leiston and James Smyth of Peasenhall, both
pioneers in the mass production of agricultural machinery. It was the very few successes that produced
Smiles generalisations about the importance of self-help. Therefore, it is
important to stress the contribution made by the lower middle classes to the
growth of a business community at this time, because having started off with
relatively modest capital resources most of these men were probably 'architects
of their own fortunes'. Halesworth has
several examples of people falling into this class. It is also important to stress that the belief in self-help was
further compromised by economic reality.
Extensive local social networks for the mobilisation of finance, talent,
or information were utilised as an essential aid to management. These networks
were primarily based on what has been described as a 'high-trust culture',
which sustained the finely spread business structure prevailing at that time,
and within the regional context especially, elite groups of businessmen
collaborated extensively to reduce the transaction costs arising from the high
levels of business uncertainty. Religious groupings were especially successful
in building up networks, particularly the Quakers and other non-conformists, who
utilised their common bonds to build a mutually supportive financial
infrastructure in the North East Suffolk linen industry. Religion, however, was by no means the only
bonding agent at work from the mid-eighteenth century, because it was 'the
region' that took on a crucial importance as an integrated unit. It provided not only the key factors of
production and vital technical and commercial information, but also forged a
community of interests. This regional dynamic was to become the abiding characteristic
of Britain's first phase of industrialisation, and for businessmen struggling
with market uncertainties and deficient knowledge, it provided and encapsulated
a 'high-trust culture', which would minimise transaction costs external to the
firm. In this context, the self-help philosophy had an important negative
influence on business development at this time, largely because it placed so
much emphasis on the individual as the key to success. This often led to a managerial constraint on
business growth, through too much reliance on one man as an arbiter and
decision maker. The ultimate failures
of Smyths and Garretts are good examples of the original entrepreneurial force
petering out in their founder’s descendants.
Halesworth was an epitome of this age of personal adventure with
regard to individuals and their extensive regional networks. In particular, the importance of personal
capital and the high trust culture are features that characterised the careers
of Halesworth's local self-help hero, the industrious Scot, Patrick Stead, and
William Jackson Hooker, a refined and well-born dilettante scientist. They dominated Quay Street, which was the
town's new centre of ideas on how to make lots of fast money.
But the character of a place cannot be gathered from its
exceptional figures. It is revealed in the lives of the typical and the humdrum
that inhabited Chediston St, the Market Place and The Thoroughfare. These people are exemplified by Halesworth's
manufacturers and traders, competent, self-assured and complacent, who were
content with an order of things, which allowed them to buy in the cheapest and
sell in the dearest market. A third
social group was the urban artisans for whom work was a monotonous round of
disciplined toil. Then there were the
tenant farmers enfranchised in 1832, but as tenants-at-will, they were often
the political vassals of their landlord in the 'big house'. Such was the power of the Plumers and then
the Parkyns of Chediston. Finally,
there was the labourer of the farm, who was politically voiceless and socially
isolated. It has been said that this
kind of social mix was a British civilization that had strength without
grace. People worked hard and saved
hard. They passed on the technique and the products of the new industrialism to
other countries; they exported their capital, and a considerable fraction of
their population, so that a big contribution to boost a world economy was made.
On a national scale, the Great Exhibition of 1851 showed a solidity of
achievement, which could not be mistaken.
Up in Halesworth, the goings on in Quay Street were making a small, but
significant contribution to this national whole, which was centred on
London. However, at the terminus of the
scale of prosperity were the paupers of Chediston Street, where Halesworth
displayed more than its fair share of family misery.
The continual rise in the population made it indeed impossible
to provide work for everyone. Agriculture had absorbed all the hands it
required, and many traditional kinds of rural occupation were disappearing.
Great national industries, like cloth, were migrating back out of the country
districts to which they had moved in the later Middle Ages and Tudor times, to
the rapidly growing new industrial towns. The village was becoming more purely
agricultural; it was ceasing to manufacture goods for the general market, and,
moreover, was manufacturing fewer goods for itself. In this sense, the story of Halesworth as an economic island
extends into the sea of village life that surrounded it. With the improvement of roads and
communications, first the lady of the manor, then the farmer's wife and lastly
the cottager learnt to buy in the town many articles that used to be made in
the village or on the estate. The ' village shop ' was now often set up with
goods from the cities or from overseas. The self-sufficing, self-clothing
village, became more and more a thing of the past. This was a beginning of a process that dragged on to the last
quarter of the 20th century.
One by one the craftsmen began to disappear; the harness maker, the
manufacturer of agricultural implements, the tailor, the miller, the furniture
maker, the weaver, sometimes even the carpenter and builder slipped away, till,
at the end of the second World War, the village blacksmith was in some places
the only craftsman left, eking out a declining business in horseshoes by
mending the punctured bicycle tyres of tourists. Young lads, who in the 1930s were apprenticed to village
craftsmen, such as harness makers, after the War found themselves in charge of
tractors.
This time was also the
birth of a mythical countryside fostered by those confined to the sparse
greenery of urban streets. In the face
of change, the life of the village children, let loose to play in the hedges,
heaths and thickets, was conflated as being entirely wholesome and sweet. This was the first whiff of nostalgia for
the countryside and its biodiversity as first depicted by Bewick, Wordsworth
and Cobbet, who were actually people with boyhoods that were connected with the
realities of a previous generation. William Howitt, George Borrow and other
writers actually shared the life of the common people in lane, field and
cottage during the 'twenties and 'thirties, and as successful popular authors
they left a largely false impression of much widely diffused rural health and
happiness. It is ironic that
Halesworth's contribution to local economic and national intellectual
development came from two contrasting aspects of its local natural resources,
the intensive production of barley, and the scientific wealth of its
untrammeled hedgerows and meadows. Both
views were actually in opposition. In
this respect, William Hooker and Patrick Stead, both temporary residents of the
town, exemplify the two pillars of cultural ecology, the 'biological' and
'industrial', which are now starkly revealed as being in need of an economic
bridge to conserve the world’s green heritage assets.
The
production and weaving of hemp linen fibre has a very long history in Blything
Hundred. The first indication that
these were widespread activities in medieval times comes from a taxation list
of 1342. In this year the laity were
made liable for a ninth part of all tithable products. This one-off Royal tax to pay for a war
against the French was collected from each parish, and those Blything parishes
returning a tax on flax and hemp are shown in Fig. 4.4.
Fig.
4.4 Parishes of the Blything Hundred
taxed on hemp and flax in 1342
About 45% of the communities were growing hemp
or flax; the record does not distinguish between the two materials. It is significant that down to the 18th
century about two thirds of these parishes were recorded from wills and
inventories as having linen weavers.
The latter evidence, collected and analysed by the local historian Nesta
Evans for the entire county, emphasises the importance of North Suffolk in the
production of linen cloth (Fig. 4.5.). Taking the county as a
whole, about 60% of the villages had weavers. The total mapped area contains 82% of the villages in Suffolk where weavers made wills. In the area enclosed by the black line,
about eight out of ten of the villages had weavers.
Elsewhere in England, where records are more
abundant, it was the wool-manufacturing sector that was the first to show the
effects of the boom in exports. But in economics, waves travel far when the
expanding sector is a key one in the economy. English woollen shortcloth
exports tripled between 1500 and 1550, and much arable land was turned over to
sheep pasture. As the favourable
economics of textile production spread through East Anglia, those places such
as the Blyth valley, where there was an old tradition of growing hemp, saw an
expansion of the local manufacture of Suffolk linen made from hemp fibre. Small fields were given over to hemp
production, retting pits (to separate the fibres) were dug where there was a
clay subsoil, and meadows were designated for the drying and bleaching of
locally woven cloth. Although the evidence
is patchy it seems that the production of Suffolk hempen cloth reached a peak
in the 18th century following duties of around 50% imposed on French
linen cloth.
Fig.
4.5 Distribution of linen weavers in
North East Suffolk (adapted from the Historical Atlas of Suffolk)
Halesworth
was well placed to participate in satisfying an intensification of the demand
for home produced linen, and local families, who were prominent in town life
during the 16th century, emerged in the 18th century hemp
trade as weavers and drapers. Thomas
Cox remarked on the impact of the hempen linen on Halesworth as a cottage
industry around 1730:
‘The town is populous, and the Market good. There is plenty of linen yarn, which the
women of the county spin, partly for the use of families, and partly for
sale. Good commodity for trade’
The
prosperity from trade in linen cloth is highlighted in two house inventories of
the time, referring to Richard Wincop, a Halesworth grocer (1726), and
Nathaniel Briggs. Briggs was a Blyford
farmer, and probably a part-time producer of dressed hemp, who possessed 140
skeins of fine yarn at the time his death.
The
brothers, Anthony and Henry Sones were late examples of this phase of
development, who established businesses in Halesworth as weavers and dressers
of cloth, during the last quarter of the 18th century. Local people
were still investing in hemp during the first decade of the 19th
century, but these enterprises did not fulfil their apparent promise. The momentum really came from the more
favourable economics of the previous century.
The number of weavers and drapers operating between 1800-30 (Table 4.1)
could not be sustained. By the 1840s
the retail trade was in decline and there are examples of weavers who were on
workhouse relief. A few were taking up
other livelihoods, and yet others were migrating to find work.
There were many factors leading to the
decline in demand for locally produced hemp.
One that has so far received little attention is that in the early
development of the East Coast herring fishery the nets were hand-made from
linen or hemp, but from the 1820s factory-made nets came in, which tended to be
bigger. In terms of value added to the fibre, a hemp net was often worth more
than the boat. A second revolution was the changeover to cotton nets from the
1860s. This resulted in nets that were
lighter allowing the boats to carry more nets.
Their net trains increased to 70 or 80. This meant that when a boat was
lying with its nets 'shot' they extended about two miles from the boat.
Table 4.1 Persons engaged in the hemp
trade:1800-30 (Fordham, 2004)
Place |
Draper |
Rope/twine |
Cloth maker |
Sailmaker |
Beccles |
Garrod & Banks |
Henry Hindes |
|
|
|
Sarah Delf |
|
|
|
|
John Mayhew |
|
|
|
Bungay |
George Bardwell |
|
Richard Smith |
|
|
Paul Bowen |
|
|
|
|
Nathaniel Minns |
|
|
|
Eye |
William Hutchinson |
|
|
|
|
John Naylor |
|
|
|
|
Edward Sparkball |
|
|
|
Halesworth |
James Aldred |
|
James Aldred |
|
|
Thomas Bardwell |
|
John Paxman |
|
|
Edward Hewitt |
|
Henry Sones |
|
|
Daniel Gobbett |
|
Joseph Felmingham |
|
|
John Hatcher |
|
Henry Scarle |
|
|
Charles Bardwell |
|
Moses Moore |
|
|
Thomas Bayfield |
|
James Bishop |
|
|
|
|
James Clark |
|
|
|
|
Samuel Baker |
|
|
|
|
Thomas Butler |
|
Lowestoft |
John Chaston |
|
|
Edward Brewster |
|
Daniel Delf |
|
|
James Tilmouth |
|
Edward Seamon |
|
|
Bracket Tilmouth snr |
|
|
|
|
Bracket Tilmouth jnr |
From
all accounts the East Anglian hemp business began to fail in the last quarter
of the 17th century, the decline first becoming obvious in West
Suffolk. The pace of this decline
accelerated in relation to the increased production of cheaper mass-produced
cotton cloth from water-powered mills in the north of England. There was also
growing competition from cheaper and better quality linen imports from
Ireland. With regard to sackcloth and
rope fibre, this was produced more cheaply from jute in the factories of
Yorkshire and Scotland. The hempen
cloth producers of Bungay turned to silk weaving, but the Halesworth
enterprises were on a smaller scale and were not adaptable to the changing
economics of hemp.
According
to Fordham, during the period of terminal decline between 1830 and 1842 the
Halesworth hemp craft involved nine weavers, two hecklers, four dyers, two rope
makers and two twine spinners. Ten
years later, none of these occupations were listed in the 1851 census. However, the Halesworth hemp business
continued for a while in the form of a manufactory for sacks, rope and twine
run by Robert Peachey, and after his death in 1863, by his wife.
The
only evidence to estimate the scale of family business in the Blyth valleys on
the raw material side is to be found in the Tithe Apportionment (1839) for
Bleach Farm, Wissett. Eight fields
(about 7 acres) are described as ‘hempland’ Most of these were less than an
acre and the largest was only about 2 acres.
This use of small enclosures for growing hemp was typical of many
Blything farms. Four more fields
between 2 and 7 acres were designated at Wissett for the laying out of cloth
for bleaching (total of 17 acres). In
the 1820s this farm (84 acres) was leased to John Aldred. As a young man John appears to have entered
the linen trade as a weaver. From his
will of 1827, in addition to renting Bleach Farm, he also owned four properties
for rent in Halesworth.
Bleaching
was a slow and laborious natural process until the discovery of chlorine at the
end of the 18th century (Fig. 4.6.). The method followed was to boil the cloth with ashes and then
with sour milk. Thereafter it was
exposed for long periods to sunlight until the required whiteness was
obtained. Bleaching therefore tended to
become a highly specialised rural business involving considerable outlay of
capital and employment of large numbers of seasonal part time wage earners.
Fig.
4.6 Working in a bleachfield
Aldred’s
hemp/linen enterprise was clearly an adjunct to a traditional ‘eighty-acre’
Suffolk arable farm, with some property dealing on the side. It is likely that his Halesworth operations
as property developer were made possible by additional income from the hemp
business. His accumulated assets were passed on to his sons. One, James, was probably the Halesworth
linen weaver, with looms and a drapery in Chediston Street. James also had a farm at Sotherton. Another son Robert, who was the main legatee
of his father’s will, and farmed in Wissett on a big scale, appears to have
abandoned his father’s interest in hemp.
He eventually gave up the lease on Bleach Farm, sold his property in
Wissett, and moved to Norwich.
The
growing of hemp seems to have been very much the speciality of a few
farmers. It was not simply a matter of
sowing and reaping. The farmer had to
cultivate seasonal ties with labourers to operate the retting pits, which
required know-how above the average.
Bleachers were also specialist part timers. Then there was the administrative effort on the part of the
farmer to make long-term contracts with a nearby weaver. All of these factors probably limited the
number of farmers engaged in hemp production and kept the average acreage
committed per farm to a minimum
It
is not known for certain how large the Halesworth hemp production system was at
its peak in relation to that of the Waveney valley region. In particular, we have hardly any
information about the situation during the early 17th century, when
the outlook appears to have been most favourable for investment. With regards the growing and processing of
hemp in other Blything parishes, in addition to Wissett, out of twelve other
contiguous parishes, nine had hemp designations in their field names included
in the Tithe Apportionments, two had no such designations, and one had no named
fields (Table 4.2). Four of these
parishes had paid a hemp and flax tax in 1345. On the whole the evidence, such
as it is, favours relatively small-scale operations satisfying a local market
for cheap and durable cloth for farmers and their labourers. This scale may be contrasted with the
account of Suffolk hempen sailcloth in the Victoria County History. This
has much to say about the production of cloth for sails, and to make sacks for
transporting coal and grain, but little about hempen clothing. Sailcloth was exported in large quantities
through Ipswich. This material appears
to have been produced in the villages of West Suffolk during Elizabethan
times. However, by the 18th
century the large-scale manufacture of sailcloth had moved to towns north of
the Wash. The reputed ‘sail loft’ in the Swan public house may be taken as
evidence that Halesworth played a small part in sail-making, probably in
association with the needs of the local community of bargees.
Table
4.2 Fields in 12 villages* with respect to ‘hemp’ designations in the Tithe
Apportionment
Village |
Field
No. |
Name |
Field
size (a) |
Total
hempland |
Cookley |
255 |
Hempland |
0.475 |
|
|
22 |
Hempland |
0.331 |
|
|
388 |
Hempland |
0.662 |
|
|
|
|
|
1.463 |
Chediston |
170 |
Hempland |
0.919 |
|
|
222 |
Hempland |
0.619 |
|
|
375 |
Retting Field |
5.906 |
|
|
436 |
Retting
Pit |
6.738 |
|
|
116 |
Rotten
Pit Meadow |
10.532 |
|
|
|
|
|
1.538 |
Linstead Magna |
210 |
Hempland |
0.413 |
|
|
183 |
Hempland |
0.750 |
|
|
|
|
|
1.163 |
Linstead
Parva |
8 |
Hempland |
0.219 |
|
|
104 |
Hempland |
0.494 |
|
|
84 |
Hempland |
0.633 |
|
|
3 |
Part
of Hempland |
0.325 |
|
|
57 |
Hempland |
0.944 |
|
|
100 |
Hempland |
0.463 |
|
|
|
|
|
3.408 |
Heveningham |
215 |
Hempland
Meadow |
4.406 |
|
|
236 |
Hempland |
1.219 |
|
|
|
|
|
5.625 |
Peasenhall |
79 |
Hempland |
0.481 |
|
|
|
|
|
0.481 |
Cratfield |
91 |
Hempland |
0.213 |
|
|
128 |
Hemplands |
0.588 |
|
|
432 |
Hempland |
0.800 |
|
|
227a |
Hempland |
1.088 |
|
|
602 |
Hempland |
0.363 |
|
|
205 |
House
& Hempland |
0.438 |
|
|
377 |
Hempland |
0.213 |
|
|
618 |
Hempland |
0.313 |
|
|
310 |
Hempland |
0.756 |
|
|
373 |
Hempland |
0.213 |
|
|
540 |
Hempland |
0.706 |
|
|
78 |
Hempland |
0.413 |
|
|
333 |
Hempland |
0.438 |
|
|
227 |
Bleach |
0.638 |
|
|
|
|
|
6.542 |
Sibton |
268 |
Hemplands |
0.268 |
|
|
|
|
|
0.268 |
Ubbeston |
91 |
Hempland |
1.70 |
|
Wissett |
|
|
|
1.70 |
*Huntingfield
& Withersdale:- No fields named designated for Hemp. Walpole:- None of fields had names.
With
respect to the decline of the Halesworth hemp trade, it is particularly
interesting to study the Aldred family in relation to the trajectory of James
Aldred’s Halesworth weaving/drapery business.
James’ place of birth is not known, but it appears from his
age at death that he was born in 1778. Baptisms of his siblings begin in
Wissett with Rachel, daughter of John and Mary Aldred (nee Nighton) in 1786.
The actual baptisms of this family recorded for Wissett are:
Rachel 21.05.1786
Charlotte 22.07.1787 *
Robert 17.08 1788
Harriot 7.03.1790
Edward 12.01.1794 buried 25.05.1794
Robert 9.10.1794
The other village connected with the Aldreds at this time
is Stratton St Mary in Norfolk. This
comes to light through the marriage in Wisset of a James Aldred to Mary Aldred
of Wissett. Their marriage indicates a
union of cousins and suggests ancestral connections of the Stratton St Mary
Aldreds with Wissett kinfolk. In the
1836 White's Directory for Stratton St Mary, a James Aldred was a corn
miller. This only adds to the mystery
of James Aldred’s birth. He was a contemporary of his namesake the miller, and
was associated with the birthplace of his father John. Rachel was probably the
second child of the aforementioned weaver John. There is an eight year gap between the birth of Rachel and her
brother James, and this may be connected with the family origins in Stratton St
Mary.
Shortly after her son Robert’s birth, Mary Aldred (nee
Nighton) died, for on 2.10.1810 the Wissett Register records John Aldred,
widower, marrying Jemima Clarke, a widow.
A reciprocal connection between the Aldreds and Clarkes is evident from
the marriage the previous day of John Clarke of Halesworth, Jemima’s son, to Charlotte*
Aldred, John’s daughter.
John Aldred was buried in Wisset, age 74, 30.01.1829 and Jemima Aldred was
also buried in the village, age 67, 19.06.1833. In John Aldred's will of 1829 one of his executors was John
Clarke of Halesworth, baker, probably his son in law.
As
a second generation entrepreneur, the turning point in James Aldred’s fortunes
seems to have been around 1827 when, from the Halesworth Manorial Court
records, he borrowed £500 from Joseph Mayhew, a dissenting minister living in
Wissett. This seems to have been an
over-optimistic investment in marketing.
He advertised his new enterprise in the Ipswich Journal of 1827 as a
grocery, drapery, hosiery and haberdashery.
Another advert in 1830 was for James Aldred’s ‘Real Suffolk Hemp
Cloth Manufactory’. Reading between
the lines it seems that he was having to reduce his prices, and in order to
move stock, and had to share his profits with agents in Ipswich, Norwich,
Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Beccles, Benhall, Stradbroke and Peasenhall. At the end of
the decade his adverts proclaimed that he had moved to new premises in
Halesworth Market Place and was promoting himself as a woollen draper and silk
mercer, as well as a dealer in linen cloth manufactured in his own workshop.
With regards his own production, he again stressed that he was selling hemp
cloth at very reduced prices.
Furthermore, he no longer had his network of local agents, and also
appeared to have had difficulty in renting his old shop in Chediston St (‘the
rent is very low’). The writing was
well and truly on the wall for the extinction of Suffolk hempen linen when
Thomas Leavold, a prominent Ipswich draper, kin of James Aldred and one of his
former agents, declared that ‘he had a great assortment of Irish linens and
sheeting as sound and strong as Suffolk Hemp for sale’.
The
Leavolds appear to have originated in Beccles.
The following baptisms are the register of Beccles Independent
Church.
William** and Sarah
Leavold -
Sarah
12.9.1786
- William Henry*
2.8.1792
-
Thomas 10.2.1795
*James
and Sarah Aldred named their second son William Henry
**The executors of
James Aldred's will were William Leavold (father or brother?) of Beccles and
Thomas (brother?) Leavold of Ipswich)
Hemp
and linen manufacturers were up against mass production Although hemp and flax fibres were more
difficult to handle by machines than cotton, these technical problems were
eventually conquered. By mid century,
flax and hemp mills were producing great economies of scale (Fig. 4.7) and
James Aldred in his small collection of sheds and buildings off Chediston St
was helpless against the production might of far distant factories.
Fig.
4.7. Interior of a flax mill in the 1850s
After
James Aldred’s death in 1846, his executors were unable to sell the property in
Chediston St, which was maintained by his wife as a grocery and drapery until
she died in 1849. In the 1850s the shop
and property was in the hands of Daniel Croft a master shoemaker, and had been
adapted to house two additional families and seven lodgers.
It
is clear from the above potted biographies of two generations of the Aldred
family of entrepreneurs that the production and marketing of hempen cloth was
not to be relied on to earn a living, let alone establish a commercial
dynasty. This would also have been the
verdict of the weavers, dyers and hecklers of Chediston St, who were classed as
resident paupers in 1830. Nevertheless,
at first sight things appeared to be looking up for a fresh economic cycle in
the town, a pointer in this direction being the conversion of James Aldred’s
old premises to house a new wave of immigrants. However, these were economic migrants from the countryside,
fleeing from agricultural unemployment in search of non-existent jobs. Halesworth, like its hinterland was
suffering an economic depression that was widespread through East Anglia.
Although
the Aldreds abandoned the hemp trade, after James Aldred’s death, one of his
sons William Henry took over his father’s drapery shop at the corner of the
Thoroughfare and the Market Place. He
went on to become the second of Halesworth’s self-made ‘millionaires’. This story is told in Chapter 5.
There was another Halesworth business cycle beginning at the time that
the hempen cloth trade was in decline, and this was based on barley, the
Suffolk clayland’s greatest botanical asset of primary productivity. Production of barley by eleven contiguous
Blything parishes in the 1840s is given in (Table 4.3). As now, the most profitable return for
barley was as a source of malt for the brewing industry, and much of
Halesworth’s 19th century development is taken up with the
successful commercial realisation of this potential.
Table
4.3 Comparative productivity of barley of parishes (totals per parish taken
from their Tithe Apportionments of the 1840s)
Village |
Barley
(bushels; 1 bushel = 8 gall dry measure) |
Peasenhall |
947 |
Cratfield |
874 |
Heveningham |
808 |
Walpole |
52 |
Huntingfield |
906 |
Linstead
Parva |
410 |
Linstead
Magna |
668 |
Withersdale |
393 |
Cookley |
682 |
Ubbeston |
533 |
Chediston |
410 |
In a national perspective the development of the malting industry was
largely a product of rising demand for beer consequent upon the unprecedented
increase in population after 1750, supplemented by more efficient transport and
progressive urbanisation of consumers.
During the eighteenth century, agriculture was the greatest prime mover
of the national economy. In such an
economy, where a successful harvest was so important, the brewing industry had
a far greater significance than in the industrialised England of our own days,
where barley is also a major source of food for intensive livestock
production.
In European history, barley has always been the first mainstay of
alcoholic fermentation. Barley grain is
germinated in the dark so that the seed’s store of starch is converted to
sugars suitable for yeast fermentation to yield beer. This process of controlled germination is called malting. In this perspective, malting experienced
the application of mass production very early in the Industrial Revolution to a
process that until the 18th century had been a small-scale cottage
affair serving the demand of a small circle of neighbours.
During
the 16th to mid 19th centuries, malting developed from a
domestic process centred on the retail production of beer for ale houses in
villages and market towns, to the concentrated mass production systems of town
and city breweries, which satisfied the needs of urban consumers. Family brewing, which for millennia had been
a mainstay to make the drinking of water a safe, palatable and pleasurable
experience, became all but extinct.
The
revolution in processing the primary raw material that made possible the entire
process of industrialisation of brewing can be studied with reference to two
centuries in the socio-economic history of Halesworth. Locally grown barley provided the raw
material, and the national economic driver for the development of the town was
the increased demand of London breweries for East Anglian malt. The basic idea
was that the mass malting of barley close to farms that grew it, added local
value to the crop. To get what they
wanted the London brewers had to fashion their own commercial links with these
provincial producers, and penetrate new farming areas with the spearheads of
direct demand. Crisp Brown, a well-known
Norwich maltster and merchant in his own right, wrote to Whitbread, his London
employer, in 1812:
I find so much competition in our Market for fine barley
that I have this week hired a Premises at Ranworth, where I shall meet the
farmers every Monday, it is an excellent district for quality and quantity, and
I expect frequently to purchase a good deal, the delivery being so very
convenient for the Farmers in the neighbourhood of Blofield and South Walsham.
I assure you I think myself very fortunate in serving such an excellent
situation.
By
such means did the development of urban demand and industrial efficiency in the
brewing industry make themselves felt in the agricultural economy of Eastern
England, where most of English malt was made.
Indeed, Suffolk was its greatest producer of malt at the turn of the 18th
century (Fig. 4.8).
Fig.
4.8. Malt production (bushels) in Eastern England 1801-2
For more than a century, the processing of locally grown barley
to serve the brewing industry was the dominant industrial activity in
Halesworth. The timelines of the six
main Halesworth enterprises that processed these botanical riches are
summarised in Table 4.4.
Table 4.4 The major
maltings in Halesworth 1750 to 1890
Woodcock’s Bridge St Brewery |
Prest’s Quay St Maltings |
Prime,s Bungay Rd Maltings and Brewery |
George’s River Side Maltings |
Knight’s Angel Yard Maltings |
Parry’s Station Yard Maltings |
1770 Built for John Woodcock |
|
|
|
C 1750 Built for Thomas Knights |
|
1792 Development of Creek Side Quay |
|
|
|
|
|
1809 Bought by Dawson Turner and William Hooker |
1801 Built for Messrs Prest, London corn factors. Managed by Hammond Ringwood |
|
|
|
|
1821 Sold to Patrick Stead & John Robinson*, and enlarged. |
1819 Bought by Ringwood after Prest’s bankruptcy |
|
|
|
|
1837 Enlarged with new malthouse and kilns |
1839 Sold to Patrick Stead and enlarged |
1839? Built for Edward Prime? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1845? Built for Thompson George |
1845? Owned by William Atmer |
|
1850 Sold to Truman Hanbury Managed by Robert Burleigh |
1850 Sold to Truman Hanbury Managed by Robert Burleigh |
|
? Sold to Messrs Croft & Flick |
|
|
1883 Managed by James Parry |
1883 Managed by James Parry |
1866 New malthouse built |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1890 Built by James Parry |
·
Also owned maltings in South Norfolk and East Suffolk
The two people associated with this trade who stand out, as
having risen above the confines of their provincial environment are William
Jackson Hooker and Patrick Stead. The
former used his position as managing director of the Bridge St Brewery as a
base from which to launch an outstanding career as a professional botanist of
national note. His life was devoted to promoting the botanical riches of global
biodiversity. Stead, in contrast, used
his excellent managerial skills, coupled with exceptional inventiveness and
drive, to generate above average wealth from controlling the biochemistry of
germination, which he dispensed with great generosity for the long-standing
benefit of his adopted townsfolk.
Neither Hooker nor Stead were self-made in the sense that they both
started life with sufficient family resources to take advantage of local and
national networks. This enabled them,
with luck and timeliness in their favour, to seize opportunities not available
to most people. They in fact came
together in an unlikely conjunction in 1821, when Hooker’s share of the Bridge
Street business was up for sale consequent upon his appointment to the Regius
Chair of Botany at Glasgow University.
Stead bought the concern as an addition to his growing collection of
maltings scattered through South Norfolk and North East Suffolk.
There are questions still remaining as to the origins of the
Bridge St Brewery, but the story seems to begin with the Badeley’s of
Walpole. They were one of the founding
families of Halesworth’s malting fortunes, who in the 1750s had property
interests in Halesworth and were in business exporting barley, wheat and malt
and importing coal. In 1765, Samuel
Badeley the younger described himself as a wholesale brewer. It is possible that it was the Badeleys who
built the Bridge St Brewery and a residence for the manager, known as Brewery
House, in the 1760s. It was about this time that the Woodcocks, father and son,
arrived in Halesworth from Harleston, where they were drapers, with a farming
enterprise in Pulham Market. They
settled in a property called The Mansion House in the Market Place,
which they purchased from John Durban. When it went to auction on 1799 it was described in the Ipswich Journal of
13th July 1799 with:-
"vestibule, good stairs, breakfast
Dining and drawing rooms 20 x 18 feet each, kitchen, offices, cellar, shop. 6
chambers and closets, 3 garrets, chaise house, stable, garden etc. situated in
the centre of Halesworth, a suitable dwelling for a merchant or banker with a
large family, for many years in the occupation of John D'Urban".
In any event, it was by way of the Bridge Street brewing
enterprise that Badeley went into partnership with John Woodcock the younger.
By the end of the century Badeley and Woodcock were Halesworth bankers, and it
was this precarious financial arrangement that brought the pair to bankruptcy
in 1799.
The Halesworth Trade Directory of 1793 lists John Woodcock as a
maltster and brewer. In his will of 25
Nov 1802 (he died Dec 1801) there is mention of his interests as a common
brewer, liquor merchant and farmer.
According to Rachel Lawrence’s research, the Woodcocks in this period
lived in a mansion off the old Bungay Rd (site now occupied by Magnolia House
in Station Rd). She drew this
conclusion from a perusal of the deeds.
However, in the 2006 description of this property given in the Council’s
appraisal of the town’s conservation area, Magnolia House is described as
having been built after 1841 for a parson.
So it is not at all clear where John Woodcock lived at the time of his
death. On the other hand, Michael and
Sheila Gooch believe that he occupied Red House in Bridge Street.
Red House was one of Woodcock’s properties, copyhold of Rectory
Manor, a spacious dwelling in Bridge St, to the east of the Congregational
Church, in the grounds of which there was the source of the brewery’s water
supply. The latter makes it likely that Badeley or Woodcock as part of the
Bridge Street Brewery development built Red House. This property eventually came up for sale in 1811, together with
a farm in Pulham Market (the genealogical homeland of the Woodcocks), a
freehold dwelling at Southwold, and lands with growing crops in
Halesworth.
In 1803, the two Turner brothers and Samuel Paget, another
Yarmouth financier, bought the Bridge Street Brewery, along with some public
houses and an associated villa called the "Brewery House" from
Woodcock’s executors. We do not know
whether Woodcock had lived in Brewery House or Red House.
The Rectory Manor Court Book for 1852 states that the ‘Red
House’, together with a stable, chaise-house and outbuildings, then unoccupied,
was purchased by the 15 directors of the Halesworth Savings Bank, one of whom
was Patrick Stead.
The Court Book records that in 1809 the same partnership paid
£28,000 for copyhold property that had been surrendered to Elizabeth Woodcock
from John Woodcock the younger. It is
from several copyhold transfers during this time that it seems that Rectory
Manor had many pockets of land in the Quay St/Bungay Rd area which consisted of
closes and pightles with named messuages, such as the King’s Head and Nag’s
Head public houses.
The Red House, having had the role of a temperance hotel, was
demolished when the eastern bypass and roundabout were constructed.
The life of William Jackson Hooker is a sharp commentary on the
complex social mix that comprised England’s ‘high trust culture’ at the turn of
the 18th century.
Financiers, intellectuals, retailers and artisans lived together, cheek
and jowl, up and down England in small towns like Halesworth, yet maintained
independent streams of wealth, intellect and mobility. Biological science was largely in the hands
of gifted amateurs, usually in receipt of sufficient wealth from a previous
generation of entrepreneurs to indulge their personal interests in collecting,
travelling and writing. Such was the
life of William Hooker, who’s brief contact with Halesworth, reveals much about
the role of inheritance, luck and opportunism that set careers in motion from
small beginnings to the very heights of the English scientific
establishment. Attitudes to science
were changing. In particular there was
a growing need for well-trained specialists to research the worlds natural
resources upon which the British industrial revolution was coming to
depend. By the time William Hooker’s
son had followed his father into the directorship of Kew Gardens, botanical
science was part of a professional scientific establishment, and the age of the
amateur contributor was rapidly fading.
William Hooker was born in Norwich July 6th 1785. He
was educated at the local grammar school and later at Starston Hall, where he
learned estate management. His uncle
and godfather, William Jackson of Kent, left him a considerable fortune,
allowing the young man time to pursue a single-minded idiosyncratic interest in
botany. It may be said that his
scientific career really began when, during his ramblings through the Norfolk
countryside, he discovered a moss, which appeared to be unknown to science. The national expert on mosses and algae was the
Yarmouth banker, brewer, botanist
and antiquary, Dawson Turner, and it was Turner who confirmed that it was
indeed a new species, which was subsequently named Buxbaumia aphylla. Hooker’s domestic and professional life was
from then on closely tied to that of Turner and his family.
Dawson Turner
was born at Great Yarmouth on 18 October 1775 to the brewer-banker James Turner
and Elizabeth Cotman, the only daughter of John Cotman, mayor of Yarmouth. He
received his early education at the public grammar school and afterwards
privately by Reverend Robert Forby, a botanist of some ability, from who it is
believed that Turner might have acquired his penchant for botany. He entered
Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1793, only to leave a year later maybe in part
because his father was ill. His father
died that same year. Following in his father's footsteps, he joined the
family’s Yarmouth Bank in 1796. During the same year, Turner married Mary
Palgrave by whom he had 11 children. The fortune left to him by his father gave
Turner the opportunity to pursue his foremost interests, botany, more
specifically cryptogamic botany, and also the study of antiquities. At this
time the scientific establishment was composed of gifted amateurs with
independent means or rich patrons. As
part of this national network of experts, Norwich was an important regional
centre for research in natural history.
Turner
devoted most of his leisure time to botanical tours. In 1799 for instance he
made an extensive progress through the western counties in England and on his
return published a catalogue of the rare plants collected on the expedition. In
the following years he visited and collected in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
Turner was most notably interested in mosses, lichens, and algae, describing in
publications four new species of lichens between 1802 and 1804. Between 1797
and 1803 he was elected a fellow of the Linnaean Society, the Imperial Academy,
the Royal Society, and the Society of Antiquaries. His earliest papers reveal that he was a field-oriented person.
Living by the sea, he was able to carry out observations on the seaweeds of the
shore year-round, and thus in 1800 he contributed one of the first-ever studies
on the life history of seaweeds. Turner published numerous works on the subject of botany
including, The Botanist's Guide through England and Wales and the Natural
History of Fuci. He also contributed several articles to the Transactions
of the Linnaean Society and formed large specimen collections,
predominantly of seaweeds. At the turn of the century, when he was producing
his monograph on British seaweeds, he asked William Hooker to prepare the
drawings for the first two volumes.
These were published in 1802 entitled Synopsis of the British Fuci. This was the year when Turner was elected a
member of the Royal Society.
As a result of Hooker’s discovery of Buxbaumia aphylla,
and a growing friendship with Turner, Hooker was elected a Fellow of the
Linnaean Society in 1806, at the age of twenty-one. Over a thirteen-year
period, starting in 1806, he became practically a member of the Turner family,
staying in the family home at "Bank House" Yarmouth and eventually
completing 234 plates of the total of 258 plates in the Fuci , the last
volume of which was published in 1819.
In 1812 the Turners persuaded the Norwich artist John Sell Cotman to
settle in Yarmouth, and they arranged for him to tutor their daughters in
draftsmanship and water colouring. Turner had the means to serve as the
lifelong patron to Cotman and essentially had a "cottage industry"
under his roof. Drawings and etchings by his wife and six daughters enriched his publications. In the
summer of 1814 Turner travelled with his wife and two of his daughters (Maria
and Elizabeth) along with Hooker to Paris. This was the first time English
citizens were allowed to set foot on French soil because of the preceding years
of the Napoleonic wars. The party was able to visit the Muséum d'Histoire
Naturelle and to attend meetings of the "Academie des sciences". Also
at those meetings were such celebrated scientists of the time as Lamarck, de
Jussieu, Alexander von Humboldt, and Labillardière.
At about this time, Halesworth was brought into William Hooker’s
vision through Dawson Turner’s links with the town as a financier, with a
branch of his bank in The Thoroughfare managed by his brother James. James was probably also managing the Bridge
St Brewery, which had been bought by the Yarmouth partnership in1803. By 1809 it appeared to Dawson Turner that
his friend William Hooker was in need of a business arrangement to stabilise
his domestic situation and he and his partners agreed to offer Hooker a quarter
share in their Halesworth business. The
offer was made on Hooker’s return from an expedition he made to Iceland on
behalf of Sir Joseph Banks, who at that time was associated with the embryonic
Kew Gardens. An important feature of
the partnership was that Hooker was to move to Halesworth and superintend the
day to day running of the brewery. It
was clear to Hooker that his godfather’s legacy was not going to be sufficient
to maintain his independence, and, investing most of his inheritance to the
venture, he took up residence in Brewery House in November 1809. His special
relationship with Dawson Turner grew closer when he married Turner's eldest
daughter, Maria, in 1815. The couple
set up home in Brewery House where two boys, William Dawson, Joseph Dalton and
two daughters, Maria and Elizabeth were born.
From his base in Halesworth, Hooker continued networking through
the Linnaean Society, and in particular he appears to have cultivated a good
relationship with Sir Joseph Banks.
Banks had been the first director of Kew Botanical Garden since 1772. He obviously thought highly of Hooker’s
scientific abilities when he sponsored him in the expedition to Iceland, all
expenses paid. After the expedition he
even offered him unpublished notes from his own expedition in 1722, as almost
all of Hooker's collections and notes had been destroyed in a shipboard fire
from which he had barely escaped with his life. With Joseph Banks' support,
William Hooker was able to realise his true vocation by obtaining the Regius
Chair of Botany at Glasgow University.
He left Halesworth for Glasgow in 1821.
His departure coincided with the sale of the Bridge St. Brewery
enterprise, and this is documented in a series of notices in the Ipswich
Journal in February and March 1821. The
property in Halesworth was probably his quarter share in the Yarmouth
partnership and is summarised in the newspaper entry for February 3, 1821. The sale notice states that the beer brewery
and public houses were for sale ‘in consequence of the death of the resident
partner’. The partner was probably
James Turner the banker, who died in Halesworth aged 33, and was buried on
January 7th 1820. In other
words, when Hooker left for Glasgow, there would be no member of the Yarmouth
partnership left in Halesworth who could take up the business.
In detail the sale consisted of 15 public houses, with another 3
on lease, the brewery, a counting house from which the business was conducted,
and a nearly new maltings.
There was also a ‘genteel dwelling house, with gardens, vinery etc.
adjoining the premises’ (probably present day Hooker House). On March 3rd it was announced
that the inns and public houses, together with a piece of upland pasture
(Linstead), and a malthouse with two cottages adjoining (in the Angel Yard)
were to be auctioned on 14th March.
At the same time there was to be sold ‘a comfortable and very excellent
family residence with large-well appointed garden, hot house and vinery’. This is very likely to be the property
referred to above as a ‘gentile dwelling house’. W. J. Hooker was in occupation and on March
10th the Ipswich Journal carried the following description of it.
A
comfortable and very excellent FAMILY RESIDENCE, substantially brick-built and
sash fronted; comprising a neat vestibule, staircase with area, mahogany hand
rail, handsome drawing-room, dining-room and breakfast room, 4 principal
bed-rooms and dressing-rooms, water closet, servants room, housemaid’s closet
and attics, a second staircase, capital kitchen, butler’s pantry, store room,
cook’s pantry, wash house, in which there is a new lead pump, a forcing pump
with pipes to supply the upper floors, excellent cellarage, usual domestic
offices. Large pleasure and kitchen gardens, walled round and planted with
choice wall and standard fruit trees, abundantly cropped with every description
of seasonable vegetation, good green house, communicating with the dining room
and vinery
The
Premises are in a complete state of repair, having been lately re-built and
improved at considerable expense, are fitted up with much neatness, judiciously
arranged, and well connected, containing ample accommodation for a highly
respectable family, now in the occupation of W.J. Hooker, Esq. who will give
immediate possession.
We learn several important things from this description. First the house was very large; second, it
had been recently rebuilt; third, important architectural features were singled
out that were probably part of the rebuild.
These included the main staircase with a mahogany rail, a neat vestibule
and the front with its sash windows.
These are features that can be located in present day Hooker house, and
taken together, they indicated a building date circa 1810. The gentle pitched
overhanging roof, the railed first floor rear veranda, the elongated ‘floor to
ceiling’ rectangular windows, white-brick façade, the rectangular brick pillars,
and the iron balustrade of the central staircase with its mahogany rail,
epitomise a stripped down version of the grand Regency style. The source of the
money for this makeover for the newly-weds may well have been Maria Turner’s
dowry.
Other Hooker property that was listed for sale on 19th
March 1821 consisted of livestock, implements and furnishings of a farm at
Holton.
We owe to William Hooker’s youngest son, Joseph, a glimpse of
family events in Halesworth, Yarmouth and Norwich on the eve of the family’s
departure to Glasgow. These are his
earliest recollections. He was four
years old when the family left Brewery House and his reminiscences are
preserved in an autobiographical fragment, set down late in his life.
“I was
born [he writes] June 30, 1817, at Halesworth, Suffolk, being the second child
and son of William Jackson Hooker and Maria, nee Turner, of Great Yarmouth. My
brother was older than myself and my parents had subsequently three daughters.
I was named Joseph after my Grandfather Hooker, and Dalton after my godfather,
the Rev. James Dalton, M.A., F.L.S., Rector of Croft, Yorkshire, a student of
carices and mosses and discoverer of Scheuchzeria in England.
My
memory reverts to a very early age-when only three years old to my father's
house at Halesworth, and incidents connected therewith, amongst others the
gardener, in mowing a damp meadow behind the house, slicing the frogs with his
scythe, and my brother running along the top of the garden wall to my mother's
alarm. He died in 1840. Curiously enough I have no recollection of a
magnificent dog, a Newfoundland I believe, that my father kept, and which was
notorious for its thefts from the butchers' shops of the town.
My
Grandfather Hooker's house in Magdalen Street, Norwich, I remember even better,
where my grandmother used to show me the glazed drawers of his insect cabinet.
On leaving Halesworth for Glasgow, my father sold his insects to Mr. Sparshall
of that city, a well known collector. The
collection is now in the Norwich Museum. Also I well remember his little garden
and greenhouse of succulent plants, and on seeing a Coccinella on a post,
repeating to it the stave:
Bishop Bishop Barnabee
When will your marriage be?
If it be to-morrow's day,
Take your wings and fly away.
Of my
Grandfather Turner's house in Yarmouth, I remember being carried there in my
nurse's arms early in 1821, on the eve of my mother taking myself, brother and
sisters to Glasgow, where my father, who had taken up his Professorship in the
previous summer, was awaiting us. My grandfather occupied the house of Gurney's
Bank, of which he was a resident Director. I remember distinctly the railings
before the Bank, its drawing-room, and my aunts' seizing me from my nurse,
dancing with me round the room, and striking the harp to amuse me. Also I
remember the walls of the room being covered with pictures of which my
grandfather had a small but very choice collection. This collection was sold
after my grandfather's death in 1858. Some of the pictures, notably the Titian,
a Hobbema and, I think, a Greuze and one or more Cotmans are in the Wallace
Collection.
Of the
journey from Yarmouth to Glasgow by post horses I have a distinct recollection,
during which my mother caught ague in crossing the Fens, with which she was
troubled for many years. Of incidents I can only remember my brother running to
eat a cake of white soap, mistaking it for an apple. I also distinctly remember
the picturesque place, Inn of Beattock Bridge, in Dumfriesshire, but why I
cannot tell.
My next
memory is the arrival in Glasgow by night, and going into lodgings (No. 1, Bath
Street) which my father had taken pending his obtaining possession of a new
house which he had purchased in West Bath Street (No. 17), in which lodgings I
found my Grandfather and Grandmother Hooker, who had accompanied or followed my
father to Glasgow with a mass of furniture from the Halesworth and Norwich
houses, on some bedding from which I slept, for the first night, on the floor.”
Mea Allen in her book on the Hooker family
published in 1967 refers to Joseph’s birthplace as ‘Brewery House’. She has a photograph of it taken in 1930 by
Prof. F.W. Oliver when he attended a gathering to unveil a plaque to the
Hookers in the parish church. The
caption states:
“The window of the room in which Joseph
Dalton Hooker was born is the upstairs one second to the right”
Other important information from the
particulars of the 1821 sale, are that the maltings seem to have been a recent
development, and there was a counting house, which was described as an integral
part of the commercial complex. The
latter is probably the ‘manager’s house’ mentioned in Pevsner’s ‘The
Buildings of England: Suffolk’, 1961; rev. 1975’, where in the entry for
Halesworth is the following description of the maltings opposite the
Congregational Church:
“The continuation of Thoroughfare is
Bridge Street, and from this, past the bridge, QUAY STREET turns off, where
opposite the CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH of 1836 is THE MALTINGS, a very picturesque
group of buildings round a courtyard.
The little quay at the back still exists under a wide archway (On a
keystone adjoining Creek Side the date 1792. DoE). The manager’s pretty house also faces the courtyard”.
The heart of this collection of buildings
was probably the Badeley/Woodcock brewer.
The ‘pretty’ manager’s house referred to by Pevsner could have been the
courtyard house, known as ‘Creek Side’.
The site of the courtyard, Creek Side, and quay is now occupied by a
close of private houses.
Regarding the winding up of the Yarmouth
partnership’s interests in Halesworth, in 1821 the Rectory Manor minutes record
that £850 was paid by the Rev Lombe Athill to Samuel Paget, Dawson Turner,
Charlotte Turner and William Jackson Hooker, brewers and co-partners for the absolute
purchase of copyhold hereditaments (2 messuages, one stable and a pightle of
land called Taynt Close). The premises
had been transferred to James Paget from Samuel Badeley in 1811 and this was
probably one of the last remnants of the co-partnership’s commercial
involvement in Quay St.
4.5.3 Botanical imperialism
William
Hooker’s move into academia coincided with a shift in his father-in-law’s
interests. After 1820, Dawson Turner
seems to have directed his attention to the study of antiquities. He gave the whole of his herbarium to his
son-in-law, with possibly his most notable antiquarian contribution the Acount
of a Tour in Normandy, undertaken chiefly for the purpose of investigating the
Architectural Antiquities of the Duchy.
His daughters illustrated this publication.
Many of his
family's drawings supplemented the nearly 8,000 volumes that comprised Turner's
extensive personal library. The library was a leading interest throughout his
life, and he continued to collect books nearly to the end. He was also an avid
collector of manuscripts. His
collection included the literary and scientific correspondence of many
prominent men such as, Sir Isaac Newton, John Pinkerton, and Henry Baker, as
well as some 25,000 autographed letters. He continued to work as a banker in
Yarmouth until 1851 when, after his wife had died, he married a woman, whom his
family did not approve, causing him to move to London. In 1855 Turner's health
began to fail and he died in London on 21 June 1858.
During this time, William Hooker seems to have detached himself
completely from his East Anglian roots.
During the twenty-one years of his tenure at Glasgow, he not only
revitalised the botany department but also developed the city's botanical
gardens. When his son Joseph was six years old, he would accompany his father
to the university almost every day and attend his lectures. Although he was
immensely popular as a professor, William Hooker found that his income was not
sufficient to support his growing family.
The opportunity to move upwards, financially and scientifically,
came in 1841 when there was a vacancy for the directorship of Kew Botanical
Gardens. For some years the Gardens had
been in something of a managerial crises, and in 1838, one year after Victoria
came to the throne, the decline was so serious that the Treasury appointed a
full-scale commission to enquire into the state of the Gardens. The committee,
headed by Dr John Lindley, was strongly critical of the current management and
recommended that Kew 'should either be at once taken for public purposes,
gradually made worthy of the country, and converted into a powerful means of
promoting national science, or it should be abandoned'. The report had clear
ideas, too, about Kew's wider role:
A
national garden ought to be the centre round which all minor establishments of
the same nature should be arranged . . . receiving their supplies and aiding
the Mother Country in everything that is useful in the vegetable kingdom.
Medicine, commerce, agriculture, horticulture, and many valuable branches of
manufacture would benefit from the adoption of such a system... Government
would be able to obtain authentic and official information on points connected
with the founding of new colonies; it would afford the plants these required.
This is in tune with a general Victorian sentiment that
examination systems and scientific endeavours should be aimed at providing
specialists to further Britain’s command of the world’s natural resources. At first the government resisted Lindley's
report but eventually it gave in to public and scientific pressure. In 1841 Kew
was put under the control of the Commissioner of Woods and Forests. It was by exercising his many connections
and influences that in 1841 William Hooker, who by that time had received a
knighthood, took over the management of Kew and was appointed as Director. It seems that this happened after complex
and protracted machinations to secure the position, and deny his serious competitor
John Lindley that honour. Under Hooker’s energetic leadership Kew began to
flourish again, and the linking of science, public interest and colonial
expansion recommended in Lindley’s report (and implicit in Kew since its
beginning) was made official policy. The scientific expertise was strengthened
and the Gardens expanded up to nearly 200 acres. They were thrown open to the
public, and to the insatiably curious Victorians became one of the most popular
pleasure resorts in London.
Kew was suddenly at the hub of all kinds of botanical enterprise.
It was again sending out plant collectors and helping to familiarize ordinary
gardeners with the new plants they brought back. It advised and staffed a
growing network of botanical gardens in the colonies. At home it was the scene
of an almost continuous botanical spectacle of global biodiversity: giant
cacti, aroids, water lilies and orchids such as Cattleya skinneri, six feet
high and bearing 1,500 flowers.
Botanical illustration flourished once more at Kew, not least
because Hooker was himself an enthusiastic and proficient artist, an innate
skill that he had successfully developed in his early rambles in Norfolk, and
honed in Brewery House as a scientific illustrator for his father in law. Since 1834 he had been editor and principal
illustrator of Curtis's Botanical Magazine, an illustrated journal started by
William Curtis in 1787, and intended for 'such ladies, gentlemen and gardeners,
as wish to become scientifically acquainted with the plants they
cultivate'. From the beginning of W.J.
Hooker's directorship, Curtis's Botanical Magazine has maintained a
relationship of varying degrees of closeness with Kew. In 1984 it was
relaunched as the Kew Magazine, with the intention of paying special attention
to plant ecology and conservation. Throughout these two centuries the tradition
of using original coloured paintings as illustrations has been maintained, and
the magazine has been a showcase for most of the finest botanical artists
associated with Kew over these years.
William Jackson Hooker was a singularly social creature who
cultivated many important friendships and maintained life-long correspondences
with many of them. Over the years he
was able to use his considerable charm and tact to expand the garden by
acquiring many of the surrounding royal grounds, as well as initiate the
construction of several glasshouses, including the famous Palm House, and
organize the garden's beds in a more logical and scientific manner. He was also
largely responsible for opening a greater portion of the garden for public
viewing. He maintained his position as director until his death in 1865, at
which time his son, by then Sir Joseph Hooker, took over as
Director. Joseph had gained an
independent reputation as a field botanist and plant illustrator that was equal
to, or even higher than that of his father.
He made a significant impact upon the study of the embryo science of
plant biogeography in his travels through India and the Himalaya, and his
collections, particularly of Rhododendrons, have enriched temperate gardens the
world over. There was no thought of
conservation at this time. His
expeditions pillaged literally tons of living material on porter’s trains a
hundred strong at times. Seven loads of
a single orchid species were taken from their habitat in this way. Very few of these cargoes of living material
survived the journey back to England.
This was indeed an age when Earth seemed a vast unexplored storehouse
filled with limitless natural resources, ready for the taking. It is interesting now to contemplate this
lost world through Joseph’s evocative drawings and his exciting accounts of his
perilous journeys through an exotic Indian sub-continent, and at the same time
remember the long-lasting impact made on his young mind by the wet pastures on the
banks of the Blyth behind Brewery House.
In
the 18th century most of total malt exports of England and Wales
went through the Norfolk ports of Yarmouth, Lynn, Wells, Blakeney and
Cley. In the period 1738 to 1780
Norfolk’s production ranged from 96 to 79% of the total. Of these ports, Yarmouth’s malt exports were
by far the greatest (about 50% of Norfolk’s production), most of which was sent
to Holland. The key to Yarmouth’s
success was that it was at the head of the comprehensive Broadlands network of
waterways, the arms of which reached deep into Norfolk’s upland cereal
farms.
Unfortunately,
comparable figures for malt exports are not available for Suffolk, but it is
known that the ports of Aldeburgh, Dunwich, Walberswick, Southwold and
Woodbridge were all involved with grain exports, although in contrast to the
Norfolk shipments, as much wheat as barley and malt was being sent coastwise,
invariably to London. If Halesworth was
to become involved in the mass-production and export of malt, it had to have
improved direct communications with its local port of Southwold. As it happened, the main investment of money
and know-how in Halesworth came from Yarmouth, via the Lacon family business,
which had pioneered the combined development of malting with brewing and
banking in Yarmouth and Norwich. The
family also controlled the local consumption of beer, for by the 1780s the
Lacons of Yarmouth had nineteen public houses valued among their assets, being
among the first to invest in the ‘tied trade’.
Southwold
is the nearest port to Halesworth, and from the earliest of times Halesworth
merchants dealing with bulk products, such as lime, coal, timber and grain, had
to rely on road transport by horse-drawn wagons to reach the ships involved
with coastal trade between Suffolk’s ports and London. As far as Halesworth is concerned, this
meant using the quays of Southwold Harbour at the mouth of the Blyth, or the
Reydon and Wolsey Bridge quays, which were linked to the sea through Southwold
harbour by way of Buss Creek (Fig. 4.9) The most important factor for the
economic development of Halesworth was therefore an efficient link with these
quays.
Fig.
4.9 Wolsey Bridge and Reydon quays (from Hodskinson’s map of 1783)
At
the start of the 18th century the Reydon quays were owned by the
ancient Platers family of Sotterley, and in the 17th century a
London branch of the family ran a fleet of sloops, schooners and sailing barges
on the Thames and along the coastal waters.
The first record of development at the quays is the improvements made by
Sir John Platers of Sotterley round about 1740. The first local merchant to use them intensively was William
Lenny, a yeoman farmer of Sotherton.
Lenny dealt in timber, the production of burnt lime, and grain
exports. He had granaries at Reydon and
traded from Reydon with Yarmouth and London.
At this time, the townsfolk of Southwold and the Reydon merchants were
very much concerned with the natural processes of wind and tide that were
blocking the mouth of the Blyth with shingle and silt. Efforts were made in 1741 to raise capital
to improve the situation with harbour works.
This was of great interest to those using the Reydon quays, which were
the traditional outlet for local merchants in adjacent parishes, such as
Wangford, who also dealt in grain and timber.
Miles Barne, who bought the Sotterley estates from the Platers, together
with William Lenny, backed plans to stabilise Southwold Harbour, and Lenny supervised
the construction of a new South Pier in 1751.
On Lenny’s death in the 1790s, a local family, the Barfoots, took over
his interests in Reydon. It was
probably the Barfoots, together with the Reeves of Wangford, who led the
merchant interest in backing an idea to canalise the Blyth and link Halesworth
directly with Southwold Harbour. Having a water link with Halesworth would
stimulate trade with farmers and villagers in the hinterland of the Blyth
catchment. This project would also
boost the development of large-scale malting as the most profitable use to
which locally grown barley could be put.
Indeed, Robert Reeve of Wangford was a prime mover in tapping into
Blything’s barley production for the beginnings of large-scale malting and
brewing in Halesworth during the 1750s.
At the same time it was to the malting properties of barley, that
Blything farmers turned their attention, encouraged by London brewers anxious
to maximise the efficiency and quality of their raw materials.
There
is no doubt that trade in locally produced barley provided the economic spine
for the development of Halesworth. This
is summarised in the following time-line (Table 4.5). It is a sequence of events that turned Halesworth from a small,
relatively impoverished closed and divided manorial community, straddling an
important bridging point on the road from Harleston to the port of Southwold,
into a thriving 19th century market town, replete with many fine
brick built middle class residences and commercial premises.
Table 4.5 Timeline of the development of
brewing and malting in Halesworth (based on
research of Michael Fordham)
1568-77
In
the Halesworth Tax List of 1568 John Pryme held lands to the value of £1, while Robert Pryme had goods to the
value of £7. In 1577 John Pryme’s
property included a cottage and house next to the Angel Inn, butcher’s stalls
in the market and six and a half acres of land, mostly in Chediston St. Robert’s property included the Angel
tenement and 21 acres of land.
1580
John
Pryme the elder was a churchwarden and another John Pryme lived at the Angel
Inn.
1606
Mr
Pryme was at the Lyon Inn and Robert Pryme at the Angel; both men were probably
retail or victualling brewers.
1607
John
Browne is described as a common brewer late of the White Hart.
1619
There
were 10 brewers, innkeepers and victuallers in the town.
1629,
John
Prime the younger died leaving his property to his daughter Alice. His will mentions an inventory of the
attached brewhouse, namely one copper
and guld set (tub for fermenting), one mash vat, one wort vat, and underbecke
or spout, a cooler and two forms.
1620
There
were 6 inns and taverns in Halesworth including the Angel, Lyon, Kings Arms and
White Hart. There were two common
brewers, George Meeke and Thomas Thurston.
Thomas Thurston, brewer in his will left his wife £50 and his eldest son
£20.
1638
Francis
Rushmere, widow bequeathed to her son ‘a pair of mill stones, one brewing tub,
three shallow tubs, four beer vessels, a half barrel and a copper couldron’.
1647
John
Wigg brewer
1651
Manor
of Halesworth Minute Book: Nathaniel Chilston and Walter
Winston were chosen as ale founders and tasters for the Town of
Halesworth. They were provided with
‘One Winchester quart and one pint of pewter, a set of weights ranging from a
quarter of an once to eight pounds, a book of directions for officers, one
brand to mark the measure and a pair of brass scales’.
1654
Thomas
Woodward maltster (Halesworth?)
1664
Robert
Rufhurst brewer
1686
Thomas
Gooch brewer also owner of the Beer Hall
1695
John Jefferson, maltster (Halesworth ?)
1705
Inventory
of William Barfoot, alehouse keeper and brewer. The inventory of his possessions made after his
death in 1705 provides a description of his ale-house. It was small containing
hall and parlour with two chambers above, and only the hall and hall chamber
were heated. There was also a garrett in the roof, a buttery and wash house in
a backhouse behind the ground floor rooms, and a cellar possibly below the
hall. The beer was drunk in the hall as it contained one table two stools and
fourteen chairs. The beer was provided in pewter tankards and pots, ranging in
size from a half-pint to a quart. In the backhouse rooms were the brewing
vessels. These were a ‘tyn boiler and cover, one iron pott, two old tubbs,
three keelers, two empty half barrells and four empty barrells.’ In the cellar
were ‘two barrells of beer one decayed.’ The value of the whole inventory was
£29 9s 0d, Ranked according to wealth, ale-house brewers were just above poor
labourers and widows (whose inventories ranged in value from £15-£20). They
were of similar status to shoemakers (£32) but well below farmers (£79-£400)
and merchants (£181-£443). William
Barfoot may have been related to Robert Barfoot a Reydon merchant. In the 1770s Robert was working lime kilns
and importing coal for domestic use from his quay at Wolsey Bridge. He lived at Kiln Farm, Reydon, which was
linked by lanes and tracks to the communities of Henham and Wangford. In 1775 he shipped 9,800 quarters of grain
to London, of which half of this was barley or malt.
1730
Samuel
Pallant brewer
1731
John Moor maltster, Daniel Scholding maltster.
1735
The initiation of Thomas Knight’s brewery and malting enterprise at the ‘Angel’
and ‘Angel Yard’.
1735
John
Skimming brewer, owned the George
1735
Thomas
Knights maltster and brewer
1740s
Crisps of Wangford. Yeoman
farmers. John Crisp (dissenter of the
Independent Church, later ‘Congregationalist’, died 1778) of Elms Farm. John and his brother William married daughters
of the Rector of Wrentham, John
Steffe. Widow of Rector, acting on
the last wishes of her husband, transferred to the Independent Church with her
family. John Crisp exported barley to
London on a substantial scale. Had 6
sons and 1 daughter. John’s son,
Steffe, sold Elms Farm and maltings to Lord Rous. They were then tenanted by Robert Reeve.
1748
Inventory
of Phillip Knights beer brewer, also innholder of the White Lion (uncle of
Thomas Knights of the Angel/Angel Yard alehouse, brewery and store.
1749
John
Skimming brewer owned the Red Cow
1758
Robert
Reeve of Wangford married a daughter of Richard Smith, timber merchant
of Sotherton. Moved to Halesworth in
the 1750s where he became established as brewer and maltster.
1759
Robert
Reeve took lease of maltings in Pound Pightle (Soap House Hill Maltings;
‘Elephant House’ built on part of site in 1855). With his son James he bought up property in Halesworth and they
owned a network of about 30 public houses in and around Halesworth. Lived in house on west side of the market
place and tenanted the brewery ‘The Halesworth Brewery’, behind this
property. Owned the White Hart and
Castle pubs. Another son, Benjamin
remained in Wangford, where he took over his uncle’s maltings (who was a
bachelor also named Benjamin), where he became a successful maltster and farmer
(250 acres).
1761
‘Halesworth
Navigation’ opened
Norwich
Mercury; Halesworth, July 23rd 1761: This day we had the pleasure of receiving into our Bason a keel
from Southwold, laden with coals and drawing three Feet of water. We can assure the Publick that the Works for
our facilitating the Navigation of our River are constructed and finished with
the Greatest Art, and as they afford the most pleasing probability of a
particular Benefit to the Town, so do they no less promise to the Country
around us a more extensive influence, especially as the Tolls imposed on the
several kinds of Merchandise conveyed up and down the Blyth, are low beyond
expectation. It would be unpardonable
ingratitude in us, not to take the earliest Opportunity of acknowledging our
Obligation to those Gentlemen, who actuated by generous Zeal for this
undertaking, nor feared to bring them the Torrent of Malice, Predjudice and
Interest to bring about to General Benefit.
The Barge was attended from the Town Lock up to the Bason by a numerous
concourse of People, assembled not more to satisfy their curiosity at the
Novelty of the Sight, than to join in the General Joy and Triumph of the
Occasion.
1770
Bridge
St Brewery built for John Woodcock : this was probably the start of the Bridge
St maltings, a complex referred to by Pevsner as being at ‘Creek Side’. (‘The
Buildings of England: Suffolk’)
1781
James
Turner of Yarmouth (1743-94) m Elizabeth Cotman. In conjunction with ? Gurney founded
the ‘Yarmouth and Suffolk Bank’.
1782
Creation
of Gurney and Turners ‘Halesworth and Suffolk’ Bank
1792
Date
on a keystone of the Ceek Side Maltings- opposite the Congregational Chapel
(referred to in Pevsner’s ‘The Buildings of England: Suffolk’)
1793
John Woodcock (wealthy draper family
of Harleston) married daughter of John Garneys, Yoxford surgeon and
man-midwife. Listed as brewer and
maltster in Halesworth Directory; premises in Bridge St. (according to
Mea Allen he lived in Magnolia House, Station Road).
1794
John Woodcock and Samuel Badeley of
Walpole set up in partnership established the ‘Halesworth Bank’.
1794
Universal
British Directory Halesworth; The nearest sea port is Southwold, distance 9 miles, from which
place there is a newly cut canal and barges go down three or four times a week
with corn etc for the London market. A
London coach comes every other day to The Angel and another every other day to
the Three Tuns. The London carrier sets
out every Wednesday from the Kings Arms.
Thomas Adamson carrier sets out for Norwich every Friday and returns on
Saturday.
1799
Woodcock and Badeley’s business was bankrupt.
Messrs
Prest a London firm of corn factors built granaries and maltings in Quay St.
1809
Woodcock
and Badeley’s Bridge St maltings bought by Samuel Paget, Dawson Turner,
and James Turner. One of Dawson’s
daughters, Maria, married William Jackson Hooker. Hooker managed Bridge St maltings until
1820.
1819
Messrs
Prest went bankrupt
1819
Hammond
Ringwood purchased Prest’s property
1824
Bridge
St maltings bought by maltster Patrick Stead age 36 of Yarmouth. Fordham
says that John Robinson was also involved.
Stead moved his maltings HQ to Halesworth circa 1837. What was Stead
doing in Yarmouth? Patrick Stead was of
Scottish descent, born in Stead’s Place Leith Walk in 1788. Educated at Perth Academy. Trained in merchants office in London and
became connected with the brewing business of Truman Hanbury & Co in the
grain procurement department.
1830
Pigot’s
Directory:
Great quantities of hemp are grown in the neighbourhood and the spinning of
yarn with the manufacture of it into cloth gives employment to many of the
inhabitants. The malting business is
carried on here very extensively and a good business is done in corn on the
market days.
1837
George
and Thomson George, Halesworth farming family, trading in corn, coal,
lime and malt, built, or enlarged a maltings, down the Angel Pathway,
which had access to the Blyth Navigation at the new Reach. Thomson owned three wherries and supplied
Trumans.
1839
Stead
purchased Ringwoods maltings etc on his retirement.
1839
Edward
Prime owned a brewery and malthouse in Bungay Rd.
1844
Whites
Directory; part of entry for Halesworth: ‘This river has been navigable up to the town for
barges of from 20 to 30 tons burthen of which there are a dozen belonging to
the merchants here employed in carrying out corn, malt etc and bringing in coal
and timber etc. Here is a large iron
foundry and agricultural implement manufactury and a number of malting houses. Mr P Stead has lately obtained a patent for
making malt by a new process and has erected a large kiln in the form of a
tower 50 ft high divided into five storeys and heated by steam pipes and a hot
air blast. The green malt is first
placed on the top floor and is moved a storey lower every day and the heat of each
floor increasing as it descends. It is
dried off and ready for the market on the fourth or fifth day. There is also a contrivance for regulating
the temperature of the ‘steep’ as well as the drying floors.
Maltsters
William
Atmer, Bridge St
Thomson
George, Bridge St
Edward
Prime, Bungay Rd
Reeve
and Cracknell, Market Place
J.
Alf Riches, Bungay Rd
Samuel
Self, Chediston St
Patrick
Stead, Quay St.
1850
Stead
sold out to London based Truman Hanbury brewery.
1855
Halesworth
Directory:
Here is a large iron and brass foundry and agricultural implement manufactury
established in 1803 and now belonging to Messrs T Easterson and Son who employ
a considerable number of hands in the manufacture of ploughs, thrashing
machines, turnip cutters, chaff engines, iron fencing and gates etc. Here is also Mr Samuel Brown’s large coach
and harness manufacture chiefly for the London market and employing about 60
hands. Here are likewise several large
malting houses and an extensive brick, tile and drainpipe manufacture. Great quantities of hemp were formerly grown
in the neighbourhood and many of the inhabitants were employed in the
manufacture of Suffolk hempen cloth, but the trade was discontinued many years
ago. It once gave employment to about a
thousand hands in the town and neighbourhood.
Maltsters
William
Atmer, Bridge St
Thomson
George, Bridge St
Samuel
Self, Chediston St
Strathern
and Paul (Prince of Wales, Brewery?), Bungay Rd
1855
The railway between Yarmouth and London reached Halesworth
1879
Suffolk
Directory 1879;
The trade of the town consists chiefly of corn and malting which is carried on
very extensively by Mr R. W. Burleigh and Messrs Croft and Flick and Mr
Strathern. Many thousand quarters are
annually sent to London by rail and the River Blyth by means of small craft to
the port of Southwold. Here are also the carriage works of Messrs
S. Smith and Co. employing 70 hands and the breweries of Messrs Croft and Flick
and Mr Strathern.
Circa 1890
Building
of the Station Yard Maltings by Mr James Parry one of Truman’s agents in
charge of the Quay Maltings. The
buildings were erected by Wallace Ellis of Wenhaston at a time when more than
45 tons of malt were produced in the town each week. (the maltings were taken
over by Crisp Maltings Ltd of Great Ryburgh in Norfolk about 1968, and closed
in September 1980).
1898
New
Cut Maltings
built behind the Prince of Wales Brewery by F. Kendall-Chapman.
1896
Kellys
Directory;
trade of the town consists chiefly of corn and malting which is carried on very
extensively by Mr James Parry, Mr Frank Kendall-Chapman and the Colchester Brewing Company
Ltd. Many thousand quarters are annualy
sent to London by rail.
1929
Kelly’s Directory; The trade of the town consists chiefly of corn
and malting which is carried on very exensively by Messrs James Parry and Sons,
and Watney, Combe, Reid and Co Ltd.
Many thousand quarters are annual sent to London by rail.
The first stage in 18th century malting was
the steeping of barley in a cistern of water, to begin germination. Innkeepers
who were malting and brewing for themselves might use quite small utensils,
which they managed single-handed. However, in the industrial maltings many
quarters of barley would be run into the large cisterns from a barley loft
above. When the barley had been
immersed, the light grains would be left floating on the water, to be skimmed
off for use as animal food—escaping the duty, which was laid, on the volume of grain
in the next stage of manufacture. After the requisite time (usually three days,
or four days and three nights) the water was drained off and the barley left in
the cistern for half a day to raise a little heat in the grain. It was then
placed in a square wooden receptacle—the 'couch'—for twenty or thirty hours, at
which stage it was customarily measured by the excise officers, being at the
point where maximum swelling of the grain was achieved. From the couch, the
grain was spread out more thinly upon the 'floor', the layer being less than a
foot deep on average, but thickening at the edges where most draught occurred.
Here the grain lay while germination proceeded regularly, being turned with
wide shovels to prevent the sprouting rootlets from matting together and
allowing all parts of the 'floor' to profit equally from exposure to air. The
manipulation of the ventilators to keep the floor 'coming on' in a smooth
regular progress was one of the maltster's most subtle arts. The whole process
took from twelve to fifteen days, and needed to be carefully regulated, with
just the right amount of air, heat and light to encourage the best growth, yet
prevent mould. The London porter brewers wished the shoot—the acrospire—to
proceed nearly along to the end of the grain, just without penetrating beyond
it. They considered the maximum sugar
content to be obtained if the germination was halted by drying out the malt
when it had preceded just this far. Some
of the new malt houses were designed for working large quantities of grains at
one time in several cisterns, possessing several 'couches', and several growing
'floors'.
Atmer,
William, Bridge St
Badeley,
Samuel
Cotman.
Elizabeth
Crisp,
John
Flick,
Garneys,
John
George,
George
George,
Thomson
George,
Thomson, Bridge St
Gurney
Hooker,
William Jackson
Kendall-Chapman,
Frank
Knight,
Thomas
Paget,
Samuel
Parry,
James
Prime,
Edward, Bungay Rd
Reeve
and Cracknell, Market Place
Reeve,
Robert
Riches,
J, Bungay Rd
Ringwood,
Hammond
Selfe,
Samuel, Chediston St
Smith,
Richard
Stead,
Patrick
Stead,
Patrick, Quay St.
Strathern,
Fairley B.
Turner,
Dawson
Turner,
James
Patrick Stead began his Halesworth enterprise
in 1821 at the age of 36 with his manager John Robinson, another Scotsman. His plan was to develop theBridge St.
brewery and maltings, which he had purchased at the Hooker sale in the same
year. Pigot’s 1830 Halesworth
Directory lists John Joseph Robinson as a maltster, so it appears that Stead
had put Robinson in charge of the Halesworth operation, and had shifted the
enterprise from brewing to malting. There
are no further references to John Robinson in the Halesworth scene.
Before purchasing the Halesworth property Stead
already had a commercial base in Yarmouth South Town where he was a major East
Anglian maltster and dealer in barley.
He seems to have arrived in Yarmouth from London to build upon his
experience and networking gathered as the purchasing agent for the massive
Truman Brewery. The Bridge St
enterprise provided Stead with an opportunity to apply his comprehensive
knowledge of the East Anglian malt trade, and wealth he had already
accumulated, to develop a malting business integrated with the Blyth Navigation
as his export facility. He immediately
set about making improvements and enlarging the malting floors at Bridge Street
to incorporate his own ideas for improving its productivity.
In 1837 he began building a new malting complex
to the east of the Bridge St Brewery and the following year he purchased the
Quay Maltings from Hammond Ringwood, a few yards to the east along the Holton
Road. He then developed the enlarged
site, incorporating his own patented ideas, to create the largest malting
establishment in the town, of which the centrepiece was a large multi-story
tower designed for pneumatic malting. The two most
common methods of malting are the traditional floor malting method, where grain
is literally spread across the floor to germinate. Talk about a new method of
pneumatic malting was in the air, where the environment is strictly controlled
inside tanks or drums. As developed and
patented by Patrick Stead, moist air of a definite temperature is drawn through
the germinating grains; therefore ensuring greater temperature and moisture
uniformity, and expulsion of carbon dioxide formed during germination. The
grain is turned from time to time and sprinkled with water to maintain moisture
requirements. The time was ripe to
capitalise on new ideas because the lethargy in the malting trade, and in all
matters relating to malting processes, induced by two centuries of restrictive
legislation, was being gradually shaken off by the malting industry under new
laws. For many years, nearly all improvements in malting processes originated
abroad, as numberless Acts of Parliament fettered every process and the use of
every implement requisite in an English malt-house. The removal of these
legislative restrictions gave an opportunity for improved methods, which promised
to open up a considerable field for engineering work, and to develop a very
backward art by the application of scientific principles. Stead was one of the
first to apply a material change that malting had never before experienced. The failure of his Halesworth pneumatic
system did not deter his energies and by 1839 half of the Harbour revenues of
Southwold were paid by Stead’s exports of malt and grain and imports of coal
and lime. As later developed by the French
maltsters of Troyes, towards the end of the century the pneumatic process
system was eventually widely adopted by British malsters. A great feature that boosted productivity is
the continuous manufacture of malt throughout the year instead of for a seasonal
period of five to eight months.
Stead had transferred his home and
commercial headquarters from Yarmouth to Halesworth in 1838. This seems to have involved modifying the
Hookers former residence because the Halesworth Vestry Minutes for January 1840
state:
“
The assessment for the new dwelling house of Mr P Stead fixed for the present
(it not being completed) at the sum of £20”.
This may be taken to mean that he set to
work to rebuild Brewery House. However,
although there is little doubt that Patrick Stead lived in Brewery House (alias
the present day Hooker House), apart from the vestry minute, there is no
definitive evidence as to what he actually did to change the property described
in Hooker’s sale. As it stands today, Hooker House, apart from the rebuild of
the eastern portion associated with war damage and the construction of the
bypass, can be equated with the 1821 sale description. It may be that the
eastern end was the portion that Stead modified. In any event, he lived there for a total of 35 years, from whence
he retired to Scotland.
The layout of the area in 1883 is presented in Fig 4.13.
Fig 4.13 Map of ‘Woodcock’ maltings based
on the 1883 O.S Edn.
S.H = Patrick Stead’s House; C.S. = Creek
Side (accountants house); Cr = The Creek; C.C. Congregational Chapel
Table 4.8 1841
Halesworth census District 12 Patrick
Stead’s Neighbourhood
(Occupations
in pairs of census form)
New Court 1 |
New Court 2 |
Taylor |
Washerwoman |
Servant |
Agricultural
labourer |
Independent
means |
Wherryman |
Agricultural
labourer |
Washerwoman |
Taylor |
Agricultural
labourer |
Braziers
apprentice |
Agricultural
labourer |
Pauper |
|
Butcher
(Seaman) |
|
Pauper |
|
Agricultural
labourer |
|
New Court 3 |
Bridge St 1 |
Agricultural
labourer |
Independent |
Pauper |
Farm
labourer |
Shoemaker |
Coachbuilder |
Sadler |
Curate |
Bricklayer |
Articled
clerk |
Agricultural
labourer |
? |
Servant |
? |
Coach
painter |
Blacksmith
apprentice |
Baker |
Independent |
Miller’s
journeyman |
Independent |
|
Clergyman
(Lombe Athill) |
|
? |
|
House
servant |
|
House
servant |
|
Independent |
|
Basket
maker |
|
? |
Bridge
St 2 |
Bridge
St 3 |
Dressmaker |
Linen
draper |
Butcher
(Kemp) |
Servant |
Innkeeper |
Straw
hat maker |
Ostler |
Butcher
journeyman |
Servant |
Articled
clerk |
Grocer |
Staymaker |
Grocer’s
apprentice |
Staymaker |
Servant |
Bookseller |
Servant |
Shop
maid |
Butcher |
Shop
maid |
Butcher
journeyman |
Printer/binder
(Day) |
Servant |
Servant |
Butcher
journeyman |
Servant |
|
Fire
Office Agent |
Bridge St 4 |
Bridge St 5 |
Carpenter
journeyman |
Maltser |
Dressmaker |
Foundryman |
Baker’s
apprentice |
Agricultural
labourer |
Independent |
Corn
merchant (Patrick Stead; 50 years old) |
Milliner |
House
servant |
Milliner |
House
servant |
Dressmaker’s
apprentice |
House
servant |
Dressmaker’s
apprentice |
Agent |
Dressmaker;s
apprentice |
Accountant |
Dressmaker’s
apprentice |
Bricklayer |
Independent
(Elizabeth Badeley) |
|
Independent
(Charlotte Badeley) |
|
Independent
(Maria Badeley) |
|
Independent
(Maria Tuthills) |
|
House
servant |
|
House
servant |
|
House
servant |
|
? |
|
Bridge
St 6 |
Bridge
St 7 |
Whitesmith |
Builder |
House
servant |
Draper’s
assistant |
Tailor |
Carpenter’s
apprentice |
Tailor’s
apprentice |
Grocer’s
apprentice |
Tailor’s
apprentice |
Brewer |
Carpenter
journeyman |
Independent |
Grocer |
Servant |
Independent |
Maltster |
Servant |
Agricultural
labourer |
Servant |
|
Pauper |
|
Bricklayer |
|
Innkeeper |
|
Bridge
St 8 |
Bridge
St 9 |
Independent |
Carpenter |
Servant |
Carpenter |
Grocer |
Agricultural
labourer |
Carpenter
journeyman |
Servant |
Horse
keeper |
Pauper |
Shoemaker |
Miller |
Agricultural
labourer |
Washerwoman |
Fruiterer |
Washerwoman |
Servant |
Drapers
assistant? |
Weaver |
Wheelwright |
Carpenter
journeyman |
Scarles Yard |
|
Wherryman |
|
Sawyer
journeyman |
|
Quay St |
|
Wine
merchant |
|
Servant |
|
Servant |
From the 1841 census it is possible to
define the neighbourhood around Stead’s residence. In particular the social mix of Bridge St and Quay Street may be
defined in terms of the occupations of his neighbours (Table 4.8). In this survey it can be seen that in this
microcosm of Halesworth he was surrounded by a cross section of the town’s
inhabitants from paupers to clergymen with a few people of independent means.
We can only assume that living amongst many townsfolk less fortunate than
himself was a major influence on his decision to bequeath the residue of his
estate to establish a hospital for the benefit of the community (see below).
It is worth noting that an ‘agent’ and an
‘accountant’ are listed as living next to Stead’s home. The house of the former was probably an
addition made by Stead between Brewery House and the maltings. Until recent
times this is where the office of the maltings was situated. The accountant probably lived in Creekside,
which was the ‘counting house’ in Hooker’s day. This arrangement for housing the key managerial staff was
continued after Patrick Stead sold up, as will be seen below.
When Patrick Stead arrived on the Halesworth
trading scene, the key to profit was exporting and importing through the port
of Southwold. This meant accommodating
business plans to the dynamic planetary forces of southerly moving tides, which
are responsible for the destruction of vulnerable communities all along the
East Anglian coast. These tides also
carry a southerly drift of materials to create sandbanks and low-lying
promontories (nesses) at other places.
David Higgins expressed the remarkable coming together of physical and human
geography on the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk as follows.
“The coastline of East Anglia has always been restless with
the sea acting like some frenetic sculptor, constantly reshaping its previous
creations in the seemingly endless pursuit of perfection”.
The southern end of this cyclical pattern in
Suffolk has been dramatic erosion at Dunwich and Aldeburgh with a concomitant
extension of the great shingle bank of Orford Ness. A positive aspect for
coastal shipping is that the marine currents have collected eroded materials
into a series of substantial offshore banks, which, while being a scourge to
mariners in bad weather, enclose the only relatively safe anchorages between
the Tyne and the Thames, the famous Yarmouth and Lowestoft Roads. However, for East Anglian ports in general,
the process is entirely negative because the shifting banks, by creating
shallow sand bars across the mouths of relatively small rivers, restrict access
to harbours in unpredictable ways, the channels often changing month to month
according to the force of the outward flow of fresh water from the river
catchments. Smaller inlets that had
been important from very early times have been blocked. One such, Frostenden ’harbour’ at Covehithe,
is now a fresh water lagoon (Covehithe Broad).
During the Middle Ages the port of Dunwich was the major
commercial hub of Blything, with seemingly endless disputes as far inland as
Blythburgh, on trade dues and rights of wreck. Dunwich had the upper hand in these confrontations because it
was situated strategically at the confluence of both the Blyth and Minsmere
Rivers. All this changed when coastal
erosion began to destroy Dunwich’s cliff-top site, and silt up its harbour. To compensate for this, new channels were
cut through the shingle bank to the north between Dunwich and Southwold. The dominance of Dunwich may be said to have
ended when, in 1590, the Blyth was finally diverted by a ‘New Cut’ through the
shingle bank at the point where the Blyth turned south at Walberswick. Up
to this time it seems that Walberwick was more important than its northern
neighbour Southwold. For example,
between 1509-47 Walberwick had 17 trading vessels compared with 10 for Dunwich
and 7 for Southwold. Now, the dice of
maritime forces had fallen in Southwold’s favour because the shingle bank
suitable for making the New Cut actually belonged to Southwold, and from 1590
Southwold became the major coastal settlement commanding both sides of the new
mouth of the Blyth. Southwold’s
ownership of the river, as it were, was subsequently commemorated in the annual
community ceremony of ‘beating the bounds’, which in 1836 was recorded in the
following Corporation minutes.
‘The procession left the Council Chamber about noon; passed
over East Green, went down the score to the Cliff on which the two-gun battery
formerly stood; over the beach to the edge of the sea, and thus along to the
piers…and….the jetty within the haven, and there entered the barges and crossed
over the South Pier, and coming to the west end of it, then walked at the back
of the beach for about twenty yards to the south-west of the said pier, near to
a house built by Colonel Barne of Dunwich, on a place called ‘Ferry Knowle’
; and then to the bank of the river,
near the cut recently made by the Commissioners of the harbor, which runs
towards the Dunwich creek, and there again taking to the barges proceeded up
the river Blyth….and landed at the north-west of Black-Shore quay, where a very
numerous party of men, women and children were regaled with a barrel of strong
ale and plum buns’.
An important economic consequence of the New
Cut for Southwold was that the town gained control of dues for unloading and
trans-shipping all commodities passing to and from Blything. Eventually the Borough became the Harbour
Authority (the first Harbour Act was passed in 1745).
Unfortunately, the early records of Southwold’s
trade have been lost. Transcripts of
the Walberswick Church Account have survived, which show that this community
also prospered after the formation of the New Cut. The village was involved in shipbuilding (an 18 gun ship was
launched in 1654) and, along with Southwold, was an important player in the
Icelandic cod and ling fishery, and also contributed a good share of vessels to
the annual East Anglian North Sea herring fleet. No doubt both communities were
involved with exporting locally produced goods, such as wool, cheese and butter
to London, but records are not available.
However, from the time of the Southwold New Cut, there began a battle
with tide and river to maintain Southwold’s harbour free from the natural
forces of silting and blockage by offshore banks. In this respect, there have been many attempts over the years to
design efficient harbour works to ensure the continuous commercial use of
Southwold’s quays.
Another local ‘improvement project’, which
involved landowners reclaiming marshes, sometimes by seizure of land, to create
grazing pasture by embanking the tidal saltings, exacerbated the blockage of
Southwold Harbour by beach drift.
Ironically, an early developer was Southwold Corporation, who in 1547
sold the church plate to wall the Corporation Marsh. They continued to be involved in reclamation of saltings over the
next three centuries. In 1847 the Church
Accounts show they borrowed money for this purpose, and in 1850 the corporation
enclosed Haven Beach Marshes. By 1845
between four and five square miles of salt marsh had been reclaimed. The outcome of this kind of widespread
activity was the separation of the Blyth from its flood plain. Enclosure of the marshes essentially
prevented the deposition of river-borne silt, which was formerly spread over a
vast area of saltings. Enclosure also
reduced the scour through Southwold Harbour, which had been powered by the wide
estuary of the Blyth emptying between the harbour piers at each turn of the
tide. After reclamation of the
wetlands, the river’s total load of suspended material was dropped where river
and sea met at the harbour entrance.
It was into this uncertain trade outlet that
water-borne traffic using the newly created Blyth navigation channel from
Halesworth to Southwold had to be inserted.
In fact, the inefficiency of Southwold’s harbour works was quickly
revealed as a serious problem limiting the growth of Halesworth’s
prosperity. This became a major local
issue when Patrick Stead’s malt exports via the Blyth Navigation came up
against the forces, natural and human, that were responsible for restricting
the use of the harbour.
In 1836, five years after his arrival in
Halesworth, Patrick Stead became a Blyth River Commissioner, with a strong
motivation to obtain direct access of his own premises to the New Reach of the
Blyth Navigation, and also to ensure his exports of malt to London moved
smoothly through Southwold Harbour. In the first four years after his arrival
the dues collected by the River Commissioners indicate that there was a
doubling of Halesworth’s water-borne trade.
How much of this was due to the expansion of Stead’s trade is not known,
but it became increasingly clear that the inefficient cleansing of
Southwold Harbour was reducing his potential profits. Things came to a head in 1839, when the grain carrier merchant
vessel ‘Lord Exmouth’, loaded with Stead’s barley bound for Cardiff, was
trapped by the silt bar from January until April. As a result of this situation, which in this case spoiled the
cargo, Stead gave up exporting grain in 1840.
Armed with a professional survey stating that the harbour was short of
several hundred thousand gallons of water passing back and forth between the
piers twice a day, Stead pressed urgently for modifications to cleanse the
harbour.
The issues for all sides, landowners,
harbour commissioners and merchants were aired at a public enquiry in
Southwold’s Town Hall in August 1839.
Stead put the case for the merchants in relation to them being liable to
additional expenses for damage, inconvenience, and detention of vessels, which
shipowners constantly experienced.
There were anecdotes of coaches being driven over the Walberswick ferry
and cargo ships having to be hauled over the Soutwold bar with huge
capstans. There were comparisons of
dues, in which the cost of using Southwold came out higher than other East Anglian
ports, particularly Aldeburgh, where no fees were paid. Southwold had the lowest tonnage for exports
of corn and malt, and the import of coal.
In fact, exports were half of those through Aldeburgh and one tenth of
those through Yarmouth. Stead estimated
that exports through Southwold were two thirds of their potential with an
average loss of £3. 5s per ton on cargoes.
He pointed out that farmers delivered to ports specified by merchants
who arranged the vessels, and their captains added dues to freight which the
merchants had to pay. These arrangements contributed to Southwold’s
neglect. He was to pursue this issue of
the bar unsuccessfully with the Harbour Commissioners over most of his time in
Halesworth.
Roy Clark, author of Black Sailed Traders,
tells this story succinctly by putting the following words into Stead’s mouth
as he imagined him passing over the bridge at Blythburgh, and viewing the
reclaimed saltings to the east:
“Look you there, man, that’s what caused us all our
misery, what broke the trade of Halesworth, and ruined Southwold. Those banks you see yonder were all put up
by greedy, soul-less men who cared not a jot for what happened to the rest of
us. Look well at them and remember;
they stand as a monument to all those who turned Southwold into the port that
was murdered”.
Clark also put the hydrodynamics of the
problem in a nutshell;
“All right
thinking persons know how important these saltings were. The saltings were to the harbour what a
cistern is to a lavatory pan; they should not be encroached upon”.
In April 1849 Truman
Partners, the London Brewery with which Patrick Stead did most of his dealings
in malt, as part of their policy to command all major inputs to their business,
made him an offer of £18,000 for his property in Halesworth and his shares in
the Blyth Navigation. This was accepted and in 1851 one of their agents R.W.
Burleigh took over as resident controller of the Halesworth maltings. Stead retired to Scotland where he died at
the age of 81 in 1869. Eventually,
after the death of his wife in 1875, the Trustees of the parish of Halesworth
received the sum of £26,000, being the residue of her husband’s bequest to
build and endow a hospital for the benefit of local residents. Under the ownership of Trumans, the Stead
maltings continued as a source of employment in the town well into the 20th
century, but with production firmly integrated with the railway system. The
Patrick Stead Hospital is still serving the local population today.
However, Stead remains
an enigma. The financial success of his
commercial deeds has arguably had a more profound influence on Halesworth than
any other of the town’s long stream of entrepreneurs, yet he is a shadowy
figure on the margins of the town’s history. Compared with the Hooker family,
there is no archive of his life to illuminate his character and add substance
to the bare facts outlined above.
The occupation of Patrick Stead’s house by Robert Burleigh
can be followed decade by decade through the census returns. He was described as living in Quay Street in
White's 1855. The entry described him as an ale and porter merchant, malster
and corn and coal merchant. The census
information is as follows.
·
Burleigh was living as maltster and corn merchant at 15
Quay Street in 1861 age 46 with wife Hannah and large family. A governess and 5
servants.
·
Next-door lived Josiah Walker clerk and corn merchant. The
census started from the 'Wherry' end of Quay Street so he came before Burleigh.
The property was probably Creekside.
·
He was still living at 15 Quay Street in 1871 with wife
Hannah and two children, governess and 4 servants. He was described as
maltster, corn and coal merchant employing 39 persons.
·
Next-door was, Alfred Stagoll age 33 with wife and 3
children. He was described as clerk to maltster, corn merchant. This reinforces the idea that since Patrick
Stead’s time Creekside was traditionally occupied by the clerk to the maltings.
·
In 1881 Robert Burleigh was again to be found at 15 Quay
Street; merchant with 36 hands, born at Sible Hedingham, Essex. Alfred Stagoll was still his clerk, born in
Leiston.
·
In the next two censuses 15 Quay Street was occupied by a
maltster, James Parry, born Wangford.
In 1891 he had 3 children 4 servants.
As an early candidate for industrialisation, the story of brewing is an
important commentary on the questions: when did the eighteenth-century world
die; when does modern history begin? Certainly there are some aspects of the
twentieth-century industrial scene of mass production and mass consumption that
have their parallel in the story of the brewing industry during the eighteenth
century. In a sense, the period 1700-1830 saw the emergence of a modern
structure of production, with its attendant developments in procurement of
malted barley grain and the merchanting and distribution of beer. In this chain of mass production, the brewer
became the farmer’s most important customer.
These developments had begun before the eighteenth century, but national
statistics for beer and malt only become available for the first time in the
first half of the 18th century, so the process can only be charted
from then. That century saw the innovations of porter brewing, exact measurement
of ingredients, steam-power, and mechanical processing, all inventions upon
which a few enterprising ‘ale house brewers' became industrialists of a
different order to any the brewing industry (or the economy as a whole) had
seen in previous centuries.
The career of Patrick Stead can be paralleled by that of
other East Anglian maltsters. One such
was Robert Sheriffe of Diss. Robert was
the brother of Rev. Thomas Sheriffe of
Uggeshall. From the middle of the 16th
century the Sheriffe family was prominent in the commercial life of the Norfolk
market town of Diss, and its members subsequently made their mark as
substantial property owners in the neighbourhood. In Diss, they owned land in
Cock Street and this is where Thomas Sheriffe (III) became associated with the Lower
Brewery, which was situated in the north-east corner of Cock Street
Green, now Fair Green. The brewery was a very large business with
several tied public houses in the neighbourhood. In his will of 1748 Thomas states that he was in partnership as a
brewer with Benjamin Coggeshall of Ipswich, and that it was his wish that if
possible his wife Abigail should continue in partnership with Coggeshall until
his son Thomas (IV) should be able to take it over when he became of age. Benjamin was probably a relative of William
Coggeshall from Stratford St Mary who pioneered large scale brewing in Diss at
the beginning of the century. When
William died in 1714 he estimated that his brewing stock or stock in trade was
estimated to be worth at least £1,000.
Although it is not known where the Coggeshall brewery and maltings were
situated, in view of Thomas Sheriffe’s later connection with Benjamin
Coggeshall, it is likely that their partnership was a development of William
Coggeshall’s business.
Although it was the intention of Thomas Sheriffe (IV)’s
father that his son should follow in his father’s footsteps as a brewer, he
developed his own business in Bungay. Abigail, his mother, continued with the
Diss brewery and in August 1783 there is a draft lease for the brewery, which
names the lessors as Abigail Sheriffe and her kinsman Robert Layman. A draft bond for the business in 1793, five
years after Abigail’s death, bears the names of Robert Layman and Benjamin
Wiseman (Abigail’s grandson). The Universal
British Directory of 1793 lists a Diss brewery of Wiseman and Layman. A
lease of 1802 indicates that this couple were still brewers with tied public
houses. Abigail’s will does not mention
the brewery so it is not known who actually owned Thomas (III)’s business at this time.
What is certain is that the Lower Brewery and
maltings eventually came back under the control of the Sheriffes sometime
between 1802 and 1840. The evidence is
that it was sold as a provision of the will of Robert Sheriffe of Diss, the
younger unmarried brother of Thomas Sheriffe (V), Rector of Uggeshall. It is clear from Robert’s will that he was
extremely rich. In addition to the Lower
Brewery with its associated maltings and a granary, he owned 44 inns and
public houses, two farms, a couple of mansions in Diss, several parcels of land
in the county, and the estate and manor of Henstead Hall. He had purchased Henstead Hall and surrounding
farmland in 1834 and he held his first manorial court there on the 19 December
1834. Robert died on May 9th 1840 age 75,
after which most of his property was sold by auction at the King’s Head in
Diss, and the proceeds passed to his nephew Rev. Thomas Sheriffe (VI) who was
by that time Rector of Henstead. Robert
also bequeathed Henstead Hall and its pleasure grounds to Thomas (VI), so at a
stroke the latter became one of the richest clergymen of Suffolk. Thomas (VI)’s father Thomas (V) of Uggeshall
held the advowson of Henstead Church, and it was by this means that Thomas (VI)
had been appointed Rector of Henstead.
There followed a move from Henstead Rectory to Henstead Hall. His father bequeathed him the advowson in
1842. Thomas (VI) remained Rector of Henstead, residing in Henstead Hall until
his death in 1861.
The personal wealth of Robert Sheriffe highlights an
important feature of the economic development of rural East Anglia at this
time, which was driven by the demand for malt, produced from locally grown
barley. It is interesting that the
Sheriffes, like Patrick Stead became involved with the canalisation of a local
waterway, the Waveney at Bungay.
As has already been narrated, control of the trade in
barley and malt was also the source of considerable wealth for those few in the
supply chain who could capitalise on the increasing demand for locally brewed
beer. Thus did the Lacon quaker family
of Yarmouth and Patrick Stead of Halesworth rise to become the millionaires of
their day, and it seems that Robert Sheriffe of Diss was of the same ilk. An outward sign of the wealth of these 18th
century ‘malting barons’ was a Regency town house built of expensive white
Suffolk bricks. In Halesworth, Stead’s
Quay Street mansion (now known as Hooker House), and in Diss Robert
Sheriffe’s Mount Street mansion, still stand as indicators of this time of
plenty for those who made good through the industrialisation of brewing. They
had central control over the purchase of barley and a tight grip on sales
through the innovation of ‘tied pubs’, which obliged the tenant of a public
house to buy beer only from the brewery that owned the property. These
industrialists are a far cry from the old beer-house brewers, such as Raynolde
Shuckforth of Diss, who in his will of 1599 left a brewing house in Kenninghall
with its copper, three vats and a cooler, worth about £6, to his eldest son.
The year 1830 is a useful date at which to close this phase of economic
development. In that year, the ending
of the heavy beer duty and the restrictive licensing of public houses set for a
time new commercial conditions in which the industry was operating. A national
railway network was soon to break down traditional geographical barriers to
economic development, particularly the marketing limits previously set by the
high cost of transporting raw materials overland by horse-drawn wagons. London
names, such as Truman, soon became eclipsed by the meteoric rise of firms,
which, for example rapidly urbanised the Midland village of Burton on
Trent. In the second half of the 19th
century the great innovation in the eighteenth century, black beer porter, was
also eclipsed by lighter ales. The
latter were the result of new technological innovations, which were first made
at the end of the eighteenth century.
On the other hand, these widespread developments went along with
innovations in malting, which quickly became one of the most closely controlled
of any industry. The timing, sequence,
and even the details of each process of the manufacture of malt were prescribed
and inspected by revenue officers. It
is not coincidental that this regulation inspired a trade association to look
after the maltsters, the ‘Association of Maltsters in the United Kingdom’,
which was organised with equal care. A
primary aim of the association was to confer with government intent on regulating
the trade in alcoholic drinks.
The eighteenth-century world was passing by 1830, although it was still
a generation before the biochemistry of fermentation was fully revealed, and
brewers could at last gain precise control over the secrets of their ancient
art. The immediate reactions to free trade in beer were to induce a further
profound change in the business environment of brewing. With the foundation of
the temperance movement, which ironically established an outpost at ‘Red House’
in the heart of Halesworth’s brewing community, new social forces were
released, and new political groupings with a modern air began. They all look
back to 1830, and exemplify Halesworth as a starting-point of the modern
manufacturing economy.
There
is an attraction for the social historian to research only the success stories
of business, but these are exceptions that prove the rule that most potential
entrepreneurs fail to make the grade.
Halesworth has many examples of false starts and stories of initial
success that faltered at the next generation, particularly in manufacturing
(Table 4.9). This was particularly the
case with new operations based on technological innovations in production
systems. Printing is a good example of Halesworth’s failure to capture an
expanding market, which was a national success story only a few miles to the
north at Bungay. The business was printing, which in terms of new technology
was rapidly becoming automated at the start of the 19th century. Technology
may be defined as a spectrum of ideas at one end and techniques and things at
the other, with design in the middle as an operation that turns ideas into
plans to make things. If we add the
profit spur of business to make more things faster, then the history of the
printing press, which issues a standardized mass-produced merchandise, is as
good as any other industry to illustrate the entrepreneurial progress of
industrialism.
Ideas to improve printing
were turned into production systems at a fair rate during the first half of the
19th century. A breakthrough
was made in 1804, when the third Earl of Stanhope replaced the wooden screw press, virtually
unchanged since Gutenberg's time, with an iron framed lever press. Stanhope also introduced stereotyping,
which made the saving of pages of type for reprinting a commercial proposition.
Table 4.9 Some Halesworth manufacturers; 1851 and 1881 census returns for Halesworth
1851
enterprise |
1851
business |
1881
enterprise |
1881
business |
Brickmaking |
Robert
Smith. 178
Pound St.; 12 men and 9 boys |
Coach
building |
Sarah
Smith: coachmaker . |
Iron
founding |
Thomas
Easterson: 32, Thorofare; 11 men and boys |
Boot
and shoemaking |
Walter
Ives: leather merchant |
Malting |
Patrick
Stead. 15
Bridge St; 31 men |
Leather
merchant |
John
Haward: leather seller |
Bookseller
& printer |
Thomas
Tippell: 16 Thoroughfare 3 men |
Malting |
Robert
Burleigh: merchant |
Bookseller
& printer |
John
Day: 44 Bridge St |
Brewing |
George
C. Croft: brewer merchant |
Printer |
George
Rackham: 41 Bridge St |
Builder |
Frederick
Woodyard: builder |
Bookmaker |
John
Sawing: 67 Market Place; master bookmaker 4 men 1 boy |
Bookseller
& printer |
William
Gale: 15 Throughfare |
|
|
Bookseller
& printer |
Peter
Canova: 1 man 2 boys |
Pages of type for future reprints were preserved using
plaster or metal matrices from which a stereotype could be cast, instead of
having to reset the text. Frederich
Koenig's steam printing machine with rollers was adopted by the London Times in
1820, and raised the output of a printing press from 300 to 1100 copies an
hour. A few years later in 1822, the
letter-founding machine, invented by Dr William Church and a forerunner of the
linotype machine, raised the number of letters that could be cast daily from
3,000 / 7,000 to 12,000 / 20,000. By
1827 the ‘New Press ‘ of Applegath and
Cowper enabled The Times to produce 5000 copies an hour from a single
machine. Prior to this, rows of Stanhope presses had been used. In 1840 the American Richard March Hoe
developed a revolving perfecting press, which could turn out 20,000
impressions an hour. The mass
manufacture of paper from wood pulp was accomplished in the same year and
within a decade industrial production had spread everywhere. The outward
appearance and 'feel' of paper was altered and it became much cheaper to
produce, which was particularly advantageous to the newspaper trade. Hoe developed the first version of a rotary
press in 1846. He found a way to fit
the type around the cylinder, which was inked by automated rollers, while four
smaller rollers brought the sheets of paper in contact with it. This raised the
number of impressions that could be taken from 22,000 to 24,000 an hour. By the middle of the century Claude Genoux
and Nicholas Serriere improved the system for making page moulds on papier
mache ‘flongs’, as they came to be called. A flong prepared from flat type
could be curved to permit moulding of the cylindrical type needed for a rotary
press. At about the same time,
James Gordon Bennett in his New York Herald developed a method using a metal
plate impression of the type rather than the type itself. By the 1860s William Bullock perfected a
method of feeding paper into a machine continuously instead of by sheets. He
also incorporated Bennett's metal plate system and the use of stereotypes,
shaped to fit the rollers, instead of hand set type.
There were printers in Halesworth in the early 1800's, and
possibly before, who could potentially take up these innovations. There is also evidence in Halesworth
highlighting the power of mass printing.
A great controversy raged in the town in the autumn of 1808 on
the morals of the contemporary stage, which was fought out with pamphlets
printed by the two rival printers. W. Harper for those against the stage, and
Thomas Tippell taking the other side. The Nonconformist minister in the town,
the Rev. John Dennant, preached against the stage morals, and he was answered
in a pamphlet written by a physician of the town. Others joined in the
fray, and for a few weeks the two printers were kept busy in publishing the
pamphlets in prose and verse that were issued by the two sides. The pamphlets,
which have been called the Halesworth Theatre Tracts, are, it is claimed,
unique in their completeness.
It is highly probable that the printers in the town were not of a
sufficiently literary turn of mind to start a newspaper, and at that time
there was a stamp duty on publications of that description. The Suffolk
Chronicle, a weekly paper, was started about 1811, but without doubt small
printers had little enthusiasm for starting a paper while the duty was payable.
In the middle of this remarkable period of international
innovation there were 3 printers living in Halesworth. According to the 1851 census, Thomas
Tippell, at 16 Thoroughfare, had the largest establishment. As a printer and bookseller he employed
three men. He was also a coal merchant
employing another three men. His son
James was an assistant printer. George
Rackham is listed as a chemist and printer at 41 Bridge St. His wife was a milliner. Rackham printed ‘The Halesworth Times and
East Suffolk Advertiser’, with a circulation which included all towns from
Lowestoft to Saxmundham, and Southwold to Framlingham. This was the
first ‘Penny Newspaper’ in Suffolk. It
circulated throughout the County and also in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex.
Through the century it has recorded the ebb and flow of life in the district,
reflecting its character in times of hardship and prosperity, and peace and
war. The first edition appeared on July 17th 1855, and during
the first six months of publication it was about half the size of the 1950s
editions. The two outside pages were
printed locally containing advertisements and items of local and district news
(printed in very small type), and the two inside pages, printed in London,
contained an summary of the national and international news. The first issue of
1856 saw the paper enlarged to twice the size, and this continued until 1868,
when the second enlargement took place.
John Day was also a printer and bookseller, at 44 Bridge
St. He was living there with his father
in law, the butcher James Freeman.
There are three other references to print workers in the 1851 census;
Jeremiah Goodwin, a printer lodging in Mill Hill St, Charles More an apprentice
printer, and Charles Godfrey, a printer’s errand boy.
Apart from Rackham’s newspaper, we have no information as
to what else was being produced by the town’s printers in the 1850s, but it is
likely that they all offered a printing service of paper bags, bill heads and
circulars to local traders. With
respect to technology, most of them were probably using pre-Stanhope
presses. It is clear that there was no
local demand that could occupy a printer full time. Not only did the printers have other occupations, but they also
functioned as stationers with sidelines in library furnishings for the
wealthier inhabitants of the town and its surroundings. Regarding John Day, his business also
involved selling accessories such as writing desks and work boxes (Fig.
4.14). George Rackham was advertising
‘Pawsey’s, Fulcher’s, Renshaw’s and Marchall’s ladies pocket books and diaries,
gentlemen’s pocket and desk memorandas, pocket books, almanacs etc. of every
description’.
Fig. 4.14 Supplement to The Halesworth Times January 1856
By the time of the 1881 census the earlier printing
establishment had been replaced by two small-scale businesses, William Gale, a
Londoner from Hackney, and Peter Canova, born the son of a Halesworth jeweller,
who employed 1 man and 2 boys. Gale
appears to have taken over Thomas Tippell’s establishment in The Thoroughfare.
Later he went on to become the publisher of the Halesworth Times.
Meanwhile, printing technology went on improving. On the final page of the collection of
summaries of major events of the year for the quarter century from the Great
Exhibition (1851 to 1875), published by The Times, there appears the
following advertisement of the new Walter Printing Press:
"This volume of 598 pages has been set in type by four
lads, working at two composing machines, in ten days of eight hours, at the
rate of 2,150 lines per day. It has been printed from stereotype plates, in perfected
sheets, each containing 128 pages, at the rate of 12,000 per hour on the
Walter Press."
What can have been the thought of an elderly Halesworth compositor
who read these words; or of his trade union; or of firms with obsolescent
presses? Halesworth seems to have been
left behind in this technology race, and it is interesting to compare the town
with Bungay regarding factors in the development of large-scale printing in
up-and-coming towns of these times.
Printing in Bungay appears to have been given an early start by an
individual, Charles Brightly, who set up business in 1795. For Suffolk as a whole this was a period of
industrial pioneering. Nearly all the
large manufacturing concerns that have lasted to the present day were
established within ten years of that date. Brightly was one of the pioneers of
the stereotyping process, and in 1809 he published a small book explaining his
methods. John R. Childs joined him in his business in 1805, and the firm became
one of the largest printers and publishers of periodical literature in the
kingdom. Messrs. Childs & Son were among the first to introduce the
practice of bringing out large works in sixpenny parts, one of the books so
published being Barclay's Dictionary. A picturesque tradition survives at
Bungay of how Mr. Childs traversed the country in a chaise to solicit orders
for his publications, armed for self-defence with a pair of pistols. By the turn of
the century the business was sufficiently large and well known to attract
Lawrence Johnson from Hull as an apprentice.
After serving an apprenticeship of seven years he emerged as a master
type founder and the printing office was progressive enough for him to gain
experience necessary to branch out on his own.
He induced his parents to go with him to the United States, where they
arrived in 1819, and purchased a farm in Cayuga County, New York. Afterwards he went to New York City, where
he entered a printing office as a compositor. In 1820 his attention was
directed to stereotyping, and after obtaining some knowledge of it in the
employ of Messrs. B. and J. Collins in New York, he removed to Philadelphia,
where he established a successful stereotype foundry. In 1833 he purchased the Philadelphia type foundry, which, under
his management, became one of the largest in the country. One of his last acts,
in conjunction with other type founders of Philadelphia, was to procure from
Congress a modification of the copyright law to afford protection to engravers,
letter cutters, and designers.
The Childs business in Bungay was not small and had from
its earliest days concentrated on new techniques, becoming the earliest firm to
install a composing machine. The business was well known to London
printers. In addition to their printing
works Messrs. Childs & Son employed at one time as many as 60 or 70
engravers on metal, who did the work in their own homes at Bungay. In 1855,
when the firm had come to be mainly occupied in printing for London and other
publisher across the country, their stock of stereotype plates was said to
weigh above 300 tons. The company was sufficiently well known for it to have
been selected to print the first commercial edition of Alice in Wonderland. Macmillan & Co. published
Lewis Carrol’s book on commission in July 1865, in an edition of 2000 printed
by the Oxford University Press, the copies to be bound in red cloth gilt. Only
50 copies had been bound when Carroll heard from his illustrator Tenniel that
he was dissatisfied with the way the pictures came out. The book was withdrawn,
and recipients of presentation copies asked to return them. The rejected copies
were presented to children’s hospitals and institutions. In November 1865, Childs published the
second edition of 4000 copies. In 1876, Mr. C. Childs, the son of Mr. J. R.
Childs, died, and in the following year the business was taken over by the
London firm of Messrs. Clay & Taylor and became a limited company in 1890. Currently, Clays is one of the country's biggest British printing factories, employing
over 500 people at the Bungay Works.
Childs’ early start is probably only one factor
in Bungay’s success. The factors
militating against Halesworth’s printers are not known. It is interesting that the 1851 census lists
a master bookmaker (i.e. a bookbinder), in the Market Place employing four men
and a boy. So the nucleus of skills to
build a printing publishing centre was present. Nevertheless it was left to Arthur Stebbings, a Lowestoft
printer, to exploit the local demand for an annual information pack about the
town. He published the first edition in
1887 as the Directory to Halesworth & Southwold Almanac. Stebbings, of 56 and 57 High St and
Dagmar House beside the Railway Station, was Lowestoft’s premier printer and
stationer, with a machine works. He
published the Lowestoft Journal, which he claimed had a circulation of
thousands more than any other paper.
His Halesworth Almanac was later taken over by Gales, which
became the only Halesworth printing business to survive into the 20th
century. The almanac, known as Gale’s Almanack, which, like Rackham’s Halesworth
Times, continued to be published annually until 1953, and is a mine of
community information for local historians.
Of course, history has shown that most success stories do, in the
fullness of time, come to nothing, which makes businesses like Clays of Bungay
even more remarkable in their tenacity to stay in a particular place.
The centenary of the birth of the Halesworth Times was
celebrated in its issue of July 20th 1955.
Under the headline ‘A Century Reached’ the article records how it all
started. George Rackham, the first
editor came to Halesworth from London where in 1836 he was a sub-editor of
Kidd's London Journal, which afterwards became the "Illustrated London
News." He evidently had some knowledge of the practical side of the
printing craft, and there is reason to believe that he procured Harpers
printing business in Quay Street, which was then in the hands of Samuel Roper,
who died in 1842. Roper was only 32,
and his wife carried on the business for a time. Where the printing office was
actually situated is a matter for conjecture; it is believed it was at the rear
of the premises occupied by a Mr. Alan Richardson. At the time under review,
there was a milliner's shop in Chapel Terrace, Quay Street, run by a lady named
Miss Caroline Cook. What makes it possible that the printing works was there is
the fact that George Rackham married Miss Cook. Both were members of the
Congregational Church in Quay Street, Rackham having been made a deacon in
1850. He later became secretary of the
Church. From the records available it is clear that the paper was printed at
the Quay Street premises until 1861.
At its launching in 1855, the following is an extract from
the leading article:
"We beg to state that the
Halesworth Times will be by no means the organ of a party; it will be catholic
in its views and impartial in its discussions; measures, not men, principles,
not persons, will be the basis upon which this journal will be conducted. 'Let
truth and falsehood grapple,' said Milton, 'who ever knew the truth put to the
worse in a free and open encounter.' "
In January 1861, the publisher's imprint was altered from
"George Rackham, at his office in Quay Street," to "Charles
More, at his office, Mill Hill Street, Halesworth." Apparently Rackham
found his editorial and other commitments too much to carry on the printing as
well. He was also engaged in the sale of proprietary medicines, both for cattle
and people. It is difficult to determine the site of the "Mill Hill
Street" printing office, but it was only a brief lodging place, for on
March 15th, 1861, the following notice appeared:
' 'It will be seen on reference
to our imprint that the "Halesworth Times" has this week changed
hands, and will in future be printed at the old and well established printing
establishment of Mr. James Tippell, of Thoroughfare, Halesworth. It is now
nearly six years since we first launched our little bark upon the dangerous and
troubled waters of speculation. It has not been plain sailing, we can assure
our readers; we have had to make our way against head winds and tides that have
strained our canvas to the utmost, with shoals and quicksands and hidden rocks,
and too often breakers ahead—but with truth for our compass, impartiality for
our helmsman, and a steady reliance upon providence, notwithstanding the
adverse gales we have had to encounter during the last twelve months, we can
now look back with no small degree of pride and satisfaction at the dangers we
have passed, and with the cheerful anticipation of a future successful and
prosperous. The principles with which we started we shall firmly and resolutely
adhere to; the organ of no sect or party, actuated by broad, catholic and
comprehensive views, we shall endeavour to make the Halesworth Times an epitome
of all that transpires in the moral, political and intellectual world."
James Tippell’s role as publisher was short, for on May 19th,
1868, the following appeared in the paper’s advertisement columns.
"First class
Penny Paper. IMPORTANT NOTICE.
Permanent enlargement of the
Halesworth Times in the present month. This paper, which is the oldest penny
paper in the county, will also be the largest, and will contain 28 columns of
closely printed matter of all the current news of the week, original leading
articles, etc., etc. The Proprietor
(then Mr. W. P. Gale) intends sparing no expense to make it a first
class family paper, and a machine adapted for steam power, and specially
devised for the Halesworth Times, is now being built by Messrs. Bremner, the
celebrated printers' engineers."
The actual date of enlargement was on May 26th, 1868, and
the serial number of the paper was 664. On the assumption that 52 copies had
been published yearly, this number should have been 669, which shows that only
five weeks had been missed during the first 13 years.
Without doubt, before the purchase of the printing machine
referred to, the paper was printed on a hand press, and in this event about two
minutes would be taken up in rolling with ink and getting a copy, that is for
both front and back pages which would be printed separately. Again, the
smallness of the type used must have made composition extremely difficult for
the eyes, especially when lighting by oil or gas. Every solitary letter had to
be picked out of the case by hand, and after printing had to be put back again
into its proper place
Although the paper had been published by different proprietors and had changed
hands on three occasions, George Rackham was still the editor. There is a
record that after the retirement of George Rackham as editor, O. G.
Rackham, probably a son, acted in that capacity. He died, however, in 1899
at the comparatively early age of 51, and was buried at Stoke Newington.
Although Rackham was editor of the paper until 1880, the
publisher and proprietor was William Pickin Gale, and he had been so since the
year 1866. It appears that he came to Halesworth about the year 1862 from
Mildenhall, when he was 29 years of age. Presumably he came into the printing
and stationery business carried on by James Tippell, a son of the former owner
of the business, Thomas Tippell. In
1868 William Gale acquired the whole business, and in the running of the paper,
he received help from various local people. He remained proprietor until his
death in 1912, a period of 46 years, during which time there had been no change
in the price. When
he assumed ownership of the paper, he invested in machinery, which was “adapted
for steam power”. But it was not used,
and the paper was cranked out by hand week after week and year after year. This
was a formidable task, for a large amount of work was entailed. To continue
this was no mean achievement. Had
Halesworth been more progressive, with industries which could have adapted
themselves to the rapid changes in the industrial world that were taking place,
it is possible that power would have been used on the paper. True there were
industries in the town, but they were dying industries for the reason that the
changing ideas were not fully comprehended, or the proprietors had not
sufficient capital to keep up with the rapid pace of technical innovation.
When William Gale died in 1912 the paper was being printed each
week on a large flatbed machine turned by hand. He was succeeded by his son, W. C. Gale, who bought an electric
motor for running the printing press, but this also was never used, and the
hand-cranking of the machine and the type-setting by hand continued
relentlessly until he sold out in 1933, so ending a father-and-son ownership of
nearly 70 years.
When the undertaking changed hands in 1933, J. S. P, Denny,
who was on the staff of the Southwold Press, became proprietor. Within a year
the old manual press, which took at least four men to work, was scrapped and
replaced with a power-driven flatbed machine.
In 1935 hand setting of type gave way to machine setting on a
‘Typograph’. After the installation of
the ‘Typograph’, almost immediately,
the size and form of the paper was changed and remained in that form up to the
1950s. Two pages, printed and supplied by a London publishing firm, were
discontinued, and the paper was produced entirely in Halesworth. It was in 1935
that the largest edition ever was published. This coincided with the staging of
the Suffolk Show at Halesworth, and the Halesworth Times that week became a
12-page newspaper. In 1945 an
amalgamation resulted in the Halesworth Press, Ltd., being formed, the directors
of which were Mr., Denny and Mr. H. L. Fairweather. Within a few years modern Linotypes—typesetting machines as used
by the national newspapers of the day - were installed.
Another craft skill that failed to take off in Halesworth, despite reaching factory scale within one generation, was shoemaking. Mechanisation of the assembly of shoes evolved slowly, step-by-step, often in the face of fierce opposition. In the 1850s, a total of 45 persons comprised the town’s shoemaking trade (Table 4.10). Only one of these craftsmen appeared to be in business with employees. This was Nathaniel Shore who was listed with 2 men. The trade seemed to run in several families. In one of these households, Jebus the head of the Cullingfords, was a master shoemaker, his son James was a journeyman shoemaker and his daughter Caroline was a shoebinder. Shoebinding was quite often a job for women. As a one man business an individual completed the making of a shoe from the cutting out of the leather for the soles and the uppers, to
the adding of the final touches which gave his work individuality. A shoe today is the product of many individuals; on a man's welted shoe there may be as many as a hundred and fifty separate operations, each one requiring a different machine and operator for its completion.
Table 4.10 Persons in the shoemaking trade: Halesworth 1851
census
Designation |
|
Master shoemaker |
12 |
Shoemaker |
16 |
Journeyman
shoemaker |
10 |
Shoemaker’s
apprentice |
2 |
Shoemaker’s
assistant |
1 |
Bootmaker |
1 |
Bootmaker’s
apprentice |
1 |
Shoebinder |
1 |
Pauper shoemaker |
1 |
A boost to innovations came towards the end of the
Napoleonic Wars to help overcome the serious shortage of footwear for troops
abroad. In response, Sir Marc Isambard
Brunel, produced a range of machines with an output of 400 pairs of boots per
day. The soles and uppers were united by nails "dropped with unerring
accuracy into place and driven at one blow, the machine making its own
nails". With the end of the war, however, the machines were dismantled and
eventually destroyed by a fire. For a
number of years nothing more was heard of mechanisation, but in 1841 Elias
Howe, an American, invented a machine for sewing upper leather, and this
quickly gained popularity. Among the users of this machine was Lyman Blake,
also an American, who conceived the idea of developing Howe's machine to enable
it to sew sole leather. By 1858 Blake had produced the first model of his
machine, which by enabling the sole and upper to be united by sewing,
completely revolutionised the shoemaking industry.
Despite bitter anti-machinery strikes and riots on a
national scale, mechanisation continued to make progress, and in 1872, Charles
Goodyear introduced a group of machines, which enabled footwear to be made on
the same principle as that employed by the "hand-sewn"
craftsman. This development in the
making of shoes by machinery gave the industry new impetus; no longer was
machine-made footwear looked upon as crude, uncomfortable, and only to be
considered because of its cheapness.
These innovations were followed by heel attaching machines,
sole edge trimming machines, polishing machines, etc., until practically the
only important operation which could not be performed mechanically was that of
"lasting", i.e. the stretching and securing in position of the shoe
upper materials of the "last". This is the foot-shaped form on which
practically all shoes are made, but around 1890 machines for even this
difficult operation were on the market.
So it was that by the 1870’s that Halesworth appeared to offer an opportunity
for establishing a factory for the mass production of shoes. The entrepreneur was Walter Ives from
Laxfield, who began work in Halesworth as a leather dresser. In the 1881 census Ives’ bootmaking
establishment in Bridge St was employing 44 people representing six stages of
the assembly line. This was the same
number that represented Halesworth’s total shoecraft base in 1851.
An obvious question is; how was the raw material side of Ives’ business organised? John Hayward was described as a leather merchant in the 1881 census with a staff of 10. This enterprise was probably concerned with the conversion of skins to leather, but there is no evidence of the volume of trade. The position of the town at the head of the vast tract of Blyth cattle marshes makes it reasonable to assume that Halesworth was a natural focus for hides derived from beasts that were slaughtered to supply local butchers, and could also draw upon animals from numerous dairy herds of the upper valleys. A similar geographical conjunction of livestock rearing and entrepreneurial initiative gave rise to Clarke’s of Street, a small village in Somerset, on the edge of the Somerset Levels, marshes that had been drained for cattle rearing. Clarkes is still in business on the same site, Ives’ efforts were terminated in the second generation. His son Charles Samuel continued Ives’ factory into the next century. Charles being childless, there were no grandchildren to continue a shoemaking dynasty, and the business was not attractive to other investors.
A
similar process was taking over the craft of Halesworth’s smiths. The industrialisation of blacksmith’s skills
was already underway by the 1850s in the hands of Easterson & Son, iron and
brass founders and implement makers (Fig. 4.15). Easterson’s workforce listed in the 1851 census was 11 men and
boys. Metalworking was one of the first
crafts to be absorbed into the process of mass production, and two Blything
companies producing farm implements and machinery on an international scale
were Garretts of Leiston and Smyths of Peasenhall. Both enterprises began in the 18th century through the
ideas and determination of two village blacksmiths.
Fig.
4.15 Advertisement from the Halesworth Times, December 18th 1855
At
the same time as these assembly lines were being created in Suffolk to produce
ploughs and seed drills, the role of village blacksmiths in the production of
smaller metal goods was being undermined by mass production in the
Midlands. The town ironmonger had
arrived who retailed everything from bar iron and nails to electroplated silver
teapots and cutlery. Such was the stock
of Burgess’ Halesworth warehouse (Fig. 4.16).
The other mass production system in Halesworth in the mid-century was
Samuel Smith’s East Suffolk Carriage Works.
Samuel was previously the foreman of Thomas Brown’s coachworks in the
town, and after the demise of his employer he took over the business. In an
advert he placed in the Halesworth Times for December 1855 he begs:
‘…most
respectfully to inform the Nobility, Clergy and Gentry, and the Inhabitants of
Halesworth and its vicinity, that he is carrying on the above business in all
its branches, and most earnestly solicits a continuation of the patronage so
liberally conferred upon his predecessor; assuring them that it will be his
anxious study by first rate workmanship and reasonable charges to merit their
confidence and support’.
He was prepared to make ‘carriages of every
description, of the most approved London style, made to order’.
There
was a favourable response and Smith’s company developed by 1881 to employ
blacksmiths, joiner body makers, trimmers and painters. Samuel seems to have died in the interim and
the business was left in the hands of Sarah, his wife, with a works manager in
charge of the process of assembly. It
continued to prosper and in 1885 the Halesworth Almanack stated it was
employing a hundred men.
Like Clays printing works in
Bungay, coachbuilding in Halesworth had the critical mass necessary to impart
export know-how via its qualified apprentices.
John Hammond Etheridge was born
in Halesworth in 1846 and was apprenticed to the East Suffolk Carriage
Works, where he was employed for about 50 years. Some of his family experience rubbed off on his sons. John, his eldest son, born in 1869,
emigrated to South Africa, where he was involved in the 'siege of Kimberley'
during the Boer war. He settled in Eldoret Kenya, where he established ' The
Excelsior Carriage Works'. The second son,
James Edward born in1871, emigrated to New Zealand in 1903, and became a coach
and motor body builder.
Fig.
4.16 Advertisement from the Halesworth
Times, December 18th 1855
All this commercial activity is a measure of Halesworth’s attempts to break out of its isolated and seemingly unfavourable inland situation away from ports and the main road linking Yarmouth and London. The town’s economic success began at the end of Suffolk’s ‘age of wood’. Local carpenter architects, who for a thousand years or more had been responsible for Halesworth’s timber-framed buildings, were no more. Bricklayers were now meeting the demands for infrastructure to support the town’s expanding economy. One of the earliest mass demands for bricks was to build maltings and the quays, locks and bridges associated with the Blyth Navigation, but we really know next to nothing about the details of this new phase of investment. A rare document from the Building Committee charged with erecting the workhouse at Bulcamp tells of contracts to a John Borrett and James Pepper of Halesworth to supply the many tens of thousands of bricks required for the job. At a cost of around £11000 the workhouse must have been the largest building ever constructed in this part of Suffolk. This all took place in the 1760s. During the next century, Robert Smith’s brickworks at Church Farm appears to have been established in response to the local demand for bricks associated with the rebuilding of a substantial part of Halesworth’s retail centre during the first half of the19th century. There was also another enterprise on the Mells brickfields, which was also involved in this activity and was notable for its white/grey bricks used in the construction of the town’s first middle class terraces and villas.
The
work of all these Halesworth innovators carrying forward the outlook and the
ambitions of their age, burst into flame during the 19th century.
Standing back and taking a national view, if we ask why the spinning of cotton
was transferred from the hand-wheel to the machine, why the steam engine
supplanted water-power, why Adam Smith attacked the authoritative regulation of
economic effort, the answer is that material progress was confined by methods
no longer adequate to an expanding economic unity and a growing population. In
East Anglia the local woodlands had been stripped of timber, there were
customers unsatisfied, markets only half-exploited, would-be workers only
partially employed. New methods,
ingenious ideas and novel departures of organisation came to people like Walter
Ives, not merely because people needed shoes made by machines, but because an
individual wanted them manufactured that way, and customers were well enough
off to purchase them and accept the changes the new methods brought. The truth
of this is established by the fact that the actual origin of particular
inventions is often a matter of dispute. Why is it difficult to establish
Arkwright's claim as an inventor? What were the relations of Lewis Paul to the
later textile innovators? Why did Dudley's secret of the use of coal for
smelting die with him, and remain an enigma till Abraham Darby revived it fifty
years later? Why were patents disliked in the eighteenth century? Why did the
Society of Arts offer rewards to stimulate the devising of new machines? New
inventions were, so to speak, in the air: the environment was favourable to
industrial progress. The inventions, the improved communications, the
amplifying of the financial system, in fact all the achievements of the
Halesworth investors, innovators and manufacturers represent one movement. They
were mutual determinants and all worked together for the national economic
good.
The
industrial revolution came to Halesworth as a series of improvements rather
than a series of startling innovations, and these improvements were of more
than one kind. Initially there was a good spread of industry through the town
although malting soon came to the fore.
The elaboration of mass production at any level necessitated the
recruitment, and in some cases the special training, of the workers. There had to be new ways of allocating the
workers' industrial functions, the successive conquest of processes, and parts
of processes, by machinery. An
appropriate industrial discipline had to be devised for the factory as well as
of the factory itself. Adequate
marketing arrangements had to be elaborated and there had to be a restless
search for new markets. Sarah Smith the
coachmaker, as much as Patrick Stead had to follow these basic rules in her
contributions for the town’s age of plenty.
Fig. 4.17 Halesworth model of manufacturing in the 19th
century
This brief summary of 19th century Halesworth as a
manufacturing centre gives an idea of the increasing scale of its
businesses. According to Fordham,
towards the end of the century, enterprises employing ten or more persons
accounted for about a quarter of the town’s jobs. However, the surface of this topic has only been scratched. Part of the problem is the absence of
records. Sufficient is known to
indicate Halesworth is a good educational model for charting the principles
governing the rise of industry and the organisation of its processes of mass
production, but we can
only wonder at the quantity of information about day to day business activities
and financial accounts that must have been lost over the years.
The topic framework described above and summarised in Fig. 4.17 is also
useful for researching the outstanding question of industrialisation. Why, in the long string of market towns
along the Suffolk coast, were some successful in meeting the opportunities of
mass production and others were not?
Halesworth shows that it was often down to the random interactions
between individuals and the town economy, but does this prove the rule?
The true character of the new industrialism is
not easily described. Was the Suffolk, which issued from the industrial
revolution, the society of Charles Dickens, or of the classical economists, or
the tyranny painted by the anti-Capitalists, or the futile activity of
consumerism seen by Thomas Carlyle? The historian has to rely on the voices
that were articulate, but limited to census records, advertisements and legal
documents in this period, and they all sang different songs. To some people in
these (and any) decades, Halesworth was obviously going to the dogs—the
well-off and the badly-off may be expected at any time to agree on this. To
others, especially to those who were able to force their way up the new avenues
to wealth, the opposite was true. Seen
from a distance, the expanding industries went from strength to strength but
looked at closely, there were ups and downs. Whatever
the tones of the picture presented as a portrait of the town’s new
industrialism, they will be composed from the varying colours of contemporary
views, intermingled with the knowledge gained from subsequent experience and
the wider national context of trade and politics. In a sense the history of technology in the
years from the 1780s to 1860s is the history of a continuing industrial
revolution, which every new generation saw in different terms. But technical innovations, however important
they were in multiplying industrial output, did not make up the whole story. The social order, which had been transmitted
from the past and re-formulated in terms of 18th century philosophy,
was transformed under the influence of coal, iron, cotton, steam, and ideas of
growth and progress. To the people of
Blything shopping in Burgess’ warehouse, it must have seemed as if England was
fitted to be the emporium of worldwide commerce. However, the centre was shifting even then, and a trip to Dyers
would have revealed cheap cotton dresses made from cloth imported from India
and colour-printed in Lancashire; a trade movement that has relentlessly led to
the present day, when the Far East clothes the whole of Europe.
If the marriage between capitalism and
manufacturing technology produces such dynamism and such rapid progress in the
creation of family wealth, why should we be cautious about the present day
effects of this union and anxious for the future? We now see that the answer to
this question explains the 'failure of success'. At the beginning of the
industrial revolution humankind was still dwarfed by the forces of nature. It was
possible to see the natural resources of the world as unlimited and capable of
recovering from even the heaviest onslaughts that human beings could muster.
This became evident in the mahogany and rosewood furnishings sold by a wide
range of Halesworth’s retailers. Today
this imbalance of power is reversed. Humankind, learning from the British
experience, has the power to plunder from almost any environment and to destroy
the very foundations of our life: the soil, the seas, lakes and rivers, the
forests and natural habitats of countless species, and even the atmosphere.
Despite the fact that we now have obtained advanced and accurate knowledge of
this destruction, we are powerless to act on the information because we lack
initiatives that are related to collective interests and collective
responsibility for sustaining our planet. Instead, major institutions are
founded on capitalist imperatives that recognize only the major constraints and
short-term opportunities of the capitalist system, in particular the view that
profit is supreme. In this system there are no brakes, and very few means of
slowing down destruction. It will continue to expand on the basis of profitable
exploitation until the resources, such as Suffolk’s oak woods, have disappeared
or the environment has been destroyed. One is, therefore, unlikely to see such
a curriculum introduced coherently into the higher education system. Only small fragments of such a cultural
curriculum will find viable niches.
These
fundamental impediments arise because education, contrary to the views of many
environmentalists, is not going to be the motor of major social and
environmental change. If we want to see
a radical curriculum, then education has to be part of the larger alternative
social and economic system referred to above. Such a system is not likely to be
brought about by the efforts of educators and idealists alone. A minority of
educationalists feel that it is more likely to proceed from the actions of the
mass of people, confronted with the increasing inadequacies and contradictions
of the capitalist economic system. But precisely how these actions are to come
about and how they are to be encouraged must, of course, constitute one of the
more important items in the radical environmental curriculum itself. It is here that socio-economic models of the
Halesworth kind provide the starting point from a time when the relationships
between people and environmental resources were relatively simple, to today
when orang-utans are on the verge of extinction because of the world’s
insatiable demand for tropical wood.
Africa’s primates are on the verge of extinction because ‘bush meat’ is
economically attractive to the families who are on the economic fringes. In this scenario conservation will only be
adopted locally when the ‘age of plenty’ becomes widespread on the continent.
The adjective 'Victorian' was apparently coined
exactly half way through the nineteenth century by an almost forgotten writer,
Edwin Paxton Hood, who set out in his The Age and its Architects (1851)
to relate the conditions of his own time to the whole 'development of the
ages'. In a chapter called 'the
Victorian Commonwealth' he began by
describing it as 'the most wonderful picture on the face of the earth' and recorded
as a 'fact' the observation 'perhaps on no other spot of ground has heaven
ever grouped so bright a constellation of its best mercies'. He rounded off the
comment with an appropriate biblical text, 'He hath not done so with any
people'. The 'fact' and its trimmings may properly be taken as evidence of
enhanced national self-consciousness on the eve of the greatest period of
Victorian prosperity.
Asa Briggs,
1958
In the history of human settlement, once the needs of family and
local community were met, it is a logical aspect of human behaviour that a
cultivator of land would attempt to trade his goods for different goods
produced elsewhere. Thus markets were formed. These early efforts to swap goods
developed into more formal gatherings. When a producer who had a surplus could
not find another producer with suitable products to exchange, he may have
allowed others to owe him goods. Thus, early credit terms would have been
developed. This would have led to symbolic representations of such debts in the
form of valuable items (such as gemstones or beads), and eventually money. But was this really the by-product of a drift
towards the legitimising of market forces and the pursuit of personal
gain? It has been argued that for retailers
and periodic markets there was no sudden transition from a medieval
paternalistic economy to a mercantilist economy driven by market forces and
competitive individualism. In fact, the same tensions between communal ideals
of social justice, and giving way to market forces, were as apparent in the
literary output of medieval England as in post-Reformation times. The
progression of images of literature and art do not suggest any radical shift in
market mentalities in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, perhaps more subtle
and complex developments in retail market attitudes can be discerned throughout
the twelfth to seventeenth centuries, rooted in the changing shape of marketing
and consumption patterns. That is to
say, over time, producers would
have seen value in deliberately over-producing in order to profit from selling
these goods. Merchants would also have begun to appear. They would travel from
village to village, purchasing these goods and selling them for a profit, often
in a different village. Halesworth had pedlars up to the 19th century who were itinerant
merchants operating on a small scale.
Over time, both of these groups, producers and merchants, would
regularly take their goods to one selling place in the centre of the community.
Thus, regular markets appeared.
Eventually, markets would become permanent fixtures as collections of
shops. These shops along with the logistics required to get the goods to them,
were the start of the retail trade.
Although advantageous in many respects, this removed the mobility that a
pedlar or travelling merchant may still have enjoyed.
Thus the ‘retail trade’
is really rooted in the history of two groups, the pedlars and producers.
Pedlars tended to be opportunistic in their choice of stock and customer. They
would purchase any goods that they thought they could sell for a profit.
Producers were specialists and interested in selling goods that they had
produced. This division continues to
this day, with some shops specializing in specific areas, reflecting their
origins as outlets for producers, although their stock is usually bought from a
wholesaler. Others, known as general stores, provide a broad mix.
Excavations reveal that
shops in ancient Rome and its outlying towns like Herculaneum and Pompei, were,
in many respects, much like small shops are today, so it is most likely that
retailer chains existed then. Images
of trade and markets are found throughout the literature and art of medieval
and early modern England. Charters and
their privileges are firm evidence of the character of buying and selling in
the 12th and 13th centuries. The starting point, as in Halesworth in 1223, was the granting of
a charter authorising a weekly market. In some places this process was coupled with a week-long annual
fair. A further development was that the burgesses (freemen, often merchants
and artisans) were entitled to trade with the rest of the country as a
privilege. Much of Halesworth’s food
and other provisions would have come from the immediate neighbourhood, being
sold by the producers themselves in the lord’s market place beside the church.
Even in the medieval period it is likely that some goods did come from further
afield, for example wine from France, leather from Ireland, and salt from the
west coast all filtered into Suffolk’s market towns. Merchants, who either sold them direct or passed them on to
craftsmen to weave cloth or make shoes, would have handled such imports.
Aquavitae (later to be known as whisky) and beer would have been made in the town
and sold directly.
Although medieval markets and fairs would not be very
different from those of the 21st century, there would have been no shops, and
people would have been as likely to acquire whatever goods they needed by
barter. Nevertheless despite its distance from the great cities and trade
routes of Europe, Halesworth in the 13th century, with its chartered
market, was part of a thriving European world of commerce and Christianity.
Table
5.1 Fees for traders at Halesworth market in the 18th century
Space allocation |
Lord’s fee |
Stalls with customers in common |
3d |
Single pot stall |
1s |
Double pot stall |
2s |
Single stall tilted |
1s |
Single stall not tilted |
1s |
Double stall tilted (i.e. covered) |
3s |
Pig carts, each |
2d |
Poundage money, per head |
4d |
Four wheel carrier |
4s |
Two wheel carrier |
3s |
Sheep and lambs, per score |
2d |
Sheep and lambs in pens, per score |
3d |
1 horse |
4d |
Sacks and hampers, each |
1d |
For anyone interested in the
history of retailing, Halesworth conforms to the above model. Its weekly market is a survivor of the spate
of Royal handouts of charters in the 13th century. Richard de Argentein, who had been one of the witnesses to Magna
Carta, was absentee lord of the manor at the time. Richard was sheriff for
Essex and Hertfordshire, and also for the counties of Cambridge and Huntingdon,
and was constituted Governor of the castle of Hertford. He gave Henry III two palfreys for licence
to hold a weekly market at his manor of "Halswode", and an annual
fair on the eve, day, and morrow after the feast of St. Luke, on October the
18th. Market traders paid a fee to the manor according the space that
was allocated to them, a simple arrangement that has continued through the ages
(Table 5.1).
It was not until the 19th
century that the retail shop usurped the function of the market place. The commercial traveller with his samples
took the place of the itinerant merchant with his wagonload of goods. People began to specialise in particular
classes of goods and to use every device to attract the attention of passers
by. For some shopkeepers, it made sense
to obtain extra stock and open up an additional shop, most probably operated by
another family member. This would recover business from pedlars, create new
business, and the greater volume would allow the shopkeeper to strike a better
deal with suppliers. Although families would have mostly run retail chains, as
some chains grew they would have needed to employ people from outside their
family. This was an important factor as there would have been a limit to the
number of trusted non-family members available to help run the chain. Another,
even more definite limiting factor, was the distance the furthest shop would
have been from the original shop. The greater the distance, the more time and
effort would have been needed to effectively manage outpost shops and to
service them with goods. There was, therefore, a natural barrier to expansion.
That was the case until transport and communications became faster and more
reliable. When this at last happened towards the end of the 19th century,
chains became much bigger and more widespread.
The large shop with many
departments, first found in Paris at the start of the 19th century,
was copied in British towns.
Halesworth’s Bon Marche appeared in the second half of the century. Many of these businesses became more
structured and formalized, leading to the retail chains that we see today. However, it was not until the end of the 19th
century that retail chains made contact with customers in Halesworth.
Although specialist shops are still with us, over time, the
general store has increasingly taken on specialist products. Customers have
found this to be more convenient than having to visit many shops - thus the
term "Convenience Store" has also been applied to these shops. As the
popularity of general stores has grown, so has their size. This, combined with
the advent of self-service, has lead to the Supermarket, or Superstore. This
sequence is illustrated in Halesworth.
The first grocery chain to reach Halesworth was the International Tea
Company, which advertised in 1904. In
1923 it had changed its name to the International Stores. There was also a branch in Saxmundham,
which employed carters who visited villages and farms to collect and deliver
orders. Between the wars the Co-op
national chain, which originated in Rochdale, arrived in town. It was actually an offshoot of the Beccles
branch, and occupied premises in Rectory St. next to Tooks’ grocery store in
Bridge St (Fig 5.1), a shop run by a local family. The exact status of the Halesworth Co-op at this time is
uncertain. Unlike Tooks it did not advertise goods in the local papers. The only newspaper reference is for 1937,
when it advertised that tickets to visit the Beccles shop to view the furniture
department and a mannequin parade could be obtained from the Co-op ‘office’ in
Rectory St. Following the death of Mr.
Took in 1945 the Co-op expanded into his former shop. It remained in Rectory Street until moving to new premises on the
site of the old livestock market, where it was rebranded as the Rainbow
Supermarket. The library now occupies
the site of the Co-op’s former premises.
From the end of the Second World War until the 1960s it appears that
Halesworth’s shoppers had the choice of three large grocery concerns, the
Co-op, the International Stores (site now occupied by the SPAR convenience
store) and the grocery department of Roe’s Bon Marche in the Market Place. Their co-coexistence seems to have been due
to the strong family loyalties on the part of shoppers rather than price
competition. For example, those townsfolk who grew up with the situation say
that many women ‘would not be seen dead in the Co-op’.
Fig 5.1 Tooks’ grocery store at the corner of Bridge St and
Rectory St (circa 1920)
Commercial development has been
a process of geographical expansion. In
fact, geographical space, as a source of explanation, affects all historical
realities. These realities are all
spatially defined phenomena such as sovereign states, societies, cultures and
economies. A small town economy like
that of Halesworth is an expression of family needs, which focus a market for
goods and services in a localised area.
The economic zone is effectively defined by the space containing the
families that are drawn to its market and shops in order to buy and sell.
Fig 5.2 Halesworth economic
zone in 17th century
L=Lowestoft; S=Southwold; B=Blythburgh; D=Dunwich;
Sa=Saxmundham;F=Framlingham; De=Debenham; M=Mendelsham; E=Eye; H=Harleston.
A town economy therefore has a
social boundary, and the line that defines it gives it an identity just as
coastlines do the sea. This boundary
lies where other similar ones begin.
The frontier is hazy because buyers and sellers on the boundary have
options of orientating towards more than one economic centre. The easier it is for people to access a
particular market place the less they are likely to travel to others. Based on
the its proximity to other thriving markets in North East Suffolk and the
Waveney Valley, it is possible to estimate the size of Halesworth's economic
zone in the 17th century (Fig 5.2), which extended deep into the western parts
of the Blything Hundred.
Because they are hubs of an
economic system, towns are also elements of a world-economy, which always has
an urban centre of gravity, a city, as the logistic heart of its activity. News, merchandise, capital, credit, people,
instructions and correspondence all flow into and out of the city from far and
wide. Its successful merchants lay down
the business law, sometimes becoming extraordinarily wealthy in the
process. Towns lie at varying and
respectful distances from the centre, directing the flow of business toward it,
redistributing or passing on the goods it sends to its inhabitants, living off
its credit or suffering its rule. Thus
metropolises come to be accompanied by a train of subordinate communities that
have been expressed as an 'archipelago of towns'. So it was with Suffolk's overgrown villages like Halesworth,
which were orientated for the most part by coastal maritime trade towards the
English world economy of London.
The financial roots of
Halesworth's retail trade go back almost 800 years. Until the eleventh century there were practically no financial
mechanisms in England to facilitate the transformation of savings into
investment. From the eleventh century
onwards there was a remarkable development in European business techniques. The list of innovations is long, such as the
organisations of markets and fairs, the appearance and spread of trading
manuals, the evolution of new techniques of accounting, the cheque, the
endorsement, and insurance. From the
eleventh to the sixteenth century, Italy was the birthplace of most of these
innovations. England responded to this economic momentum relatively late. In a national context it was Edward I who
first took advantage of the new international monetary system, borrowing money
from the Ricciardi family, bankers of the independent Italian town of Lucca, to
finance his war with the Princes of Wales.
This happened in the 1270s.
It appears that Halesworth,
with its market granted in 1223, was one of the earliest manifestations of the
economic development of Suffolk after the turbulence of the English baronial
wars, which only ended in the reign of Edward’s father, Henry III. The wars of the 12th century were
symptomatic of the prevailing primitive social structure. Society was more or less divided into those
who prayed, those who fought and those who laboured. Fighting and praying were the only respectable activities. The founding of markets in the 13th century
was a political peace dividend; a response to the fact that during the reign of
Henry III Europe began to move beyond direct agricultural consumption, i.e.
self sufficiency, to the stage of indirect agricultural consumption, which was
created by the determined marketing of surplus farm production. A town with a market began to attract all
the skilled crafts, creating for itself a monopoly of the manufacture and
marketing of their products. At the
root of the growth of towns was a massive migratory movement. Towns grew because their populations grew,
not by increased fertility or survival, but because of an influx of people from
the countryside.
By the end of the 15th century
Halesworth was creating an economic surplus and stimulating the transfer of
such surplus from savers to producers, when and where the latter could invest
such resources more productively. This
financial process can be first glimpsed in the 15th century Calendar of Close
Rolls (Table 5.2).
Table 5.2 References to
Halesworth townsfolk in the Calendar of Close Rolls/Patent Rolls
1429
Joan Reve Parish chaplain
A Thomas Clement persued Robert
Fitzrauf, Gentleman, of Keteryngham Norfolk, a debt of 5 marks.
1431
Robert Sampson tailor.
1439
Robert Meke yeoman, a
debt at 40s.
1445
Robert Randolf, chapman,
a debt to a mercer of London
of £7 4s.
1449
John Deynes of Halesworth a cutler,
a debt of 40s to a
bladesmith of London.
1452
Richard Symonds tailor
1456
A pardon to John Edderych,
bocher, (butcher) broke into close and houses of Michael Strowlyour at Cookley
and took 13s and a piece of woollen cloth valued at 5s.
1457
The will of Nicholas Dunmore, a
barker.
1461?
Robert Sewale mercer &
Robert Randolf draper.
1481
Henry Warner, Halesworth, tailor;
general pardon with others from Spexhall charged with murder.
This list gives some of the
occupations typical of an urban centre, such as cutler, draper and several
tailors, the latter implying that a large proportion of families in the town’s
economic zone were rich enough to instruct others to clothe them. Dress was in fact an unsettling social influence. In particular it encouraged rivalry and
ostentation. Even before 1400 there
were complaints that extravagance in dress was tending to upset generally
accepted class distinctions. The
Sumptuary Laws were an attempt by London to check the forces that were creating
a new type of society. The livery,
which had been the badge of common interests among members of a guild, now
emphasised difference in wealth and economic status. Only the more prosperous townsfolk could afford it.
The wealth of Halesworth’s
townsfolk at this time can be assessed from the steady rate of production of
wills during the 15th, and on into the 16th century (Fig 5.3).
Fig 5.3 Will-making in
Halesworth 1419-1525
As urban wealth increased so
did the efforts of government to take a proportion of it in taxes (Table 5.3;
Fig 5.4). As always, few people were
rich; most were poor.
Table 5.3 Halesworth entry in the tax list of 1524
Alman John in goodes £1 |
Deryk Elizabeth in goodes £1 |
Fowlyng Thomas in goodes £10 |
Appulby Thomas in goodes £4 |
Deryk Henry in goodes £7 |
Fuller Robert in goodes £1 |
Arnold John in goodes £1 |
Kokar Robert, in wages £1 |
Fysk Johanna in goodes £1 |
Balle William, in wages £1 |
Kolsale Thomas in goodes £1 |
Fysk John mercer in goodes
£10 |
Barett Robert in goodes £1 |
Koo Edmund in goodes £1 |
Fysk John the elder in goodes
£13: 6: 8 |
Bedford Peter in goodes £1 |
Kurtes Robert, in wages £1 |
Garerd Richard in goodes
£1 |
Bontyng Christofer in goodes
£1 |
*Launce John in goodes
£40 (2.0.0) |
Garerd Robert in goodes £1 |
Bradlee Christofer in goodes
£5 |
Neve John in goodes £1) |
Goodale Nicholas in goodes
£1 |
Bryghte Thomas in goodes
£4 |
Newell Robert, in wages
£1 |
Goodale William in goodes
£1 |
Buk John in goodes £5 |
Norman William in goodes
£2 |
Heynde Henry in goodes £4 |
Clerk Robert pynner in goodes
£1 |
Edmondes William in goodes £1 |
Hunt William in goodes £1 |
Cooke John, in wages £1 |
Feitham John in landes be yer
£5 |
*John Hugh in goodes £80
(4.0.0) |
Couper Thomas in goodes £2 |
Flyk Henry in goodes £1 |
Kersey Bendes in goodes
£1 |
Crowe Richard in goodes £
1 |
Flyk John in goodes £10 |
Knyght Robert in goodes £10 |
Rechardes John in goodes
£1 |
Pye Thomas in goodes £1 |
*Norton Walter in goodes
£20 (1.0.0) |
Russell Thomas in wages £1 |
Saunderson John in goodes £2 |
Palmer William in goodes
£1 |
Sadborn Edmund in goodes £4 |
Sawmson William in goodes £5 |
Payn Thomas in goodes £1 |
Pek Maryon in goodes £10 |
Sepens Richard in goodes £1 |
Wallard Robert in goodes
£1 |
Pek Richard in goodes £12 |
Srayth Roger in goodes £ 10 |
Walpoole John thonger in
goodes £1 |
Davy John in goodes £7 |
*Tower Thomas in goodes
£20 (1.0.0) |
Walpoole William in goodes
£1 |
Welton Thomas in goodes £1 |
Wrighte Richard in goodes
£1 |
Wrythok John in goodes £5 |
Wurlych John in goodes £
13:6:8 |
|
|
Summa hujus ville - £13.2.6: *
= the four highest taxpayers
Fig 5.4 Distribution of the 1533 tax for Halesworth between 64 inhabitants.
It is likely that most of these
people lived in the town, and suggests a 16th century population for the parish
of between 70-100 primary families. This conclusion is supported by lists of
communicants of St Mary's parish church made in the 1580s. The lists contain a maximum of around 80
surnames of those who took communion on important saint’s days, and probably
represent most families of the parish.
It was in the 16th century that
the first 'maps' of Halesworth were produced.
These were essentially descriptions of the town's principal inhabitants
and the houses and land they possessed. These documents have been transcribed
to produce virtual maps by matching the descriptions of properties and their
relative positions with properties on a modern map. These virtual maps indicate that the general layout of the modern
centre of Halesworth from the church to Bridge St has changed little over the
centuries. One of these produced as part of a local Workers Educational Association
local studies project is presented in Figs 5.5/5.6 and Table 5.4. A general conclusion is that the town’s land
was being used less intensively in the 16th century. Altogether there were 74 properties, most of which were described
as having houses or cottages.
Four people were in possession
of 38% of the properties; John Sone (5); John Browne (6); Thomas Feltham (7)
and John Launce (10). There were two
capital messuages (Sir Walter Norton and Thomas Feltham). Five women held properties; Alice Knight,
widow, Cecilia Feltham, Margaret Kelsal, Woman Everrage and Joan Smyth.
Fig 5.5
Conceptual map of north central of Halesworth in 1577
Fig 5.6 Conceptual map of south
central of Halesworth 1577
Table 5.4 Persons listed with property in the 1557
survey of Halesworth (M. Coleman)
1 |
Barfote
Thomas: messuage |
2 |
Browne
Robert: 2 cottages |
3 |
Knight
Alice: ‘Wists’ tenement |
4 |
Henry
Robert: messuage |
5 |
Knight
Alice: 2 cottages |
6 |
Pryme
Thomas Snr: messuage and various parcels of land and garden |
7 |
Pryme
Thomas: messuage |
8 |
Smyth
Joane: messuage |
9 |
Launce
John: ‘Growts’ messuage |
10 |
Launce
John: ‘Bell Hangers’ tenement |
11 |
Feltham
Cecilia: ‘Spycers’ / Cecilia Feltham & John Launce: Mereas or Moores/John
Launce: garden |
12 |
Launce
John: cottage |
13 |
Peacock
Robert: messuage |
14 |
Launce
John: tenement |
15 |
Launce
John: ‘Oversowthes’ tenement |
16 |
Pryme
Thomas: tenement |
17 |
Launce
John: messuage |
18 |
Launce
John: two pieces of land |
19 |
Woodward
Nicholas: messuage |
20 |
Woodward
Nicholas: cottage |
21 |
Woodward
Nicholas: land built upon |
22 |
Woodward
Nicholas: ‘Prymes’ messuage |
23 |
Cryspe
Nicholas: messuage |
24 |
Cryspe
Nicholas: ‘Brytans’ messuage |
25 |
Browne
John: messuage |
26 |
Halesworth
Town: messuage |
27 |
Browne
John: messuage |
28a |
Browne
John: ‘Hassards Yard’ |
28b |
Browne
John: land |
29a |
Cryspe
Nicholas: ‘Le Hope’: garden formerly meadow |
29b |
Browne
John: ‘Le Hope’ meadow |
30a |
Browne
John: yard |
30b |
Buntings
Fen |
31a |
Pryme
John: garden |
31b |
Pryme
John: cottage |
32 |
Pryme
John: messuage |
33 |
Pryme
Robert: tenement |
34 |
Smyth
Joan: cottage |
35 |
Sone
Richard: messuage |
36a |
Sone
Richard: messuage |
36b |
Sone
Richard: ‘The Hennecroft’ close |
37 |
Sone
Richard: cottage |
38 |
Scarle
James: cottage |
39 |
Scarlet
James: cottage |
40 |
Browning
Gregory: Maister Adames’ tenement |
41 |
Norton
Sir Walter: capital messuage ( once two houses) |
42 |
Norton
Sir Walter: tenement with two pightles |
43 |
Knights
Widow Anne: messuage and Fayer Close |
44 |
Gace
Thomas: messuage (next to this a yard then the Pound |
45 |
Thomas
Feltham: messuage |
46 |
Halesworth
Town: ‘The Almeshouse’ |
47 |
Shipdam
Thomas: house and stable (slaughterhouse) |
48 |
Feltham
Thomas: ponds, dovecote & garden |
49 |
Feltham
Thomas: tenement |
50 |
Feltham
Thomas: ‘Palmers’ tenement |
51 |
Feltham
Thomas: ‘Towers’ tenement & ’Hunts’ tenement (ruin) |
52a |
Feltham
Thomas: 2 pieces of land |
52b |
Kelsale
Margaret: garden |
53 |
Feltham
Thomas: ‘Walpoles’ capital messuage (grange) garden for vegetables and a pond |
54 |
Bucle
Robert:messuage |
55a |
Bucle
Robert: messuage |
55b |
Bucle
Robert: tenement |
55c |
Willyson
John: tenement |
56 |
Launce
John: ‘Borellys’ messuage |
57 |
Launce
John: tenement |
58 |
Launce
John: Crosse House |
59 |
Pryme
John: Market Place, butchers and land for stalls |
60 |
Everrage
Woman: messuage |
61 |
Kelsale
Margaret: tenement |
62 |
Shipdam
Thomas: messuage |
63 |
Shipdam
Thomas: 3 cottages |
64 |
Halesworth
Town: messuage |
65 |
The
Chaunter-House |
66 |
Sone
Richard: site of the Manor of Halesworth |
From the 16th century onwards, Halesworth as a local retail
centre gained in strength. Of the
cluster of six markets of Blything, all within four miles of each other, that
had received their charters during the 13th century, only Halesworth's was
still in use in the 17th century, and has survived on the same spot until the
present day.
On average in the 16th century, four-fifths of the
population of England was tilling the land, but a gradually increasing
proportion were engaged in trade or industry, in both town and country. The number of small employers and tradesmen
was on the increase. The 1674 hearth tax returns for Halesworth provide an
indication of above average prosperity because half of the 226 households were
paying tax. The average number of families per house was only about 1.4,
another indicator of a wealthy group of traders who could afford to keep
themselves to themselves.
A cross section of the occupations of Halesworth folk during most
of the second half of the 17th century may be obtained from St
Mary’s parish registers. During that period, men
(dying as heads of household, and listed as husbands or fathers of wives and
children buried or baptised) were designated by occupation or status. For example, during the 65 years between
1661and 1726 a total of 100 different designations, most of which were
occupations, were listed in the burial register (Table 5.5). There was great
variability from year to year with regards the number of persons so designated
(Fig 5.7). For example, in 1658 a total of 18 designations were listed whereas
in the following year there were only 2.
Table
5.5 Occupations of men in St Mary’s burial registers: 1653-1726.
alehouse keeper |
almsman |
apothecary |
apparitor |
ashman |
attorney |
bailiff |
baker |
barber |
basketmaker |
blacksmith |
brasser |
brazier |
brewer |
bricklayer |
brickstriker |
butcher |
candler |
carpenter |
carter |
chairmaker |
chandler |
chirugeon |
clerk |
clerk &
sexton |
cobbler |
cooper |
cordwainer |
cryer |
currier |
cutter of
tobacco |
dancing master |
doctor in
physic |
draper |
farmer |
feltmaker |
fingerbread
maker |
flaxdresser |
gardener |
gent |
glazier |
glover |
grocer |
Haberdasher of
hats |
hat dresser |
hatmaker |
hatter |
hewer of
clapboard |
husbandman |
in linen |
innholder |
innkeeper |
Justice of the
.Peace. |
joiner |
knacker |
lab |
locksmith |
mason |
metalman |
miller |
milliner |
oatmeal maker |
pail maker |
physician |
pipemaker |
ploughwright |
plumber |
post |
potash maker |
rabbit man |
rush chair
maker |
saddletree
maker |
sadler |
sawer |
schoolmaster |
sea soldier |
senex |
senior tanner |
sergeant-at-law |
servant |
sexton |
shoemaker |
soap boiler |
soldier |
stuff weaver |
surgeon |
tailor |
tanner |
tapster |
thatcher |
thatcher/mason |
tobacconist |
tumer |
watchmaker |
weaver |
wheelmaker |
wheelwright |
woollen draper |
writing master |
yeoman |
Fig 5.7 Frequency of
individuals in burial register with designations of status
A comparison of the annual number of
designations of occupation or status, with the annual number of burials
indicates that, although the same general trends were followed in both time
series, the custom of designation was not consistent from year to year. This was particularly evident towards the
end of the period under examination (Fig 5.8).
In some cases the lack of consistency coincided with a change in the
handwriting of the registrar. The custom of designating men by occupation or
status lapsed during the first quarter of the 18th century.
Fig 5.8 Comparison of
annual number of designations of occupations/status with the annual number of
burials (1653-1726).
The fact that several hundred burials have an occupation/status category ascribed to them makes this data set suitable for comparing the relative numbers of families, defined by having the same surname, associated with each category. A convenient cumulative population index, for making such comparisons within Halesworth’s social pyramid is obtained by adding up the number of different family surnames in each occupation/status category over the period 1653-1726. Comparisons of this cumulative surname index between categories, where each surname included is defined as ‘one family’, provides an approximation of the minimum number of ‘breadwinners’ falling into each category. For example, there were 24 references in the burial register to ‘wheelwrights’, which were distributed between the families of Aldred (6), Aldridge (1), Hazel (4), Knights (4), Pantry (1), Reese (1), Reeve (5) and Whincop (2). This gives a surname index of 8 for the wheelwrights. Indices for most of the categories are presented in Table 5.6.
Table 5.6 Number of family
surnames in various trades (burial
registers for St Mary’s parish church 1661-1726)
Apothecary |
8 |
Attorney |
2 |
Bailiff |
2 |
Baker |
9 |
Barber |
12 |
Basketmaker |
2 |
Blacksmith |
11 |
Brazier |
4 |
Brewer |
5 |
Bricklayer |
2 |
Butcher |
13 |
Candler |
1 |
Carpenter |
15 |
Carter |
1 |
Surgeon |
5 |
Cobler |
5 |
Cooper |
10 |
Cordwainer |
2 |
Currier |
6 |
Doctor in physic/ physician |
5 |
Draper |
9 |
Farmer/yeoman |
3 |
Feltmaker |
3 |
Flaxdresser |
2 |
Gardener |
6 |
Gentleman |
19 |
Glazier |
5 |
Glover |
14 |
Grocer |
8 |
Hats |
7 |
Husbandman |
8 |
Innkeeper |
14 |
Joiner |
5 |
Knacker |
5 |
Labourer |
60 |
Locksmith |
5 |
Mason |
8 |
Miller |
4 |
Oatmeal maker |
3 |
Pailmaker |
2 |
Pipemaker |
4 |
Sadler |
12 |
Sawer |
16 |
Shoolmaster |
3 |
Shoemaker |
32 |
Tailor |
24 |
Tanner |
15 |
Thatcher |
4 |
Tobacconist |
4 |
Turner |
3 |
Weaver |
12 |
Wheelwright |
9 |
Comparing the indices for labourers and schoolmasters may make a quick check on the reliability of this approach. This yields a ratio of 180 labourers to each teacher, which seems a reasonable order of magnitude. It is a pretty rough and ready method because, on the one hand the index probably underestimates the number of actual families involved at particular times, while on the other hand it overestimates the real situation, because deaths and recruitment of families were inevitably taking place during the three decades covered by the registers. For example, the burial and baptismal registers taken together tell us that three families of Aldreds, represented by John, Samuel and William, were employed as masons. However, these three families contributed only one surname to the mason index. The Aldred surname was also represented in the blacksmith index, by the families of Phillip and Thomas. Phillip died in 1659 and Thomas in 1674, and no more Aldreds had been recruited into this category by 1726.
Nevertheless, taking the figures for comparative purposes only, there is no doubt that labourers made up the greatest proportion of men at the bottom of Halesworth’s social pyramid (just under a fifth of the total surnames). Probably most of them worked on the land surrounding the township, and they outnumbered their employers, the farmers, yeomen and husbandmen, by about 6:1. Upper class townspeople, who described themselves as ‘gentlemen’, amounted to around 4% of the surnames in this category, and at the top were the Bedingfields, represented at the very apex by the Rt Hon. Henry, Kt, who at that time was lord of the Manor of Halesworth.
Those who provided basic
foodstuffs, the grocers, butchers, bakers, oatmeal makers, millers and
gardeners made up about 10% of all designations. There appeared to be only one family making candlesticks, and it
is represented in the index by Browne, the ‘candler’, who died in 1566. The
medical establishment was well represented by apothecaries, surgeons and
physicians (4%). Barbers (12%) also
functioned as a kind of paramedic, particularly with regards bloodletting. There were as many barbers as butchers. The
age of wood was still dominant with regards occupations such as cooper, joiner,
sawyer, turner, wheelwright, carpenter and pailmaker (13%). However, buildings were increasingly being
constructed of bricks (bricklayer/mason), although thatchers were still
required for roofing them. Metalworking
was moving from the blacksmiths to specialists such as braziers, locksmiths and
watchmakers. Pipemakers and
tobacconists were in business for the growing number of smokers, which was
being taken up as an adjunct to male social gatherings in the several
inns. With respect to special
manufacturing, there appears to have been a concentration of jobs linked with
leather working such as currier, glover, knacker, shoemaker, tanner and
cordwainer (getting on for 20%).
Another group of specialist jobs were associated with the cloth trade;
weaver, draper, flaxdresser and tailor (about 10%). In all of these activities Halesworth seems to have generated
sufficient legal transactions for two attorneys.
Any belief that in 17th century England everyone was
solely engaged in agriculture, in a subsistence economy with little economic
specialization, is undermined by many local studies involving this kind of
analysis of the occupational structure. Also, by the late sixteenth century the
market in land was fully developed. This may be studied by concentrating on a
decade of manorial activity. A typical
finding is that, of the parcels of copyhold property surrendered to the lord of
the manor, around 50% of these would be expected to be sales of copyhold
estates for cash, and a number of others would be surrenders at the end of
mortgage terms or leases. About a half, would be transfers by inheritance
between kin. Such research has shown
that this was not a simple 'peasant' society with families holding on to
ancestral plots for generation after generation. Rather there was a rapid
turnover of family holdings, where only about 10% would be held by the same
family (female links included) two generations earlier. This massive shift in
land tenure can be seen even in short periods in the records of Halesworth’s
Rectory Manor. Property in the manor was very mobile and there seems to have
been no strong attempt to 'keep the family name on the land'.
At the time of the first count
of all its inhabitants in 1801 the actual population of Halesworth was about
1,600 individuals. The average national
ratio of persons per inhabited house was 5.6, and this would equate to
Halesworth having about 280 households at the turn of the 18th century. It
indicates that the population had increased approximately three fold in two
hundred years. In the larger picture this may be compared with the United
Nation's estimate that it took 150 years for the preindustrial population of
Europe and Russia to double between 1650 and 1800. During the next century the rate of increase in Halesworth's
population from 1821-31 actually amounted to a doubling every 50 years. Of
course this rate was not maintained. It
was not a biological increase, but a response of immigrants towards the town as
a thriving economic centre, and therefore a magnet for those in search of
economic betterment. The route to
prosperity was paved by economic developments in the previous seven
centuries. The particular boost to
Halesworth's fortunes in the 18th century were notably the events, national and
local, that led up to the canalisation of the Blyth from Halesworth to
Southwold in the 1780s. This highly
significant engineering feat to construct the ‘Blyth Navigation’ was initiated
by a collection of local investors, many of whom were not natives of the
town.
In summary, at the beginning of
the 19th century, Halesworth represented England at the core of the world
economy, the country where there was a dissemination of business techniques
through London whereby wage labour was penetrating the countryside, and where
urban activity was soon to be spread to every area of British life. One of the first signs of the beginning of a
seller’s market was the appearance of mass advertising.
The Halesworth
Times And East Suffolk Advertiser was first published by George Rackham of Quay
St in July 1855. It was a weekly
publication costing one penny, containing 24 columns of close print, comprising
important domestic and foreign news of the week, with a full page of
advertising. In five issues taken at
random for the months of July-December 1855, a total of 25 businesses were
advertised. About half of these appeared once only, and a quarter were
published in three or more issues (Table 5.7).
An innovative approach to the relatively new but rapidly growing
advertising industry was the presentation of Joseph Dyer, who captured the
spirit of the times by picturing the railway; the latest means of connecting
Blything families with the products of Empire. The dialogue by which he talked
up and promoted his wares has a very modern ring about it (Fig 5.9). He and his wife are listed at 5 Thoroughfare
in the 1851 census, aged 22 and 24 respectively. They were both born in Liverpool, which raises the interesting
question of what fired them to set up business in Halesworth. In any case, Joseph was too dynamic for
small town retailing and we next hear of him in Norwich in the 1860s, where he
appears to have taken over a larger outfitting depot, Womacks, from where he
offered a mail order service to his old Halesworth customers, based on a range
of several thousand ready-made items.
By all accounts Joseph Dyer was a prototype of a new kind of retailing
world that was developing alongside the industrial manufacture and mass
marketing of old and new kinds of clothing.
At about the same time that Dyer moved to Norwich, a branch of Riches
and Skoyles, another outfitting depot, moved into the Thoroughfare at ‘White
Hart Corner’. Possibly this
translocation triggered Dyer to move onwards and upwards.
Table 5.7
Local advertisers in five random issues of the Halesworth Times and East
Suffolk Advertiser: July-December (1855)
Aldred William H (oil and lamps)
Botham B W (clothing and cheap warehouse grocery)
Bowles Alfred (dancing and drilling)
Brown Samuel (grocery and provisions, bacon curer)
Burgess N (ironmongery, furnishing ironmongery,
paints and polishes)
Burleigh R W (manure, beer, coal, malt, and hops)
Davy Thomas P (drapery)
Day, John (bookseller)
Dyer J (clothier)
Easterson Messrs
(iron founding, and maker and supplier of agricultural machinery)
Ellis W (watch and clock maker, silversmith,
jeweller and supplier of spectacles )
Fisher E (tailor)
Foreman John (wholesale and retail grocer and
fruiterer)
Freeman, George P. (livestock auctioneer)
Harvey J B (classical, mathematical and commercial
academy)
Haward Robert (insurance)
London John F (clothing wharehouse and outfitter)
Rackham George (publisher, bookseller, health foods
and patent medicines)
Smith Samuel (coachbuilder)
Strathern F B (wine and spirit and porter merchant)
Taylor G. G., Kings Arms Inn and Commercial Hotel
(accommodation , wine and spirit merchant)
Upton William (property auctioneer/appraiser, animal
manure works, bone grinder, implement hire)
Wade Denney (brewer)
Wigg Mrs (boots, shoes and bonnet-renovator)
Wigg N (watch and clock maker)
Fig 5.9 Advert for Joseph Dyer’s ‘Clothing and
Out-fitting Depot’ (Dec 18th 1855)
From the wording
of the adverts we can learn much about the dynamics and character of an
expanding local retail trade. For
example, there were two people advertising their services as coachbuilders. Samuel Smith of Halesworth stated that he
was late foreman to Thomas Brown, also of Halesworth. The other coachbuilder advertising his business was J J
Webb. He had transferred Thomas Brown’s
Halesworth business to Yoxford, presumably on Brown’s decease, from where he
was in partnership with Mrs. Brown.
F .B. Strathern
had recently taken over the wine and spirit business of Farr and Leman and had
opened the vaults formerly in the hands of Mr. F Haward. E. Fisher, nine years a Halesworth tailor,
informs his friends that he is about to move into premises formerly occupied by
N Burgess ironmonger, opposite the White Hart Inn. Here is revealed a bustling group of people ‘on the make’.
George Rackham
was trying to capitalise on the new age of chemical science. Although he was the publisher of the
Halesworth Times, he was also making his own patent medicines and health foods,
such as an improved lemon-flavoured Seidlitz Powder for relieving bile,
indigestion, nausea, heartburn etc., and supplying his own special baking
powder, an offshoot of new food technology that was being applied to staple
foods. He claimed his powder (probably sodium bicarbonate) produced dough that
was superior to fermented bread, particularly for those liable to constipation. Rackham also sold famous national patent
medicines, such as Page and Woodcock’s ‘wind pills’, and Professor Morton’s
‘cough balls’. Rackham was soon to face
competition, for in December, H Pedgrift opened up as a chemist. He stocked ‘every assortment of English and
foreign perfumery, horse, cattle and patent medicines of every description’.
There were seasonal sales, as for example when B W Botham sold off his summer
stock of shawls, mantles, dresses, bonnets, and ribbons at cost price, ‘owing
to the lateness of the season’. There
were also more opportunistic salesmen.
From an advert of Thomas P Davy, we are told that he had bought the
entire stock of drapery from George Elliot of Ipswich, valued at £468 6s 8d,
and intended to sell it off at Norwich House, Thoroughfare. The scale of this event must have been
overwhelming to the likes of the Bothams, and of Halesworthians in
general. To take only one category,
Davy’s monster sale included 500 pairs of children’s and women’s boots and
shoes commencing at 2d a pair. Many of
the advertisers go into great detail regarding their stock. For instance, John London lists the new
stock of his warehouse, as furs, gloves, scarves, cravats, mufflers, shirts,
collars, handkerchiefs, and general hosiery: silk and alpaca wool, umbrellas,
travelling bags, cases and portmanteaus.
He commanded national agencies for ‘a special elastic stocking and knee
cap’, and Ford’s ‘Eureka’ shirts. R. W.
Burleigh is an interesting example of a multiple warehouse vendor, supplying
wheat-manure, Peruvian guano, stout, porter, ales, fresh malt and hops. He also
sold Sunderland coal from the Navigation wharf. In contrast, Denny Wade was a specialist brewer, advertising four
grades of his own production, from his best beer at 1s 4d, down to a fourth
table-grade at 6d per gallon. ‘The
Advertiser’ had little to say about the butcher and baker, which most
inhabitants would of necessity visit every day. But even at this basic level, the grocer Samuel Brown, as part of
an increasingly expanded, globalised grocery and provision trade, was seeking
strenuously to purchase at the best markets a supply of every article. This particularly included former luxuries,
demanded for family consumption, ‘of dairies of good butter and genuine fine
teas, coffees and spices’.
Farmers were
served by George P Freeman, livestock auctioneer, and Messrs Easterson and Son,
iron founders. The latter were making
their own improved ploughs, chaff cutters and engines for coupling to
horse-drives. The firm also sold
weighing machines, field rollers, horse-hoes, corn mills, feeding troughs, and
hurdles. In addition, the firm
undertook work in cast iron and wrought iron.
Also, they were agents for a variety of patent agricultural machinery, a
portent that small-scale ironworkers were on the way out. Freeman’s auction market dealt, large-scale,
in horses, cattle, sheep and pigs. On
August 1st he disposed of 41 horses, 78 cattle, 2000 sheep and 100 pigs, most
of which were probably walked to town from neighbouring farms.
There were some
things it seems that Halesworth could not supply, such as teeth, for which
readers were invited to visit Mr. Neep, surgeon dentist of Norwich.
If they needed pianos, the place to go was Suggate’s gigantic ‘Music
Warehouse’ at Lowestoft. To fill the
gap in things of the mind, we learn that Mrs. Corbyn of Beccles, professor of
the pianoforte and singing, would be visiting the people of Halesworth after
Michaelmas for the purposes of giving instruction.
The other source
for information about the Halesworth retail trade is the Ipswich Journal. This has a longer history of
publication. For instance, the issue of
Jan 10th 1851 contains information about the pending auction, in June, of the
business effects of George Godbold, a Halesworth cabinetmaker and upholsterer. It included:-
“The entire and valuable stock of cabinet and upholstery
furniture of the latest manufacture and newest design, together with the
unmanufactured stock and furniture and general effects throughout the dwelling
house. Excellent pony, luggage and dog
carts etc.
Capital pony, carts and harness and miscellaneous
property in and about the spacious showroom, shops and premises situate in The
Thoroughfare, Halesworth.
Comprising excellent carved mahogany four post French and half tester bedsteads; feather beds and bedding; splendid French polished mahogany wardrobe; a large assortment of birchwood and neatly painted chamber tables and chairs, modern mahogany chests of drawers; handsome chimney box, tray and other glasses in gilt and mahogany frames; tastefully constructed and finely grained mahogany dining and Loo card and Pembroke tables; neatly fitted mahogany escritoire, elegant Pickwick hall and easy chairs; costly rosewood and mahogany estriole and other couches, fully-sized mahogany sofa, Spanish mahogany sideboard and chiffoniers; sets of horsehair seated, fancy, drawing room, reclining and Dover chairs; mahogany whatnots and ornamental stands, rosewood and mahogany writing desks and music stools, wainscote napkin press; upwards of 1100 pieces of paper hangings, about 250 yds Kidderminster, Venetian, patent felt and other carpets of good quality, 12 handsome Brussels rugs, 100 yds painted floorcloth, a quantity of cocoanut, Manila, dyed wood and other matting and mats, several pieces of drab moreens, chintz, richly figured damask, patent felt and painted table cloths, a quantity of bed ticking, hair seating and black Holland gimp, fringes, tassels, loops, miscellaneous effects in the trade.
The unmanufactured stock etc embraces about 600 ft
of Spanish and Honduras mahogany, a quantity of Wainscot, Walnut tree, Beech
and deal plank and board; 230 ft of veneers; 6 work benches, cupboards and
nests of drawers, several pairs of bed sides and rounds, a valuable assortment
of ironmongery, packing cases and other useful articles.
The stable and outdoor offices include a very
superior chestnut pony, 6 year old, cob-sized dog cart and harness, furniture
truck, grindstone, wheelchaff engine, corn chest and numerous effects,
particularised in the catalogues to be obtained of Mr Joseph Farrow, Bungay,
and Mr Nathaniel Burgen, Halesworth, the Trustees, at the Principle inns in
Beccles, Bungay, Harleston and Saxmundham, and of the Auctioneers, Howlett and
Lenny, Wissett near Halesworth. Jan 29th-30th”
Taken together
with other information from the Halesworth Times, the local newspapers not only
provide a window into trade, but also throw light on domestic consumption, and
highlight the globalisation of Halesworth’s commercial footprint, which, already
in the mid-Victorian period, extended the town’s wants from the tea, coffee,
spice and rubber plantations of the far East, to the guano ‘mines’ on Pacific
Islands off the coast of Peru, and the primeval mahogany forests of the
tropics.
In Britain, the first
recognisable community directories emerged during the seventeenth century,
meeting a growing demand for accurate information about trade and industry for
the purposes of travelling salesmen. They also met another important growing
demand for information on local history and social structure. In the latter context they provided a 'Whos
Who?' to sustain the local social hierarchies based on wealth in property and
land. From this point of view they were by no means comprehensive since they
set out to record the "principal inhabitants" of a community, those
in trade, and others affluent enough to be recognised as the important people
in the community, such as the gentry or clerics, professionals etc. The labouring
men and women in a community rarely figure in these publications.
Directories were compiled by
publishers for profit. They appeared at
almost random intervals during the late 18th and 19th centuries, and there must
always be a question mark over who was included or excluded. We shall never know the precise relationship
between an entry in the Directory, say of a business, and the payment to the
author of the Directory of a subscription to finance the publication. If someone
refused to pay, did his or her business disappear from the list? There is no certainty, therefore, that the
information they contain is either comprehensive or accurate. Such information has to be crosschecked with
other local sources, such as Parish Registers or the census returns; to establish
as far as possible what the real situation was at the time the Directory was
compiled.
Nevertheless, directories are
an invaluable primary source for historians. They provide first hand data about
local communities, their infrastructure and the individuals inhabiting those
communities. Published more frequently than the census, directories can also
help fill in any missing gaps.
A later development was the
emergence of larger-scale directories during the late eighteenth century. These
covered substantial parts of the country. Such ambitious publications were
costly to produce, requiring the collection of data by a large number of local
agents. Consequently, the production of these national and provincial
directories was increasingly concentrated into the hands of a few large
companies.
By the early nineteenth
century, methods of compilation had become highly organised. In part, this
reflected the growing links between directories and the Post Office. Many
postal officials, such as Frederick Kelly, turned their hand to directory
publishing as a means of both aiding their work and making some extra money.
Information was collected by letter carriers, who circulated forms during their
postal rounds, and also delivered the finished directory on commission.
Trends in the number of
directories published in England and Wales show considerable fluctuation over
time.
·
The period 1760 to 1850 was one of sustained, if rather erratic,
growth for directories. This was driven by increased trade, urbanisation and
transport improvements.
·
The 1850s saw some consolidation within the industry leading to
an initial decline, followed by a period of relative stability.
·
From around 1870 far more directories started to be published
again, with particularly rapid growth after 1880.
·
The heyday of the trade directory was the early twentieth
century, when over 250 were published each year, apart from a dip during World
War I.
The
peak year for directory publications was 1936, with around 320 directories
appearing. This sustained growth stemmed from continuing urbanisation and the
increasing importance of retail and service activities in the British
economy. During World War II, however,
the publication of directories declined sharply to less than 100 per year.
Despite a slight recovery after 1945, they never again approached pre-war
levels. Many of the publishers had gone out of business during the war
years. After World War II trade
directories also faced growing competition from telephone directories,
particularly for business and commercial use. The 1950s, in many ways, marked
the end of large-scale directory production and usage.
Some of the key features likely
to be found in many directories are:
·
descriptions of cities, parishes, towns and villages. These may
include geographical, historical and statistical details
·
information about local facilities, institutions and
associations
·
listings for private residents, traders, trades and professions
·
details of important people in the community
·
advertisements
The early directories were
speculative ventures and tended to concentrate on towns and their immediate
surroundings. There was a growing demand from the late 18th century onwards
because of the rapid expansion of commerce carried forward by an increasing
number of tradesmen, many of whom were becoming more specialised and forging
business links. By the Victorian period
most towns, cities and regions had publications listing most local
tradespeople, professionals and public office holders together with details of
transport services, newspaper circulations and potted local histories. By the
later 19th century, directories were produced by commercial publishers
attempting a national coverage. Some,
such as Kelly and Pigot, went on to become household names.
Early
directories appear to have followed two paths of development:
·
Some early directories were speculative ventures. These were
established by entrepreneurial publishers in response to the expansion of
trade.
·
Other directories evolved from the lists of traders kept by the
earliest registry offices. This type of directory was particularly common in
provincial towns.
Directory publishers during
this early period came from all lines of work, which gave them access to
information about names and addresses. Some typical examples of publishers
include:
·
registry officers
·
printers
·
house agents
·
auctioneers
·
policemen.
The ways in which publishers
collected data also varied considerably. Some obtained information by personal
canvassing and combined the results with existing listings. Other publishers simply asked people to send
in their names together with a small payment if they wanted to be included in
the directory.
Directories are also a major source
for research into economic activities such as manufacturing and retailing. They
provide data about:
·
the expansion or decline of individual firms and particular
areas
·
types of business, locations and ownership patterns
·
commercial relationships between local communities
·
occupations that have since disappeared or changed beyond all
recognition.
Directories offer the
opportunity to research aspects of social mobility, such as the fashionable
status of certain areas in cities or towns, immigrant communities in the
nineteenth century, and information about local administration, charities and
public services. However it is
important to know whether or not the information in a directory is accurate,
whether it offers a good representation of the economic and social structure of
an area, and how its coverage compares with other directories of a similar
date.
The content of a 19th century
directory throwing light on the pattern of Halesworth retailing is best
illustrated by William White's 'History Gazetteer and Directory of Suffolk',
which was first published in 1844. Its
stated purpose was to provide an up to date general survey of the county. It included histories, and statistical/topographical
descriptions of the hundreds and liberties (administrative divisions) with
current information describing their extent, population, agriculture,
manufactures, markets, fairs, trade, and commerce. Social well being was set out in terms of charities and public
institutions, including churches and chapels, their annual value and the
patrons and incumbents of the benefices, the lords of the manors, and owners of
the soil and tithes. The poor law unions and county court districts were
defined. Each community was described with
addresses of the inhabitants, the railway trains, steam packets, coaches and
carriers, and the seats of nobility and gentry, magistrates, and public
officers, and a variety of other agricultural statistical and biographical
information. All of this was contained
in one A2 volume, about two inches thick.
William White was the author of similar works for Norfolk, Lincolnshire,
Yorkshire and many other counties. The
Directory was priced at 14s in calf binding or 12s 6d in boards. The primary
information was provided by local 'literary and official gentlemen of the
county' and was compiled in Sheffield by White and his assistants. This massive publishing exercise was
financed by around 3500 pre-publication subscribers.
At the other extreme is
Stebbings directory for Halesworth published in 1877. This was the product of a local publisher in Lowestoft solely for
the townsfolk and includes many private individuals, artisans and their
addresses.
Regarding the value of White's
and similar directories with a commercial orientation as reliable sources of
information about the economic structure of communities, there are questions to
be answered regarding their production: -
What was the system by which
individuals were selected for inclusion in a directory?
What proportion of the
population was represented in a directory?
Can directories be used to
quantify the sociality of economic development with respect to:
·
the life of businesses;
·
the mobility of individuals;
·
consumerism, patterns and changes;
·
distribution of wealth.
·
occupations
Answers to these
questions are difficult to obtain because in most cases the directory is the
only evidence available.
From the Halesworth entry in
White's directory for 1844 we learn of two large industrial activities
comprising an iron foundry/agricultural implement manufacturers, and several
malting houses. Regarding the presence of enterprising individuals, the
following list shows the variety and numbers of jobs, trades and professions
(Table 5.8).
Table
5.8 Occupations listed in White's directory for Halesworth (1844)
postmaster,
1
cork
cutter, 1
chief
constable, 1
thatcher,
1
lodging
house owner, 1
solicitors,
2
chimney
sweep, 3
excise
officer, 2
bankers
clerks, 6
wherryman,
solicitors
clerks, 2
collector
of navigation tolls, 1
well-sinker,
1
jeweller/tea
dealer, 1
musical
instrument maker, 1
hawkers,
2
carriers,
2
tailor,
1
wine
merchant, 1
foreman,
1
builder,
1
shopman,
1
overlookers,
2
gardeners, 2
police
officers, 3
tanner,
1
trunk
maker, 1
painter,
1
whiting
manufacturer, 1
coach
painter, 1
soda
water manufacturer, 1
rat
catcher, 1
plant
dealer, 1
brewers,
4
bailiff,
1
greengrocer,
1
attorneys,
3
fire
and life officers, 10
inn/tavern
keepers, 14
teachers,
auctioneer, 11
bakers,
10
basket
makers, 5
beerhouse
keepers, 8
fishmonger,
1
blacksmiths,
6
booksellers/printers,
3
boot/shoemakers,
17
brazier/tinners,
3
bricklayers, 5
brickmakers,
3
butchers,
10
cabinet
makers, 3
chemist/druggists,
3
coach
brokers, 2
coach
maker, 1
coal
merchants, 4
coopers,
3
corn/flour
dealers, 5
corn
merchants, 2
corn
millers, 3
curriers, 2
dyers,
3
farmers,
8
farriers,
2
furniture/clothes
brokers, 3
glass/china
dealers, 3
glovers,
2
grocer/drapers,
9
gun
makers, 2
hairdressers,
4
hatter,
1
ironmongers,
4
joiner/builders,
9
lime
burners, 2
maltsters,
7
milliners,
6
painter/plumber/glaziers,
4
saddlers,
5
shopkeepers,
8
rope
and sack manufacturer, 1
straw
hat makers, 9
surgeons, 4
tailors,
13
timber
merchant, 1
toy and
fancy warehouses, 2
watchmakers,
5
wheelwright,
1
whitesmiths,
3
Half a
century later, the following people were entered in the 1912 directory (Table
5.9).
Table
5.9 Occupations listed in Kelly's
directory for Halesworth (1912)
agricultural
manure merchant, 1
ale, wine
and spirits stores, 1
apartment
owner, 1
assessor/tax
collector, 1
asst.
overseer, 1
auctioneers,
3
baker/confectioners,
2
bakers,
3
bankers,
7
beer
retailer, 1
beer
retailer/grocer,1
berlin
wool warehouse, 1
bill
poster, 1
blacksmith,
1
boot/shoe
repairers, 3
boot/shoemakers,
4
bootmaker,
1
brewers/maltsters,
1
bricklayers,
2
builders,
4
butchers,
4
carpenter/
wheelwright, 1
chemist,
1
chimney
sweep, 1
china,
glass and earthenware dealer, 1
clothiers,
2
coach/carriage
builder, 1
coal
dealers, 2
coal,
corn, paper and rag merchant, 1
confectioner,
1
cooper,
1
corn,
seed and coal merchant, 1
cutlery
grinder, 1
cycle
agents, 3
dairymen,
2
dealer
in antique furniture, 1
dentist
drug stores, 1
draper/furnisher,
1
drapers,
3
drapers/general
provisions, 1
dressmakers,
5
fancy
repository, 1
farm
bailiff, 1
farmers,
4
fishmongers,
3
fruiterers,
2
general
carter, 1
girls
school owner, 1
grocers,
3
hairdresser, 1
hairdresser/fancy
repository, 1
harness
makers, 2
horse/cattle
practitioner, 1
hotel
owners, 7
inland
revenue officer, 1
insurance
agents, 7
ironmongers,
2
jewellers, 1
jobbing
gardener, 1
Jobmasters, 2
laundress,
1
maltster,
1
maltsters/general
merchants, 1
miller,
1
milliner, shopkeeper/cabinet maker, 1
mineral
water manufacturers, 1
motor
engineers, 1
painter,
1
photographer,
1
plumber/decorators,
2
plumber/painter,
1
police
officers, 2
pork
butchers, 5
printer/stationer,
1
provisions
dealer, 1
publicans,
8
publisher,
41
registrar,
1
sack,
tarpaulin, flag and tent makers, 1
school
attendance officer, 1
seedsman/greengrocer,
1
shoeing
smith, 1
shoeing/tyre
smith, 1
shopkeepers,
4
solicitors,
5
station
masters, 2
stationer,
1
stone
mason, 1
surgeons,
5
tailors,
3
timber
merchant, 1
tinplate
worker, 1
tobacconist,
2
tobacconist/hairdresser,
1
town
crier, 1
upholsterer,
1
vet, 1
watch
repairer, 1
watchmakers,
2
wheelwright,
1
The 1912 directory has about
10% more occupations than the one published in 1844. However, taking the two directories together, a total of 189
distinct occupations are listed, and of these, only 34 (18%) are common to both
lists. Many of the descriptions in both
directories were assigned to one individual only. In 1844 these occupations that were distinct to one person
amounted to about a third of the entries, whereas in 1912 two thirds of the
entries were in this category. In the half century that had elapsed between the
publication of these two directories some common occupations such as straw-hat
maker and part-time fire and life insurance officers had become extinct, and
new occupations associated with technological change, such as ‘cycle agent’ and
‘photographer’, had come to the town.
However, some of the changes were fortuitous, as was the presence of a
musical instrument maker in the 1844 directory, and the girl's school owner in
1912. On the whole, the differences
seem to reflect a turnover of individuals rather than a fundamental difference
in the supply of goods and services.
Nevertheless, the comparison does reveal a move away from small family
concerns towards fewer and larger enterprises, which were associated with
large-scale specialised production.
This is particularly evident in the smaller numbers of bakers, tailors,
and boot and shoemakers in the directory for 1912.
By 1912
the existing retail patterns of Halesworth were for the most part the result of
past decisions by innumerable individuals or groups, and those decisions
included many more factors than simply those related to where to locate a new
enterprise. In an ideal world the
decision to invest in a new business enterprise would be taken after a thorough
appraisal of the numerous elements that combine to render the project viable.
In practice the majority of such decisions are probably taken without such a
complete appraisal. The vast majority
of new enterprises set up during the 19th century were quite small, and lacked
the resources necessary to conduct any detailed analysis of locations; the
location decisions were therefore necessarily of the 'hit or miss' variety.
Nevertheless, such new businesses commonly enter the field of some already
established local speciality product, or one for which existing local demand is
manifestly large, so that the location has some internal rationale.
For
small town business in general, the normal 'location question' historically
posed to investors ('What is the best location in which to manufacture or
market this product?') is inverted, to become 'What is the product I can best
make or sell in this location?’ which is equally rational and cost effective.
In the world of mass-production, which grew much more competitive from 1844 to
1912, not all new business enterprises would survive. Then, as now, many would
fail because their location decision was inappropriate or the initial financial
investment was inadequate. Others would survive, although at below optimal
levels. A few would be expected to grow in stature within their communities,
their regions and their nations, and no doubt thereby confirm the superior
wisdom (or good fortune) of their founders.
Evidence from the trade directories supports the idea that this was the
small-scale scenario in 19th century Halesworth, with inevitably a rapid
turnover of family businesses.
The above comparisons made
between directories published at different times can be developed as a method
to quantify the instability of family enterprises. Families in trade may be defined in relation to their surnames,
and an analysis of changes in surnames between directories will provide a good
approximation of the rate of flow of businesses through the town. This approach has been developed by
comparing a sequence of pairs of Halesworth directories that were published
between 1783-1892 (Tables 5.10 and 5.11).
The following paragraphs describe a method of charting the coming and
going of traders. Those who only want
to read the conclusions are advised to go to subsection 5.7.1.
Up to 1844 the average gains
and losses of surnames per year of those in trade both increased, with gains
exceeding losses. During the period
1844-55, both the rates of loss and gain of surnames decreased, with the losses
slightly exceeding the gains. After 1855 both rates increased up to 1883, but rates
of loss continued to exceed the rates of gain.
Between 1883-92, the average rates of gains and losses decreased by
about 50%, with losses exceeding gains (Fig 5.10).
Table
5.10 Comparisons of surnames in pairs of Halesworth directories (1793-1892)
Comparison
of years |
Years |
Total
entries (1) |
Lost |
Gained |
In
both |
In
both as percentage of (1) |
Lost
as percentage of (1) |
Gained
as percentage of (1) |
1793-1830 |
37 |
202 |
48 |
131 |
23 |
11.4 |
23.8 |
64.9 |
1830-1844 |
14 |
282 |
55 |
127 |
100 |
35.5 |
19.5 |
45.0 |
1844-1855 |
10 |
311 |
104 |
83 |
124 |
39.9 |
33.4 |
26.7 |
1855-1879 |
24 |
301 |
121 |
97 |
83 |
27.6 |
40.2 |
32.2 |
1879-1883 |
4 |
224 |
46 |
38 |
140 |
62.5 |
20.5 |
16.9 |
1883-1892 |
9 |
231 |
68 |
53 |
110 |
47.6 |
29.4 |
22.9 |
Table 5.11
Rates of change of surnames
Interval |
Mid
point |
Average
loss/yr |
Average
gain/yr |
1773-1830 |
1811 |
1.3 |
3.5 |
1830-1844 |
1837 |
3.93 |
9.07 |
1844-1855 |
1849 |
10.4 |
8.3 |
1855-1879 |
1867 |
5.04 |
4.04 |
1879-1883 |
1881 |
11.5 |
9.5 |
1883-1892 |
1888 |
7.6 |
5.9 |
Fig
5.10 Comparison of rates of gains and
losses of surnames
Over the entire period of the
study, between 1783-1892, the pattern of change in surnames of those in trade
was characterised by there being a decline in the proportion of new surnames
added in each interval between publications.
There was also a rise in the proportional losses of surnames from paired
directories, which reached a peak between 1855-79 (Fig 5.11). At this time, the Halesworth directories
were more or less in a steady state, with gains, losses and carry-overs all
being around a third of the total surnames in pairs of directories added
together. The time of the peak in
losses between directories was preceded by a maximum in the total number of
surnames for each pair of directories.
The latter occurred between 1844-55 (Fig 5.12). Between 1773-1892 there was around a
ten-fold variability in the average rate of loss of surnames between paired
directories (1.3-11.5/yr). The
variability in gains was less (3.5-9.5/yr).
However, the average rates of loss and gain over the entire period were
about the same (6.6 and 6.7 names of persons in trade per year).
Fig
5.11 Changes in surnames: paired
comparisons of losses and gains as a proportion of those occurring in both
directories (1855-79)
Fig
5.12 Total number of surnames 1783-1892
In order
to examine these conclusions in relation to the bigger socio-economic picture
it is necessary to turn to the Halesworth population censuses. These ten-year surveys show that the
population began to increase exponentially at the start of the 19th century,
attaining its fastest rate of growth between 1811 and 1821 (addition of about
36 people per decade; Fig 5.13).
During
the next decade the rate of population growth decreased, and came to an abrupt
end, at a level of about 2660 persons, in the mid 1840s. The population then began to fall, and apart
from a small upturn in 1881, it continued to decline until the end of the
century, at which time there had been a 16% decrease in the number of
inhabitants from its mid-century level (a loss of 419 people, or 8
persons/decade). These changes in
population and directory surnames of those in trade are summarised in Table
5.12. There were no changes in parish boundaries that could play a significant
part in the process.
Fig
5.13 Change in population of Halesworth
(1801-1904)
Table
5.12 Timeline of population dynamics of
Halesworth through the 19th century.
Population
dynamic |
|
First
evidence of burst in population growth |
1811 |
Surname
gain = its largest proportion of total surnames* |
1811 |
1st
maximum population growth |
1825 |
1st
maximum of surname gain |
1837 |
Termination
of population growth |
1845 |
1st
maximum of surname loss |
1849 |
Beginning
of decline in population |
1850 |
Maximum
surnames in directory |
1850 |
Minimum
of surname gain |
1867 |
2nd
maximum of population growth |
1881 |
2nd
maximum of surname gain |
1881 |
2nd
maximum of surname loss |
1881 |
Surname
loss = its largest proportion of total surnames* |
1881 |
*
in both directories added together
To summarise, a study
of Halesworth’s trade directories has shown:
·
that most traders may
be classed as colonists;
·
the incoming specialist
traders reflected national trends in the development of new technologies;
·
the rise and fall of
the number of traders more or less followed the trends in population;
·
initially, as the
town’s population increased, more traders arrived and no doubt took over
existing private houses, which then became live-over shops; even today,
customers entering the ‘Ancient House’ and the Toy shop are immediately very
much aware of moving within the original timber compartmentation of medieval
town houses;
·
the number of new
traders declined because the number of premises suitable for trade became
saturated;
· at any time it was probably vacant shops that
controlled the inflow of new shopkeepers;
·
businesses were short
lived and were seldom passed on to the next generation.
Fig 5.14 Birth categories
of heads of households recorded in three census returns
Category 1: Born in
Halesworth Category
2: Others born in Suffolk
Category 3: Others born
in Blything Category
4: Born outside Suffolk
Category 5: Total heads
of household
The above dynamic flux between native-born tradespeople of
Halesworth and those who came to the town as colonists was generally true for
the population as a whole. In 1851 only
about a third of the heads of household were born in Halesworth. By 1901 the total number of householders had
actually declined by about 6%, yet from 1851 to 1901 the number of native heads
of households remained well below that of colonists (Fig 5.14). Most of the colonists were born in Suffolk,
of which just less than a half came from within the Blything Hundred. Over the whole period there was a trend for
householders to come from a wider area, and by the 1901 census people born
outside the county had risen by about 40%.
However the majority of the householders were still Suffolk born.
Over the half century between 1851 and 1901 a large turnover of householders
would be expected as people died or moved away. The question as to how many were replaced by natives may be
answered by first counting the householders present in 1901 who had the same
surnames as those in 1851, and then finding out how many of these had been born
in the town.
In 1851 the number of householders was 571. By 1901, out of a total population of 537
heads of household, there were 273 who had the same surnames as those present
in 1851. This means that in 1901 around
half of the 1851 heads were no longer present and had been replaced by people
with different surnames, many of which were common to all communities. Of the 273 people present in 1901 with the
same surnames as those present in 1851, only 123 had been born in Halesworth. This indicates that, as a minimum, about
three quarters of the 1901 population were colonists. Since the population size had hardly changed since 1851, the
conclusion is that during the second half of the 19th century,
migrants were replacing native householders at a rate of about 10 per
year. Looking back to 1851, only 107
out of the town’s 292 householders had the same names as those present in 1901,
which suggests that this high rate of replacement of Halesworth’s property
owners with incomers was a long-standing historical feature of the town’s
population. On the whole, it appears
that few families can be said to be truly native to the town. The rule was that, generation-by-generation,
people came and went, but remained attached to their family’s roots in the
county.
5.8 History of retail premises
Since the middle of the 19th century retail businesses in
small towns have always faced increasing challenges as they strive to attract
new shoppers and retain customer loyalty.
‘Big box’ retailers lure customers with extensive product diversity and
competitive prices made possible by the economies of scale in manufacturing and
purchasing. Yet the central business area of market towns,
which in Halesworth has meant The Thoroughfare and Market Place, has
historically been the hub of civic life.
Essential goods and services were offered in a walkable setting between
church and river. Shoppers conducted their business and in so doing the social
networks and economic vitality of a community were established and
strengthened.
‘Main Street’ districts have been good places
for socialising in towns and cities. Yet, since the early 1980s commentators on the retail trade have
lamented the loss of these places that give towns their character and provide a
sense of identity for residents. At the start of the 21st century
many communities, recognising the loss of the centres that bridged economic and
community life, are making attempts at revival. Needs for physical improvements
are many, as business communities reckon with the physical decline brought on
by years of inadequate maintenance and the need to separate pedestrian shoppers
and traffic.
Fig 5.15 Portion of the Halesworth tithe map of 1839 (numbers
refer to the Tithe Apportionment)
Building facades, streets, pavements,
and infrastructure need attention, all of which are being addressed by the
process of pedestrianisation of main streets so as to draw consumers away from
supermarket car parks. In all of this,
Halesworth has followed national trends, the major response being to bypass the
medieval centre by constructing a semi ring road through the wet pasture lands
immediately to the east of the settlement, and linking this with the road to
Harleston through a new housing estate to the south of the church. The small ancient core of Halesworth as a
market settlement still remains within the boundary of the new roads. This can be confirmed from the earliest map,
the Tithe Apportionment map of 1839, to which the main retail premises of today
can be aligned (Fig 5.15). Each
premises on both sides of the Thoroughfare was but a small frontage of a large
irregular plot extending deep into closes between the road and the river.
Table
5.13 Retail occupation of properties in
central Halesworth in 1979, which occupied plots, numbered on the Tithe Map for
The Thoroughfare and Market Place
Ref. |
Occupier |
Ref |
Occupier |
Ref |
Occupier |
Ref |
Occupier |
558 |
butcher |
538 |
Printing and clothing |
228 |
newspapers |
208-5 |
Ladies clothing, drapers,
furniture |
557 |
dentist |
529 |
Newspaper |
227 |
draper |
204 |
Tobacconists gents
hairdresser |
556 |
toys |
529 |
solicitor |
223-4 |
bank |
202 |
Mens clothing |
555-9 |
Private house |
525 |
auctioneers |
221 |
sweetshop |
200 |
electricity |
554 |
Ladies/mens clothing |
518 |
hotel |
219 |
Bike shop |
410 |
Takeaway meals |
553 |
books |
515 |
accountant |
218-7 |
bank |
390 |
Pet supplies |
552 |
electrical goods/services |
510 |
bank |
216 |
Ladies clothes |
374 |
Car repairs |
548 |
laundry/dry cleaning |
238 |
baking |
215 |
chemist |
371 |
Car sales |
547 |
public house |
237 |
Private house |
214 |
solicitors |
368 |
butchers |
543 |
solicitor |
235 |
Private house |
213 |
Ironmonger/hardware |
405 |
toilets |
541 |
Convenience store |
234 |
Trade union |
212 |
painter |
407 |
Wines and beer |
540 |
accountant |
233 |
greengrocer |
211 |
bakery |
|
|
539 |
jewellers |
229 |
furniture |
210 |
Wool/knitting supplies |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In 1979 a project organised by
the Workers Educational Association attempted to relate the positions of modern
shops in the Thoroughfare and Market Place to the sites of properties numbered
on the Tithe Map. These two roads have
most of the town’s retail establishments.
A total of 51 premises were so identified (Table 5.12). There was a good match of position showing
that the general layout of properties had changed little in seven decades. Most of the family businesses represented one
of their kind, and apart from banks and solicitors there was virtually no
competition for services
The authors repeated this survey in 2005
using a modern map (Figs 5.16 and 5.17).
A total of 79 shops, businesses and private houses were identified in
The Thoroughfare and Market Place, all of which occupied sites originally
delineated on the Tithe Map. There had
been some changes in ownership and type of business since 1979, notably a
garage and car showroom in the Market Place had been replaced by three private
houses, but the range of goods and services on offer were mostly the same
(Table 5.13 and 5.14).
Halesworth is not unusual in these
respects. Retailing is an uncertain
business. A change in the ownership of
firms has always been a regular feature.
Regarding the national level in the retail sector, rumours constantly abound of mergers and
acquisitions. For larger organisations this may cause issues surrounding branding:
consumers may not recognise the new brand or trust the product making start-up
something of a lottery. However, a new
factor which is likely to affect the rates of change in ownership is internet
shopping. No retail sector has been hit
harder by internet shopping than the consumer electricals market. Millions of
electrical items are bought online where customers can find and compare market
information quickly, easily and reliably. As a result, traders with imagination
and courage will thrive in the internet age, while those less able will be
removed by consumers going elsewhere.
Fig 5.16 Retail establishments in
Thoroughfare December 2005
The new factors affecting small town retailers, which did not affect Halesworth shopkeepers until the last decade, are concerned with meeting the need to keep up with consumer sensitivities in a number of key areas:
· Health issues – irradiated and genetic modification of foods. Use of dangerous chemicals, for example the use of phthalates in plastics and cosmetics.
Fig 5.17 Retail establishments in Market
Place December 2005
Table 5.14
Key to Figs 5.15 and 5.16
Ref |
Name |
Description |
1 |
C
A Palmer & Son |
butchers |
2 |
Childrens
Society |
charity
shop |
3 |
Patricks
|
greengrocers |
4 |
Country
Kitchen |
delicatessen |
5 |
Halesworth
Toy Shop |
toys |
6 |
Warner’s
Wine Bar |
restaurant |
7 |
Flick
and Son |
estate
agent & auctioneers |
8 |
Camplings |
launderers
& dry cleaners |
9 |
The
White Hart |
public
house |
10 |
Durrants |
estate
agents & auctioneers |
11 |
Spar
|
convenience
store |
12 |
Focus
Organics |
clothing
& gifts |
13 |
Focus
Organics |
delicatessen
etc |
14 |
Denson
Jewellers |
jewellers |
15 |
Hair
and Beauty House |
hairdresser |
16 |
Forbouys |
newsagents |
17 |
Maggie’s
Discounts |
haberdashery
and wool |
18 |
HRG
Shoe Repairs |
leather
goods |
19 |
Cross
and Ram |
solicitors |
20 |
James
Hayward |
second
hand books |
21 |
The
Angel |
hotel |
22 |
Juler
Tooke |
accountant |
23 |
Bank
House |
private
residence |
24 |
Barclays |
bank |
25 |
Ad
Shop |
printing
services |
25a |
Studio |
picture framing |
26 |
Allen’s
Butchers |
butchers |
27 |
Galaxy
Travel |
travel
agents |
27a |
Galaxy
Travel |
travel
agents |
28 |
Kai
King |
Chinese
takaway |
29 |
Gooderham |
architect |
30 |
Ipswich
Building Society |
building
society |
31 |
Hair
by Roger |
women’s
hairdresser |
32 |
Nolleys
Pet Shop |
pet
foods etc |
33 |
HSBC |
bank |
34 |
Social
Club |
|
35 |
Private
House |
|
36 |
Private
House |
|
37 |
Private
House |
|
38 |
Empty
shop |
|
39 |
Morton
Partnership Ltd Arcadia House |
consulting
structural engineers |
40 |
Sign
of the Fish |
Christian bookshop |
41 |
Instanbul
Kebab House |
Turkish
takeaway |
42 |
The
Morton Partnership Ltd |
consulting
structural engineers |
43 |
Public
Conveniences |
|
44 |
Wine
Shop & Masonic Lodge |
licensed
victualler freemasonry |
45 |
Jacksons
|
bakery |
46 |
Timberwheel
cottage |
private
house |
47 |
Private
house |
|
48 |
Private
house |
|
49 |
Burmal
Racing |
bookmaker |
50 |
Edware
Jones Investments |
accountant |
51 |
Moss
Pharmacy |
chemist |
51a |
Moss
Pharmacy |
chemist |
51b |
Raj
Puth |
Balti
resaurant |
52 |
Pinkys |
restaurant |
53 |
Homemake
Cake Shop |
bakery |
54 |
D.C.Patrick
|
newsagent |
55 |
Halesworth
Bookshop |
books |
55a |
Halesworth
Carpet Centres Ltd |
carpets
and rugs |
56 |
Lloyds
Bank |
bank |
56a |
Lloyds
Bank |
bank |
57 |
Fox’s
Cards & Balloons |
cards
and gifts |
58 |
Sweeney’s |
gents
hair stylist |
59 |
Decorum |
pine
furniture gifts |
60 |
HSBC
Bank |
bank |
60a |
HSBC
Bank |
bank |
61 |
P
J W Thompson |
ophthalmic
optician |
62 |
Melons |
greengrocer |
63 |
Norton
Peskett |
solicitors |
64 |
Coopers
(Gt Yarmouth Ltd ) & Post Office |
ironmongers
& builder’s merchants |
65 |
Reshape |
mens
hairdresser |
65a |
Remnants |
haberdashers |
66 |
The
Farmhouse Bakery |
bakery |
67 |
Halesworth
Stationers |
Stationary
etc. |
68 |
Buds
and Blooms |
florists |
69 |
Edwards
Restaurant |
restaurant |
70 |
Acacia
Tree |
furniture
and gifts |
71 |
Abbotts |
estate
agents |
72 |
Camelot
Shoes |
shoes |
73 |
Norwich
and Peterborough |
building
society |
74 |
Anglia
Photos and Sports |
cameras
etc. & sports goods & clothing |
75 |
Raceway
Services |
bookmaker |
76 |
Wotsits |
miscellaneous
goods |
Another approach to continuity
and change is to follow the history of a particular property. In 2005, the
authors were permitted to examine a package of deeds and related documents
belonging to the Palmer family, who were then in business as butchers at 1
Thoroughfare, a listed property by the river, immediately to the south-east of
Town Bridge. The deeds of entitlement
covered the period 1723-2003. From 1723
to 1875 the premises were held as copyhold of the Manor of Halesworth, which
held most of the land south of the river. Between 1723 and 1848, a period of
125 years, there were 9 copyhold tenants, who each occupied the premises, on
average, for about 14 years. The first
mention of the property being a butchery was in 1875, when a mortgage was taken
out by William Seamans. During the
period, 1875-1913 there were 4 owners of the property, giving an average
occupancy of about 9 years.
There were no documents for the
interval 1914 to 1953. Then, in 1954
the owner was George Woods. After his death, his widow continued the
butchery. She married William Harry
Spindler in 1963, and the couple continued in business until 1970, when the
Palmers bought the property. The papers covering just over two centuries of the
property’s history are listed in Table 5.15.
Table
5.15 Papers referring to the Halesworth
property No1 Thoroughfare
Date |
Descriptions |
1822 |
Deed of
entitlement: 1 Thoroughfare Manor of Halesworth |
|
1723: Mary
Edwards |
|
1742: Mary
Edwards daughter of Mary Edwards |
|
1775:
Robert Woolnough |
|
1778:
Edward Carman |
|
1798:
Edward Carman son of Edward Carman |
|
1808:
Nathaniel Carman uncle of Edward Carman |
|
1820:
Robert Watson |
|
1822:
Elizabeth Watson wife of Robert Watson |
1848 |
Indenture:
Joseph Moses Brown |
13.10.1848 |
Manor of
Halesworth: Joseph Moses Brown copyhold tenant |
21.10.1848 |
Will of
Joseph Moses Brown: George Collet tenant |
04.04.1865 |
Lease of
premises: Mrs Mary Brown widow to George Seamans for period of 5 yrs from
11.10.1864 |
11.10.1865 |
Manor of
Halesworth discharge: Sophie Spink widow discharges interest in property of
Joseph Moses Brown |
18.05.1875 |
Mortgage
between Wiliam Seamans butcher and George Seamans and Jane Allen of
Frostenden |
03.05.1875 |
Bargain
and sale of copyhold premises:: Mr Allington Carman to William Seamans in
trust for Mr George Seamans |
04.05.1875 |
Admission
of William Seamans to the Manor of Halesworth |
12.05.1875 |
Enfranchisement
of two messuages, shop and heridits: Frederick Crofts Esq and others to Mr
William Seamans |
1875 |
Abstract
of the title to certain copyholds of the Manor of Halesworth late of Mr J.
Moses Seamans |
1875 |
Aditional
abstract of the above |
08.10.1888 |
Conveyance
of the butcher's shop and premises: Exrs of late George Seamans to George R
Haward |
1888 |
Abstract
of title: of Mr George Seamans freehold messuage of premises |
29.09.1891 |
Fire
insurance of G R Haward |
03.02.1899 |
Mortgage:
Mr Ripps Masssingham to Mr N A Watson on shop |
02.02.1899 |
Conveyance:
from Mr George Haward and another to Mr Ripps Massingham |
1905 |
Abstract
of title to Mr. R. Masssingham |
07.11.1905 |
Sale of
butcher's business: Exec of Ripps Massingham |
28.11.1905 |
Mrs. Helen
M. A. Watson to Mr. Antony E. Runnacles rep. Of R Massingham recoverance of
premises |
1.12.1905 |
Mortgage.
Mr. Philip D. Chapman and Mrs. Helen M. A. Watson. Conveyance of Mr. A.E.
Runnacles and another to Mr Philip D. Chapman |
19.08.1913 |
rep.
of R. Massingham, recoverance of premises |
07.09.1954 |
Memorandum
agreement: between George Woods and the Council |
08.09.1954 |
Counterpart
agreemen:t for works on The Thoroughfare |
01.11.1946 |
Insurance
premium: Cross & Ram to George Woods |
10.08.1955 |
Vesting
assent: re G Amos Woods deceased; George Woods signed |
1962 |
Abstract
of will: of George Woods |
03.04.1962 |
Assent for
1 The Thorofare: in Mrs Kathleen Teresa Woods |
24.06.1963 |
Marriage
certificate: of K T Woods, widow to William Harry Spindler |
25.09.1967 |
Conveyance:
Mrs K T Spindler to George Woods |
25.05.1970 |
Register:
of building of special historical or architectural interest |
10.09.1970 |
Conveyance
of property: Mrs K T Spindler and George Woods |
Although the first mention of
an owner of the premises being a butcher was in 1875, the 1851 census lists a
Joseph M Brown as a butcher and head of the first household censused in the
Thoroughfare. This person is probably the Joseph Moses Brown who, according to
the Palmer papers, was admitted a copyhold tenant of 1 Thoroughfare in
1848. A will of the latter person was
mentioned in one of the Palmer papers dated 21.10.1848, which also states that
George Collett was his tenant. In the
1851 census, a George T Collett is listed head of household at 2 Thoroughfare,
and classed as a cabinetmaker journeyman, so it is likely that the Browns also
owned this property (Table 5.16).
Table
5.16 Entry in the 1851 census for numbers 1 & 2 Thoroughfare
1 |
Thoroughfare |
Joseph M
Brown |
Head |
m |
56 |
|
Butcher:
master employing 2 men |
Suffolk
Clare |
|
Thoroughfare |
Mary |
Wife |
m |
|
57 |
|
Hadleigh |
|
Thoroughfare |
Mary Ann |
d |
u |
|
29 |
book-keeper |
Halesworth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Lucy |
d |
u |
|
25 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Charles
James |
servant |
u |
22 |
|
butcher
journeyman |
Halesworth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Thomas
Rivetts |
servant |
u |
32 |
|
butcher
journeyman |
Pettistree |
|
Thoroughfare |
Maryann
Bullock |
servant |
u |
|
20 |
house
servant |
Wrentham |
2 |
Thoroughfare |
George T
Collett |
Head |
m |
36 |
|
cabinet
maker journeyman |
Newington
Surrey |
|
Thoroughfare |
Mary |
Wife |
m |
|
42 |
tea dealer |
Dicklebourgh
Norfolk |
|
Thoroughfare |
Betsey |
d |
u |
|
18 |
assistant
in shop |
Cookley |
|
Thoroughfare |
Ann |
d |
u |
|
10 |
scholar |
Halesworth |
Both
families were not natives of Halesworth.
Joseph Brown was deceased by 1865 when the butchery was leased to George
Seamans, who subsequently took up the copyhold.
The combination of the
processes of becoming a retailer of goods and the personal motivations of
customers who purchase them, raises the question; Does desire to buy have to
come first? In other words, is
consumerism ‘natural’? Early
Halesworthians clearly had a preference for land over consumerism, and many
traditional societies used economic surplus for religious investment, rather
than spending it on personal-consumerist display. If clothing is bought why do some buy better but traditional
clothing, rather than purchasing novel consumerist fashions. The coincidental uptake of each of these options
challenges the assumption that consumerism is a natural phenomenon.
A reasonable shorthand
definition of modern consumerism involves:
· a
serious commitment to the acquisition, display, and enjoyment of goods and
commercial services, which are clearly not necessary to subsistence however
generously defined;
· participation
in the process by social groups outside the upper classes.
Consumerism has a long
history. Looking back in time to China
under the Tang and Sung, and again under the Ming dynasties, this ancient
civilisation frequently displayed symptoms of socially expansive consumerism in
the cities, with style-setters among women and business families outside the
aristocracy. Chinese consumer styles would even have impact elsewhere, as in
European imitations of Chinese women's headgear in the later Middle Ages.
Why did modern Western
consumerism first emerge? Without going into great detail, the conclusive
finding that Western consumerism began in its basic modern shape during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with appropriate changes both in
commercial apparatus and in individual motivation, is one of the real
discoveries of recent social history. We can fuss about exactly when it first
happened, but the basic pattern seems clear, and with it an understanding that
consumerism preceded, rather than followed from industrialization, though it
would later be enhanced by it.
Causation, however, is more
elusive. Vital to world history is an appreciation of how much access to goods
from other regions, such as sugar, helped stimulate broader consumer demand and
the apparatus needed to sustain and enhance this demand. Likewise, rising
prosperity for many, though not all, was a vital precondition. On a world
scale, the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries are crucial periods in the
development of consumerism.
The triteness and hedonism of
consumerism have made it an inviting target to a variety of critics. These
criticisms include:
· religious
objections, on grounds of inappropriate priorities;
· social
objections, based on a sense that society has an established (often racial)
hierarchy, which consumerism threatens to overturn by allowing unworthy people
to look and act just like their betters;
· and
age-based objections to the consumer leadership of the young.
Also fairly standard are
attacks on women as particularly vulnerable to consumerism's encouragement of
public display to the detriment of financial prudence and respectable family
behaviour. Consumerism has often also been attacked as foreign. Even umbrellas
were protested against in eighteenth-century England as being effetely
French. While in many societies
resistance seems to lessen after a while (Western Europe after World War II,
for instance), some anxiety or guilt about consumerism may persist in less
explicit forms, even in the United States. And new movements against
consumerism, based on religion, environmentalism, antiglobalism or other
factors, remain an important part of world history even today. There is no
inevitable trend toward unqualified acceptance.
Consumerism arrives in
different societies in different ways and encounters different traditional
contexts through which its reception is shaped. Certainly the timing of
consumerism varies from place to place. Levels of prosperity and poverty vary,
which in turn diversely affect the path consumerism takes. Different rates of
urbanization are also important variables.
Consumerism involves
materialism and acquisitiveness, and it tends to redefine emotions such as envy
towards these qualities. However consumerism has also been involved in the
emergence of greater individuality.
This may or may not be a good thing, but is not simply being greedy. In
many societies, within and without the West, consumerism has often seemed quite
liberating from traditional social constraints, which has been one of its key
attractions for youth, women, and the less well off. And, more vaguely, it
seems to provide a way for people to feel connected to wider global meanings,
to transcend the parochial and become part of a larger, if trendy, movement.
Today, consumerism is firmly
associated with supermarkets, and in this connection consumerism became visible
in Halesworth in the form of the Rainbow superstore, which opened in 1984. This was a branch of the National Co-operative
Society that developed from Took’s grocery store in Bridge St (Fig
5.16). The concensus of local people is
that the Coop arrived in Halesworth, via the Beccles Branch, in the mid 1930s.
Nationally the Cooperative Movement itself came from the banding together of
groups of people for mutual assistance in trade, manufacture, the supply of
credit, housing, or other services. The original principles of the Movement
were laid down in 1844 by the Rochdale Pioneers, under the influence of Robert
Owen, and by Charles Fourier in France. It was in the 1960s that Co-op stores
began to be transformed into the first generation of supermarkets.
The Halesworth Co-op
transferred from its relatively small site at the top of the Bridge St, now
occupied by the library, to a new building with a car park and petrol station
occupying the former livestock market at the edge of town. The comparison of retail outlets in the town
between 1979 and 2005 indicates that this particular supermarket development
has equilibrated with lively and diverse street shopping. However, the damage created by the placing of supermarkets in and around
market towns was officially recognised over a decade ago. Supermarkets
are doing well. Tesco recently
announced half-yearly-profits for 2005 amounting to some £800 million pounds.
For those who read the profits statement closely, a significant fact is that a
great share of these massively improved profits come from non-food sales like
clothing, electrical goods, CDs and videos and in some stores, medicines from
in-house pharmacies. The damage done by supermarkets to small food retailers
like butchers, grocers, fishmongers and the like is already monumental. But if
supermarkets continue to push their way into more non-food operations, the
present generation of retailers of clothes, shoes and white goods will be the
last. The issues were supposedly thrashed out in the late 1980s and early
1990s, when the seemingly unmitigated might of supermarket chains was
challenged by John Gummer, during Margaret Thatcher's regime. In 1993 the
Conservative Government responded by introducing Planning Policy Guidance Note
13 on Transport (PPG13), which required the consideration of locally accessible
shops in planning decisions. A response of several supermarket chains has
been to concentrate on smaller branches in town centres on the unproven, and
unlikely assumption that supermarket shoppers will, after filling their
shopping trolleys, then go on to patronise local retailers. In-town
stores now form a growth core of the supermarkets. They have plenty of
experience from around the country in negotiating their way through planning
permission, with PR campaigns in the local press, planning experts and
expensive lawyers. The PPG's did much to curb the excesses of out-of-town
retail development, but it appears that more measures are now needed to
reconsider insensitive development in old town centres. Pressure from
smaller retailers in 2006 provoked yet another national inquiry into unfair
practices. This, like all previous
investigations, is bound to fail unless people, en masse, turn away from the
variety of cheap goods daily available on supermarket shelves.
The needs of a vociferous minority are exemplified by
Halesworth, where the planning process for yet another supermarket has been
activated. For a town like Halesworth,
with its rich history of family retailing, two supermarkets sited within a few
hundred yards of each other could bring the 'trolley wars' to the heart of a
relatively small town and sever it from its past. It is ironic that this
would take place at a time when the town council has just regained control of
the town's ancient market rights from the district council. Supermarkets rely on their firepower,
nuisance value, and the fact that the council would be wary to issue an
enforcement order, in case it lost an appeal and costs were awarded against
them. On paper, there are grounds for local authorities to refuse
permission for a new supermarket, but they may be reluctant to do so. After
all, the resources at the disposal of the big supermarkets are many times
greater than those of the local council. There has also been some sharp
practice. In Stockport, Manchester, a Tesco was built much bigger than
originally planned. Tesco then applied to the council for retrospective
planning permission for the extra floor space, which it insisted was only for
storage. But over two hundred local traders signed a petition urging the
council to serve an enforcement notice, meaning the store will go back to its
original size. The extra space was the equivalent of 19 independent shops!
There are many examples of East Anglian towns, which illustrate the harm done
by local supermarkets. Main streets become places where no one walks.
If the developers of a second supermarket have their way, at best the
likelihood is that Halesworth will become a town of charity shops, instead of
the great variety of local family concerns, which have given local people an
excellent friendly service, and provided a social focus for many years.
However, lest we forget the historical context of retailing, the
following quotations from Glyde’s Suffolk in the Nineteenth Century,
proves the past we glorify was not pleasurable for most who patronised the family
shops.
“Man aged 42 earnt 9s. a week, wife 9d.,
boy of twelve 2s., boy of eleven 1s.; ditto eight 1s., gal of six nothing, same
by a boy of four, total 13s. 9d.”
And this is how the earnings passed into
the pockets of retailers:
“Bread 9s., potatoes 1s., rent 1s. 2d., tea
2d., sugar 3 ½d., soap 3d., blue ½d., thread, etc., 2d., candles 3d., salt ½d
., coal and wood 9d., butter 4 ½d., cheese 3d.”
'…. any landscape is likely to contain all manner of ideological
representations so that a description of its appearance must also logically be
"thickened" into an interpretation of its meaning'
(Baker, 1992).
The word
"family" did not even enter the English language until the fifteenth
century, and then it was used to denote a household with servants. Today,
family is most often used to refer to a particular set of people related by
blood or marriage. But just who counts as family varies widely and may not be
limited by ties of marriage, biology, or adoption. Other definitions emphasize
sentiments of love and activities of care giving, especially across
generations. But families may be sites of violence and neglect, while
nurturing, including the care of children, also takes place in other contexts. Finally,
the word "family" evokes images of households, of people living
together and pooling resources. But those who call one another family do not
always live in the same household or share material goods. And members of some
households do not pool resources.
Whether focusing on kinship, sentiments, or households, most scholars
agree that throughout history, family arrangements have always been diverse and
changing. The plural word, "families," suggests this variety, whereas
the widely used, monolithic terminology, "the family," incorrectly
implies that there is one natural form—a fixed, bounded unit of father, mother,
and children. This moralizing ideology persists, but there is ample evidence
that families are social, not biological groupings and that their composition,
size, boundaries, sentiments, and material activities vary by culture and
change along with economic and social conditions.
The first time we
can come to grips with Halesworth’s families is in the17th century through the
parish registers. The lists of surnames
and occupations have already provided an overview of the town’s growing
economy. This analysis can be taken to
the family level by studying the fate of individuals sharing the most
frequently occurring surnames. At this
time these were individuals sharing the names Aldred, Crisp and Nursey.
Between 1653 and
1723 a total of 48 Aldreds are listed in the burial register. Seven married Aldreds enter the registers in
the 1650s. Thomas a butcher, Simon
a tailor, John a knacker and Thomas and Phillip, both
blacksmiths, all died between 1657 and 1674.
During this same interval the burial registers tell of the deaths
of John Aldred, an infant (1656), Elizabeth (1657), Mary
1674) and Ann (1674), daughters of Thomas Aldred, probably the
butcher (1657), and Phillip Aldred, a singleman (1657). In this period also are recorded the deaths
of two Aldred wives; Joane (1659), wife of John Aldred, a
tapster, and Alice wife of a Richard Aldred (1674: no occupation
listed).
In the next
decade the burial register records the deaths of the children of another Aldred
family headed by John, a mason.
The deceased children were Mary (1680) and Robert
(1683). We also learn of the family of
a Henry Aldred through the death of his daughter Hannah
(1687). Henry is probably the
sawyer, who buried his wife named Hannah in 1692. In 1888, Robert Aldred, wheelwright,
loses his wife, Elizabeth (1688), his daughter, also named Elizabeth,
and a son, Thomas. In the same year John the mason buries another
daughter, Sarah (1688). This
interval, 1688-93, coincides with a five-fold rise in the deaths of the
Halesworth Aldreds, all of whom were children or wives. It brings to the fore
another John Aldred, currier, with the death of his son William
(1689). Another William, son of
a John Aldred described as a bricklayer, is also buried in 1689. This John’s wife is named Mary
and in 1691 the couple bury another son John. It appears that mason and bricklayer can be synonymous, particularly
as John and Mary lose yet another son Peter in 1693, when John
is described once again as a mason. Therefore we can say that this particular John
is probably the ‘mason’ who lost his daughter Mary and son Robert
in 1680 and 1683. John and Mary
Aldred buried yet another son John in 1693, when the father’s
designation changes back to ‘bricklayer’.
In 1694 a Robert
Keble Aldred, described as a wheelwright, buries his daughter Elizabeth. This family loses five children over the
next seven years; Robert Keble (1698); George (1699); Barnabas
(1703); George (1704); and Joyce (1711). Subsequently, we learn of the deaths of two
children of plain Robert Aldred with no trade designation; John
(1717); Robert (1719). His wife Lydia
died in 1724.
At this time it seems we have a second generation of
Aldreds, with the appearance of Samuel a mason and Thomas, wife
probably Ann. Thomas was a
wheelwright, possibly continuing in his father’s trade.
Unfortunately, their baptismal records cannot amplify the
population dynamics of the Aldreds. The
register is not decipherable until 1699.
However, it does reveal that eight children of Aldreds were christened
between 1699-1723. Five of these baptisms were to wheelwrights; four of them
taking place in 1703. This register
also records another Aldred occupation of shoemaker (1703).
Between 1653 and 1723 there are 32 deaths of Nurseys listed
in the burial register. Of these, two
thirds are infants/children. The occupations of their fathers are described as,
cooper (William), innkeeper (Henry and George), butcher (William
and Henry) and saddler (George).
Another family of Nurseys is indicated by the death of Elizabeth,
wife of John in 1680, but this entry has no trade designation for her
husband. Of the 17 Nursey children who
were buried between 1684 and 1721, nine of them had a father named George,
usually designated as an innkeeper, and five were the children of William
Nursey, butcher, and his wife Ann.
Regarding baptisms, between 1699 and 1703 the register lists
15 Nursey christenings, of which 7 fathers were described as innkeeper (one of
these was also a butcher). There was
one saddler and the rest were butchers.
Between 1653 and
1723 there are 34 deaths of Crisps listed in the burial register. Of these about half are children. The
occupations of the Crisps are more diverse than for the Nurseys; 7 different
jobs compared with only 4 for Nurseys.
These jobs are, tailor (Simon), thatcher (Thomas, George
and Henry), tapster/innkeeper (John), glover, (Thomas),
labourer (Robert and Henry) cryer (Robert, town cryer?),
and blacksmith (John). It is
notable that Thomas Crisp, a thatcher who died in 1695, was age 96.
There were five baptisms of Crisps between 1699 and 1702 of which five are
described as children of a labourer.
The pattern of
deaths for all three families over this period is presented in Fig 6.1, where
the burials are grouped in 5-year intervals. There is great year on year
variability, which is reflected in the five-year summed intervals. On the whole, the peaks and troughs of
mortality were not synchronised. For
example, the highest death rate of Aldreds occurred from 1689 to 93, whereas
the maximum for Nursey burials was from 1699 to 1703. The only period when all
families experienced a high death rate was between 1653-58. When the population at large is considered a
pattern of mortality emerged which seemed to affect the whole town (Fig 6.2).
Fig 6.1 Burials of Aldreds, Nurseys and Crisps ( 5-year
intervals: 1653-1723)
Between
1653-1726 there were five peaks in the burial curve when the death rate rose
above 40 per year. This happened in
1657-58, 1666, 1674, 1680-81, 1688 and 1720.
The maxima between 1657 to 1688 occurred at roughly eight-year
intervals. The time interval between
the peak in 1688 and that in 1720 was a multiple of eight. This pattern is indicative of a disease
process that certainly affected children who made up the bulk of entries in the
burial register.
Fig 6.2 Year by year burials 1653-1726
The differences
in mortality between families that happened between these times of population
stress are indicative of the differential effects of environmental, family
structure and disease resistance. But
things were set to improve, and we are on firmer ground regarding national
statistics in the 18th century.
The death rate fell in two great waves: the first was from 1730 to 1760,
and the second from 1780 to 1810, and, while this fall was applicable to all
age groups, it was greatest for children.
In the later eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth, child
mortality rates declined. The middle and upper classes could avail themselves
more easily than the working classes of improved housing, sanitation and
medical care; the survival rate among their children up to 15 years of age was
83 per cent in 1871. In the population
at large, while it was much improved on the rough estimate of 50 per cent a
century earlier, it was still only 63 per cent. It seems likely that the social
class differential had widened in the course of the nineteenth century. For
instance, in 1830 79 per cent of the children of clergymen in the diocese of
Canterbury survived their first 15 years, in 1871 85 per cent did so. Protection and welfare of children came to
the forefront when the family was larger, and the proportion of young people in
the population greater, than ever before or since. The growing concern for the
welfare of children may be satisfactorily related to the falling mortality
rates at the end of the eighteenth century than to the falling birth rate at
the end of the nineteenth. Charles
Booth referred to the 'remarkable increase' in the number of children under 15
years of age to every 100 men aged 25 to 65, between 1851 and 1881: there were
179 in 1851, 181 in 1861, 185 in 1871 and 190 in 1881. Dependent (with no jobs)
children under the age of 15 years were increasing more rapidly than
population: by 127 per cent compared with 11-9 per cent between 1851 and 1861,
by 15-8 per cent compared with 13-1 per cent between 1861 and 1871, and by no
less than 18-7 per cent compared with 14-5 per cent between 1871 and 1881. In
the latter decade, of course, the welfare provisions themselves were causing a
greater number to be without an occupation. The proportion of children (both
dependent and occupied) under 15 years in the total population increased
steadily: 35-4 per cent in 1851, 35-7 per cent in 1861, 36-1 per cent in 1871
and 36-6 per cent in 1881. By 1881 the young were never so abundant and never
so protected. The declining birth rate came after extensive measures for child
welfare, and not before - when the cost of welfare, particularly to the
middle-class family, proved to be extremely onerous.
In Suffolk at
the end of the 18th century it was the dominance of family ties that
made for both order and continuity. In the countryside, land belonged to
families rather than to individuals and was held 'in trust' from generation to
generation. Decisions relating to its
ownership were usually made in terms of family 'interest', with complex legal
instruments of family control. In the towns, business organization also was
often associated with family partnerships—there was no limited liability and no
national capital market—and commercial initiative frequently depended on loans
from brothers, cousins or the nearest Independent minister. The road to
individual advancement usually led not through the workshop as in the nineteenth
century, or through the school as in the twentieth, but past the altar. For a man to marry his master's daughter, or
better still his widow, was a recognized avenue to success. Halesworth’s legal
and medical professions were buttressed by marriages between families in both
categories. Even the unsuccessful at a
humbler level were dependent on family both for livelihood and security, and
most often on heredity for occupation. Kinship ties were conceived of as an
intricate network of responsibilities within extended families that had lived
together, circling a relatively small tract of countryside generation after
generation. This network upheld,
trades, professions, 'domestic industry' and small-scale farming, while in the
political arena, family 'connection' counted for more than party.
Money gravitated
to those that already possessed it and was gathered through the associated
family connections that enabled children to progress through the ranks of
people of similar background. For
example, Robert Gostlin White, born to a Freeman surgeon of Yarmouth in 1767,
became a Freeman by birth and so gained access to customary privileges and
social connections of the town’s freemen. He was taken on as a clerk in the
Halesworth office of Peter Jermyn, an attorney, from whence he rapidly advanced
in status and wealth by collecting posts of legal secretary to a string of
Suffolk’s new civic and commercial transport enterprises (Table 6.1).
Table 6.1 Curriculum vitae of Robert Gostlin White
Year |
Post |
1792 |
Clerk to Blyth Navigation Commissioners |
1793 |
Temporary Deputy to Rectory Manor |
1799 |
Clerk to Yoxford to Aldeburgh Turnpike Trust |
1801 |
Clerk to Guardians of Poor for Blything Hundred |
1805 |
Clerk to Commissioners of Southwold Haven |
1808 |
Solicitor for Maltsters Committee |
1810 |
Clerk to Minsmere Drainage Board |
1814 |
Clerk to Ipswich to Yarmouth Turnpike |
In 1802 he was
able to purchase Halesworth’s Mansion House, one of its few ‘capital
messuages’. He died in 1829, leaving a
large fortune accumulated during forty years as a solicitor to an average
market town.
Society,
however, was something more than a vast cluster of families, some born to
property, others to poverty. It had its ranks and orders and its
necessary degrees of subordination and authority. They were rarely called in
question. Good order was deemed the foundation of all good things, of
'politeness' as well as ‘peace’. Social
relationships, when they were talked about, were conceived in
moral as well as in social terms. It was the ‘Great Architect of the Universe’
who had 'distributed men into different ranks, and at the same time united them
into one society, in such sort as men are united'. By Divine decree, rather
than by human contrivance, the poor, the greater part of society, were placed
under 'the superintendence and patronage of the Rich'. In turn, the rich were
charged by 'natural Providence, as much as by revealed appointment, with the
care of the Poor'. Adam
Smith, the economist, was specific in his definition. 'Society', he wrote, 'may subsist among different men, as among
different merchants, from a sense of its utility without any mutual love or
affection, if only they refrain from doing injury to each other.' The pursuit
of the general interest of all was encouraged, not hampered, by the division
between rich and poor. ‘A prosperous merchant, in augmenting his own private
fortune, will enjoy the agreeable reflection that he is likewise increasing the
riches and power of his country and giving bread to thousands of his
industrious countrymen.'
There were
various ways of classifying and sub-dividing the different ranks and orders,
which together made up the community. Many of them were complicated,
for the English social system emphasized minute social distinctions and nuances
of status rather than broad composite groupings. This was expressed as a
massive social pyramid. At the peak of
it were the 'great'. To belong to the
ranks of the great it was still necessary to be a great proprietor. Those great
proprietors who were entitled to use armorial bearings, the nearest approach to
a nobility in England, were not separated from other non-titled proprietors by
any thick walls of caste: they were not a noblesse, as in France. A
small group of them, however, were renowned nationally for the extent of their
ownership and commitments, and the pull of their 'influence'. Frequent
intermarriage, it has been said, gave them the semblance more of tribes than of
families. Many of the landed estates were kingdoms in miniature and their town
houses were as magnificent as their rural mansions. During the course of the
eighteenth century they had extended and consolidated their position. Below
them came substantial proprietors, often with great local influence and
preoccupations, and the gentry, a characteristic but imprecise English social
group, whose ownership of land provided them with their main title to power
and prestige. The gentry maintained estates in a style appropriate to their
social position, and were at the same time proud of their independence and
conscious of their corporate existence as the backbone of the local 'landed
interest'.
In addition
there were independent ‘yeoman’ families, owning their own farmstead and a
hundred or so acres of land, although in many parts of the country they had
been a declining group for generations. The yeomen, unlike the great
proprietors and many of the gentry, farmed their own land. For the most part,
the land held by substantial landowners was farmed by tenants, some of them
substantial men themselves.
It was a
distinctive feature of this eighteenth century English society that it gave an
honoured place, not only to the landowner but also to lawyers and merchants,
and it permitted wealth to increase in both town and country. Lawyers were in a particularly strong
position because they not only dealt with increasing demand for their services
in property sales and bankruptcies¸ but also for the legal control of the
numerous bodies that were spawned to govern turnpike trusts, drainage boards
and harbour works. In the world of
trade and commerce itself there were natural gradations and degrees of
authority. A group of substantial merchant magnates, princes of wealth, drawing
their riches from all parts of the world, was easily distinguishable from the
'middling sort' of folk, local factors and agents, engaged in domestic trade,
men who 'though highly useful in their stations, are by no means entitled to
the honours of higher rank'. They continued to improve their fortunes, and some
of them their prestige as the century went by. Their life project was to
accumulate the few hundred pounds surplus that would permit them to describe
themselves as ‘gentleman’.
Below the
merchant princes and the 'middle sort' came the artisans, 'who labour hard but
feel no want', skilled men with subtle degrees of 'superiority' and
'inferiority'. These were 'the country
people', a loose term, including many folk who had always been poor, many who
were socially displaced in the course of the century, and many whose standard
of living fluctuated sharply in 'good' and 'lean' years; 'the Poor, that fare
hard', particularly when they were out of work; and 'the Miserable, that really
pinch and suffer want'.
It is important
not to consider all these groups below the 'middling sort' as one homogeneous
mass because the term 'lower orders' consisted of 'the most skilled and the most prudent workmen with the most
ignorant and imprudent labourers and paupers'. Properly speaking, it was the
last two groups described above who made up Adam Smith's 'common people', the
base of an economic social pyramid which few contemporaries believed could or
should be converted into a cube. Rich and poor were always 'with us', and no
government, however enlightened, could tamper effectively with inequality by
supplying to the poor 'those necessaries which it had pleased the Divine
Providence for a while to withhold from them'.
As a background to the unequal growth of Halesworth’s wealth we should
remember that England in the early 1800s was in distress. Outwardly, the country was a model of
political and social stability but in terms of the inner workings of the masses
it was rife with unemployment, hunger, anger and radicalism. There was rick burning in the countryside
and machine wrecking in the new industrial towns. In Laxfield and Cratfield a
violent outburst against threshing machines occurred in March 1822, which was
rapidly brought under control by ‘the firm and conciliatory measures adopted by
the inhabitants…’ Elsewhere, the
Suffolk and Norfolk yeomanry was called out.
Napoleon’s war was grinding on and times at home were hard, although the
only signs that Halesworth was a part of the national scene are its fragmentary
lists of paupers. The construction of
Peter Jermyn’s town house in its urban park and Hooker’s white brick mansion
with its exotic garden hot house, were measures of the gap between minority
fantasy and mass reality. The local
masses remain inarticulate but their attitude is represented by Henry Howard of
Mendham, the only rioter who had his views recorded:
‘ a hardened old fellow, who behaved with great insolence
to the magistrate and prosecutor, declaring that he had done nothing but what
was proper and justifiable, and that the general sense of the country was in
favour of putting a final stop to machinery of every kind.’
The supporting
scaffold of the social pyramid was deference to those at a higher level, which
grew as the century developed. No better example of the local workings of the
late Victorian national pyramid was an event that occurred at Halesworth on
23rd of September, 1898. On that day
there was a gathering of
townsfolk at the
railway station to celebrate the ‘homecoming’ of the Earl of Stradbroke after
his honeymoon. This event was reported in the Halesworth Almanack for 1899 as
follows.
Undoubtly the
event of the year in the vicinity of Halesworth has been the marriage of the
Rt. Hon. The Earl of Stradbroke to Miss Keith Fraser, which took place at St.
Paul's,Knightsbridge on Saturday the 23rd of July, 1898.
There was a very
large and fashionable company present, including Her Royal Highness the
Princess of Wales, the Princess Victoria of Wales,the Princess Christian,and
the Princess Marie of Greece. The home-coming of the Earl and his bride was an occasion which will
long be remembered by all who took part in the hearty welcome which was
accorded to the newly married pair.
Arriving at Halesworth Station on
Thursday afternoon, September 23rd, an influential deputation representing the Town met his Lordship. The
Rector as their spokesman, voiced the
feeling of the inhabitants in a congratulatory speech, to which the noble Earl
happily responded. A large number of
members of the Henham Hunt, mounted,
escorted his Lordship home, and on arrival at the Hall a guard of honour of the
Southwold Artillery awaited him.
The decorations
at Halesworth station and in the town were on a very elaborate scale, and
triumphal arches were erected at frequent intervals along the road, and in the
park. The festivities which followed lasted for nearly a week and included the
Henham Cottage Garden Show, dinners to the tenantry, labourers on the estates
and the school children of Henham, Wangford and Uggeshall, concluding with a
large garden party to which the elite of the neighbourhood were invited. A very
large number of costly and handsome presents were received by the Bride and
Bridegroom, included amongst which were a Clock from the town of Halesworth, a
silver salver from the tenantry and a pair of candelabra from the Blything
Guardians and District Councillors. The entire proceedings were an eloquent
testimony to the respect and esteem in
which his Lordship is held, all classes uniting in wishing him and his
bride " Long life and happiness."
Almost every
sentence defines a long-established social framework, which had a just over a
decade to run its course before it began to dissolve in the social
reconstruction that occurred in response to the cross-class human slaughter of
the first World War. For at least two
millennia, each man had his station and each station its peculiar
responsibilities. The celebration and expensive gifting by those at the top of
the Halesworth pyramid are even more remarkable, when it is considered that the
earl had never had a direct connection with the town as a landowner. Before the railway, in his comings and
goings to the metropolis from his Henham estate, his coach and horses would
have by-passed Halesworth on the main Yarmouth to London road.
At beginning of the century the top-folk of Haleworth were
listed in two trade directories for the 1830s (Tables 6.2)
Table 6.2 Local notables listed in directories for
Halesworth: 1830 & 1839 (nobility, gentry and clergy)
1830 |
|
1839 (Pigot’s
Suffolk) |
|
Name |
Residence |
Name |
Residence |
Atthill, Rev Lombe, |
Halesworth |
Atthill Rev. Lombe |
Bridge st Halesworth |
Baas Robert Esq, |
Chediston Hall |
Badeley Mrs. Elizabeth |
Market pl, Halesworth |
Badeley, Rev Joseph |
Halesworth |
Badeley Rev.Joseph |
Rectory Halesworth |
Baldry, Miss Charlotte, |
Halesworth |
Baker Mrs. Lydia |
Mill hill Halesworth |
Bence, Col Henry Bence, |
Thorington Hall |
Bence Colonel |
Thorington hall |
Burch, Rev Rous, |
Sibton |
Cole Rev. William Graham |
Walpole |
Collett Rev Anthony |
Heveningham |
Cookley Rev.William Bond |
Cookley |
Crabtree John, gent |
Halesworth |
Crutwell Rev. |
Spexall |
Crutwell, Rev Richard gent |
Spexhall |
Dennant Rev. John |
Pound st Halesworth |
Dennant, Rev John |
Halesworth |
Huntingfield the Right Hon. Lord |
Heaveningham Hall |
Dresser, Bridget |
Halesworth |
Lemon George, esq. |
Brampton |
Huntingfield, Lord |
Heveningham Hall |
Lemon Rev.-, Thomas |
Brampton |
Mayhew Rev Jas. Wm. |
Halesworth |
Mason J Rev. |
Bramfield |
Reeve, Mrs Frances |
Halesworth |
Mayhew Rev. Jas. Wm. |
top of Pound st Halesworth |
Revans Miss Elizabeth |
Halesworth |
Nunn Rev.Thomas, |
Mill st Halesworth |
Revans Mrs Mary |
Halesworth |
Owen Rev. Henry |
Heveningham |
Robinson Mrs Margaret |
Halesworth |
Parkyns George, esq. |
Chediston hall |
Sayer Robert esq |
Sibton |
Reeve Richard, esq. |
Mill st Halesworth |
Smith Mrs Margaret |
Halesworth |
Reeve Robt. Richd.esq. |
Holton hall |
Stradbroke Hon Earl of |
Henham Hall |
Robinson Mrs. Mary |
Bridge st Halesworth |
Thompson the Misses |
Halesworth |
Ross Rev., |
Holton road Halesworth |
Tuthill Miss Hannah |
Halesworth |
Thompson Misses L & S |
Holton Road Halesworth |
|
|
Turner Rev. Samuel Blois |
Pound St. Halesworth |
|
|
Tuthill Miss |
Holton road Halesworth |
|
|
Worship Rev. William R. |
Holton Halesworth |
These twenty or
so people were probably self-selected for entry to ensure their names would be
in the same editorial category as the nobility. This distinguished them from the bulk of the town’s traders. However, they were not all residents of the
town, particularly the two local nobles; a peer, the Earl of Stradbroke, and a
baronet Lord Huntingfield. Both
families had risen to the social apex relatively recently. The Rous clan, a longstanding local family
of landowners, had been elevated to the peerage in 1830. A baronet is the holder of a species
of knighthood known as a baronetcy.
The title was introduced by James I of England in 1611 to raise funds. It is an
hereditary honour, but it does not amount to a peerage. The baronetcy of
Huntingfield in the Irish peerage was given to Joshua Vanneck of Heveningham
Hall in 1796. Joshua was the
grandson of Cornelius Vanneck, a Dutch merchant who had emigrated to London in
1718, and settled in Putney. The family received the baronetcy of
Putney in 1751, and consequent upon their move to Suffolk it was merged with
the title of Huntingfield in 1791.
At this time, a
first glance at the Blything countryside would have revealed the presence not
of farms but of 'estates', large and small, 'family seats' each with its hall
or its manor house, its garden, its parkland, its 'acres'. Such estates were
symbols of prestige rather than productive units in the modern sense of the
word. The pride of the Vannecks was a neoclassical mansion within a park
landscaped by Capability Brown, which was a ‘must be visited’ on the itinerary
of travellers to Suffolk. Projecting a
substantial finger of land into North West Halesworth was the thousand-acre
estate of the Parkyns of Chediston, with its prominent game coverts. Agriculture was a way of life and a
recreation as well as a means of livelihood, for landed proprietors and
villagers alike. To recapture that way of living we must go back not only to
the social round of the country houses but to country revels, ‘Plough Monday’,
‘Harvest Home’, and village cricket.
We must
understand also the strains and conflicts within the village community, the
increasingly sharp social divisions, the enormous power of the local
squire-J.P. Top-down
responsibilities were, of course, not always met, for every charitable action
there were many callous and brutal ones, but the concept of social order itself
often blossomed out in works of corporate as well as private philanthropy. The
eighteenth century was rightly proud of its 'improvement' in manners, and its
ripening sense of social duty. For the care of the sick, the aged, prisoners,
foundlings and poor children, new institutions were created during the course
of the century, particularly after 1750.
Table 6.3
Magistrates for Blything Division (Halesworth and Saxmundham; Kelly’s
Suffolk Directory 1879)
Sir John Ralph Blois bart
Sir William Rose K.C.B
Thomas Rant esq
Col. W. B. Long
Col. H. C. Bagot Chester
Col. Theilusson
Charles Hugh
Berners esq
Frederick Barne esq
Henry Alexander
Starkie Bence esq
John William Brooke esq
Thomas Lomax esq
John Leman Ewen esq
H. M. Doughty esq
W. Parry Crook esq
The Rev. C. W. Roberts
Rev.William Charles Edgell
Clerk, Willett Ram esq.
The dominance of
landowners over townsfolk is till evident towards the end of the 19th
century. It is highlighted in the list
of magistrates for the Blything Division in Kelly’s Suffolk Directory for 1879
(Table 6.3). These people, most of whom
were landed proprietors, were responsible for law and order in both Halesworth
and Saxmundham, and it may be said that it was the social heritage of a rural
magistracy that dominated the behavioural norms of the towns.
Some of their activities and judgements may be found in the
local newspapers of the day, such as the following typical accounts of
proceedings of Halesworth Petty Sessions in 1871.
Halesworth Petty Sessions
Wednesday, February 15th 1871
Before H.A.S.Bence, Esq., (chairman), Rev.
Henry Owen,
and T. Rant and A. Purvis, Esqrs.
1 Pitch and Toss.
Robert and James Hurren, of Chediston, labourers, were
charged with having unlawfully played pitch and toss, in the parish above
named, on Sunday the 5th of February.
Both defendants pleaded guilty.
Inspector Taylor said a large concourse of lads were in the
habit of assembling near the church at Chediston on Sundays to the great
annoyance of females and others. They
made remarks as the females were getting over styles which were of a very
disgusting character. He had occasion
to caution them several times - the defendants he believed were among the
number. By means of a glass he saw the defendants playing pitch and toss, and
he ascertained who they were, and took out the present proceedings against
them.
Mr. Smyth, the churchwarden, said the nuisance had now
become most serious. He had some months ago placed up a written notice, which
for a time had a good effect. But the young men had recommenced the practice,
and he was therefore determined to put a stop to it. He believed the elder
defendant was the ringleader. It was
customary as soon as the service commenced for many of those lads to rush up
the gallery stairs, making as much noise as they could so that the clergyman
was frequently obliged to stop.
Mr. Rant (Chediston Hall) said the nuisance had become
unbearable.
Mr. Fisher gave the defendants good characters as
labourers, but could not justify their conduct on this occasion.
The father of the young men said he could not take their
parts, but he thought it a great pity that things had been allowed to go on so
long inside the church; they then no doubt thought they could do as they liked
outside. The clergyman should have pulled them up before.
The Bench said the statement of the father was no
justification, and it only shewed that the defendants now they were caught
ought to be severely punished as a warning to others. It was not to be borne
that people going to church or chapel should be insulted by a lot of ignorant
idle fellows.
Sentenced each to 14 days imprisonment in the Ipswich House
of Correction
2 Stealing Hay
Frederick Robinson, of Holton, was charged with having on
the 11th day of February last, at Westhall, feloniously stolen a quantity of hay,
value 6d. the property of the Rev. H. A. Goodwin.
The prosecutor said the prisoner had been working at his
with another man for many weeks. The prisoner was really employed by his
brother. On the 11th February he was at work at prosecutor’s as
usual. From information received prosecutor went to a shed near his premises.
The shed was a public shed belonging to the parish. Went about half-past 3
o’clock in the afternoon, and found prisoner’s pony there. There was very
little hay on the floor under the pony’s feet. The hay was good for nothing
then. Prisoner’s cart was in the shed. There was an empty sack and some straw
at the bottom of the cart. There was another cart in the shed belonging to
another man. That cart was tipped up at the back and had in it a quantity of
hay (produced) dry and good. In consequence of this discovery prosecutor
proceeded to Holton. He leaves work
usually about 5 o’clock. Met prisoner’s brother walking along the road, and
about 200 yards behind him prisoner was walking by the side of his pony and
cart.
Witness made a remark about the hill being slippery. Saw a
sack in the cart. Witness put his hand upon it, and asked what it contained.
Prisoner said it was some hay he had brought for his pony, and that the pony
would not eat it. Witness opened the sack and took a piece out, claiming it as
his hay. Asked him if he would give him the piece taken out of the sack.
Prisoner assented. Witness then told prisoner he could take the remainder of
the hay home if he pleased. Or at his peril, or words to that effect. Prisoner
said he could carry it back told him he could do as he pleased about that. He
did return with it. Benjamin Burgess received the hay from the prisoner. Witnes
said to prisoner “ is this the reward of my many acts of kindness to you and
your family?” Prisoner said it was the first time he had done such a thing.
Witness then told Burgess to go with him to the shed where Aldred’s cart was,
and found that the hay he had previously seen in it was gone. He and Burgess then went to the stack to
compare the hay (now produced) with that of the bulk, and there could be no
doubt its being the same. On Monday prisoner came to work as usual. Prosecutor
expressed his surprise and then went off. Prisoner made no further remarks.
Aldred has neither pony nor donkey. The hay could not be seen in Aldred’s cart
unless the shafts were let down.
Henry Burgess said that as man to prosecutor, he had
custody of the hay found in Robinson’s cart. The hay belonged to the master.
Compared it with the stack and had no doubt that the hay belonged to his
master. Prisoner said some hay he took from the stack, and some he brought with
him. He said it was the first time, and that he took the hay away because he
did not like to have it spoiled.
Prisoner pleaded guilty.
Prosecutor asked that the punishment should be mitigated as
much as possible.
Sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour, in
the Ipswich House of Correction.
The landed
proprietors were of varying resources, background and lineage, but all were
insistent with respect to the need to display their good fortune. Lesser folk
often prided themselves on the splendour of their homes and the
beauty of their gardens, often newly planned. The site of the house was usually
chosen on aesthetic grounds, 'to command the prospect' and to mingle delights
of landscape and mimic the refinements of aristocratic taste. Much investment
during the eighteenth and nineteenth-century went not into canals or factories,
but into 'display' of this kind, lesser landed proprietors vying with their
more affluent neighbours and building Georgian houses amid well-wooded
parkland. The term 'improvement' itself was employed on occasion to cover such
expenditure. These norms of domestic living continued into the smaller
establishments of richer townsfolk in the next century. Such was the investment
of lawyer Jermyn, in his vast garden, which extended down to the river behind
his town house, that was later occupied by John Crabtree, another rich lawyer. Thus, the upper end of Halesworth’s Pound St
and its continuation as Walpole Rd, as well as the outer reaches of the town in
Mill St and Holton Rd, gained a sprinkling of detached brick built mansions and
their garden trees. In Table 5.1, we
see that the Rev. Mayhew made it clear that his establishment was at the ‘top’
of Pound St., probably to make it clear that he did not have artisans and
paupers, who dominated the older rows and cottages at the bottom end, as
neighbours. We should remember that
the conspicuous consumption of proprietors of all degrees were often dependent
upon mortgages. This contrasted sharply
with the frugality of manufacturers. 'An Estate's a pond', Defoe had written,
'but trade's a spring.'
6.3 1851- A turning point
If a Roman of the Empire could be transported forward in time to
the beginning of the 18th century, he would have found himself in a
society, which he could, without too great difficulty, have learned to
comprehend. He would soon have learned his way among the sedan chairs, the
patched-up beauties and the flaring torches of London streets at night. This image of cultural continuity that
characterised the thinking classes of the preindustrial world was broken
between 1780 and 1850. Ancient
classical texts and values, which had given continuity to an essential rural
culture of Britain through invasions and dynastic cycles, were no longer valid
for survival in the contemporary world.
In the course of three generations, the Industrial Revolution had become
a dramatic watershed in Halesworth's history. By 1850, the past for the average
inhabitant of the town was not merely past - it was dead, and we read about
Halesworth's new world in its trade directories and advertising copy of its
local newspaper.
Whilst the social hierarchy crumbled
rapidly after 1918, Defoe’s ‘spring of trade’ had begun to flow copiously in
Halesworth about a century earlier. In
the first edition of the Halesworth Times, published on Tuesday, July 17th
1855, there appeared the following article.
It would puzzle we think, the ‘oldest inhabitant’ to name a
period in the history of our busy little town when the spirit of improvement
and progress was so abundantly manifest as at the present time. The very handsome façade, now in process of
completion at the Bank of Messrs Gurney is not only a credit to the architects
employed, but is quite an ornament to the place.
We may also mention by way of commendation the new shop
fronts that several of our enterprising tradesmen have erected in various parts
of the town. Now that we have railway
communication with the metropolis twice a day we trust this spirit of progress
will be more fully developed; and it would afford us the greatest pleasure to
feel our town was a model of neatness and good taste.
The day we hope is not distant when the present pebble
pavement, so eminently conducive for finding out the pungent parts of ones
corns- will give place to the more metropolitan looking flagstone: a little
sacrifice on the part of owners and occupiers would speedily effect the much
desired object.
The splendid weather and benefits offered by the Railway
Company have been the means of inducing the pic-nic-partying and holiday-making
folk to don their best attire and avail themselves of the privilege- by means
of cheap excursion trains- of inhaling the delicious life-giving breezes of the
‘wide and open sea’. The Station on
Wednesdays and Fridays presents quite a gala-day appearance; young men and
maidens, elderly ladies and antique gentlemen ‘on pleasure bent’, complacently
seat themselves behind the iron steed and then
“On! On! Through weald and wood and hill,
All turned by agricultural skill
To valued uses”
The author then
goes on to complain about the cost of rail for the transport of goods and
people, and how traffic would increase if the Company would only reduce its
tariffs and fares.
Changes for the better could be seen
everywhere, and from many viewpoints the mid-19th century is a
turning point in Britain’s rise to greatness and the important social
developments that accompanied it. A
difference between the first and second halves of the century may be seen with
respect to population growth, mortality and fertility, and economic situation
of families. These four expressions of
sociality may be explored using Halesworth’s 1851 census and related
information.
The population explosion of the later
eighteenth century meant that by 1800, the population of Britain was growing at
over 15 per cent per decade. The mid century was a turning point and after
1850, the growth rate settled down at about 12 per cent per decade, and over
the whole nineteenth century, the population grew from eleven million to
thirty-seven million. This level of growth is low by comparison with some
underdeveloped countries today, but extremely rapid by any previous standard.
The rapid population growth had important economic implications.
There was a high level of demand
throughout the century for food. Until the mid-century, imports were limited
for various reasons, and most food was still provided from indigenous
resources, keeping food prices relatively high and therefore preventing major
improvements in living standards. From the mid-century on, and particularly
from the 1870s, new sources of food supply were found in the temperate lands of
the Americas and Australia. Just as the British population provided much of the
demand for these foodstuffs, British capital went in large quantities to open
up the lands, which supplied them. The demand for overseas investment was thus another
result of population increase. Throughout the century, another large proportion
of investment went into housing for the growing population, and the provision
of urban infrastructure, such as roads and sewers. Up to the mid-century, such
investment could do little more than keep pace with the population increase,
but from then on improvement did take place.
The fact that the natural rate of increase
was as high in rural areas as in the towns meant that rural labour continued to
be in surplus, with a deleterious effect on rural wage levels. As the
inhabitants of the countryside became increasingly aware of opportunities
elsewhere, migration increased. The population as a whole also became more
aware of opportunities abroad, and emigration increased to provide the third
pillar for the economic development of newly settled countries, together with
land (which they already had in abundance) and capital. The quantity of
emigration suggests that throughout the century there was no shortage of
labour, and so labour supply is not a problematical subject, although changes
in participation rates and the quality of the labour force present features of
interest.
Since mortality in nineteenth-century
Britain was still high, the continued population growth depended on high
fertility. So far as is known, fertility did not exhibit striking class
differences in the early part of the century, parents from all walks of life
had large families. By contrast, mortality was a function of class and
geography. It was correlated with who
you were and where you lived. In Manchester in 1842, the average age of death
was eighteen; in Bath it was thirty-one. Manchester was more working class, and
a larger proportion of the population was grossly overcrowded: both these
factors contributed to the high death rate. These averages for urban dwellers
masked differences between neighbourhoods.
Farm labourers, in spite of their miserable standard of living, had a
relatively low death rate.
Measurement of both fertility and
mortality becomes easier during this period as civil registration of births and
deaths began in 1837 for England and Wales, and 1855 for Scotland. In the
1820s, fertility had declined slightly from its peak levels, but then remained
more or less stable until 1850. By the
1870s fertility began a rapid and continuous fall. This decline was most marked
and most rapid in the middle class, i.e. the professions and clerical workers,
but it extended to the working class as well. As the decline
got under way, it led to the emergence of
striking class differences in fertility. By the Edwardian period, a
middle-class wife would be likely to have no more than two children. By
contrast, groups like miners and, farm labourers frequently had families of
five or more. In spite of these differences, it was the general fact of decline
that was most marked. The crude birth rate fell from around thirty-five births
per thousand population, at which it had stuck since the 1830s, to under
twenty-five by the eve of the First World War. Just as the Third World today
with its high fertility is full of children, so was Victorian Britain. By the
First World War this state of affairs was coming to an end.
Although by the
early nineteenth century, mortality was at a slightly lower rate than in the
late eighteenth century, there was very little further improvement until the
second half of the century. It is likely that the mortality experience of
individual groups in the population became rather better, but this was
cancelled out by the increasing proportion of people living at risk in the
unhealthy towns and cities. Evidence to support the suggestion that mortality
lessened for individual groups comes from a comparison between
mid-eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century London, which shows it falling from
around forty-eight per thousand to around twenty-five. Appalling though the
conditions and mortality rates of early nineteenth-century towns were, they
were almost certainly better than those of eighteenth-century towns. After 1850
favourable influences outweighed the unfavourable, and crude death rates in
Britain fell sharply, from around twenty-two per thousand to around fourteen
per thousand just before the First World War. By far the greatest fall occurred
in the mortality of children and young people and, from the 1890s, of infants.
To summarise, in
the course of the first fifty years of the 19th century fifty years
a great demographic transition had occurred, which is certainly reflected in
the demography of Halesworth. Up to the mid-century, population growth had been
close to the pre-industrial pattern, with very high fertility outweighing high
mortality. From then or a bit later, both fertility and mortality fell rapidly,
to arrive by 1914 at what we think of as the modern pattern of low levels for
both.
The major impact on mortality
probably came from improvement of the domestic environment and the rising
standard of living, which helped to reduce diseases like tuberculosis (TB). TB,
or consumption, affected the poor to a much greater extent. Its decline has
been particularly associated with increased resistance to disease, due to
improvements in diet and housing. The quality of food remained poor for the
working class throughout the nineteenth century however, and it seems likely
that the main effect of rising incomes was to lessen the impact of crises, such
as the unemployment or illness of the breadwinner, on the entire family. It was
not so much the normal diet that improved, as the diet at times of crises, thus
increasing resistance to TB and other diseases.
The decline in fertility is harder to
explain. It occurred mainly through limitation within marriage, and was not
merely a reversal of the previous change and a return to later marriage. The
mechanisms for change seem to have been either abstinence or the age-old
standby of coitus interruptus. There was an increase in the availability
of artificial methods of preventing conception, but they were not of major
importance. What are hard to establish are the motives for change.
Economic change must provide part of the
explanation. Children became increasingly costly to keep as
schooling spread and became compulsory in the 1870s. The educational standards
required before children could leave were progressively tightened up over the
next forty years, thus forcing up the leaving age. Evidence for this as a
motive is provided by the fact that parents were not postponing the first birth
of a child but, rather, limiting births after families reached a certain size.
In the days before compulsory education, working-class parents could be sure
that after they had had three or four children, the eldest would be going out
to work so they could afford to have more. This was decreasingly the case.
Complementary to this were the falling
prices of consumer goods relative to the price of having a child. When such
goods were effectively out of reach of most families, there was no point in
foregoing the pleasures of having another child. As consumer goods became more
affordable, the incentive to forgo childbearing became stronger. In the 1930s
there was a saying, 'A baby or a baby Austin' which, translated back to the
1880s, when pianos rather than cars were the height of desirability, would have
gone, 'A baby or a baby grand'; or, for the working class, an upright in the
front parlour.
J O Banks has put forward a different
argument. To him, it was the growing expense of certain necessary items of
middle-class expenditure, such as education and domestic servants that led to
the fall in fertility for that group in society. In order to maintain their
life style, they reduced the number of their children, which brings the
non-economic element of status into the argument. To this particular
non-economic element could be added others, such as the growing secularisation
of many groups in society. How far groups were integrated into society and
influenced by its dominant values is also important. Two of the most socially
isolated groups in society, miners and farm labourers, experienced the smallest
fall in fertility.
Equally if not more important is the
question of whether women or men, or both together, were the influence behind
the transition. For instance, the growth of education in the period, of
particular benefit to women because they started from lower levels of literacy,
may have made them more aware of the arguments for family limitation, which
were being increasingly propagated in the late nineteenth century. These then
became a matter for family discussion. Much work still remains to be done on
this fascinating subject; the arguments put forward are highly tentative
because of the difficulty of establishing exactly what values were at work and
how they were transmitted. However, these national
trends are behind an analysis of the population dynamics of Halesworth.
The 1851 census
for Halesworth was carried out systematically using divisions of the town,
which more or less follow its historical linear pattern of development. Historically, the town began to coalesce
around St Mary’s church where the market place is situated. The town spread west along the road to
Harleston (Chediston St), north down to the town bridge (The Thoroughfare) and
south along the highway to Walpole (Pound St & Walpole Rd.). A comparison between four of these areas is
given in Table 6.4 with respect to some indicators of sociality. The
north-south track of the enumerator along The Thoroughfare, through the Market
Place and along Pound St to the parish boundary at the end of Walpole Rd,
provides a useful transect for a preliminary assessment of differences between
these various neighbourhoods.
Table 6.4 Variation in sociality between the Halesworth
census divisions
|
Households |
Persons |
Born Hswth |
Empty houses |
Pers/housd |
%native |
Servants |
Serv/house |
Thoroughfare |
65 |
356 |
154 |
3 |
5.48 |
43.3 |
46 |
0.7 |
Market Place |
22 |
96 |
52 |
2 |
4.57 |
54.1 |
9 |
0.4 |
Pound St |
97 |
392 |
187 |
9 |
4.04 |
47.7 |
20 |
0.2 |
Walpole Rd |
13 |
64 |
22 |
3 |
4.92 |
34.3 |
9 |
0.7 |
Chediston St |
179 |
798 |
341 |
16 |
4.45 |
42.7 |
28 |
0.16 |
It can be seen
that the Market Place, the oldest part of town, accounted for a very small
proportion of the population. However,
it was distinctive with regards the proportion of native-born Halesworthians
living there. More than half of the
residents of the Market Place were born in Halesworth compared with only a
third for the
population of Walpole Rd. Pound St
stands out from the other three areas with regards persons per household and
servants per household; both figures were lower than elsewhere.
The figures for
‘servants per household’ require clarification. It was obvious from the status designations that there were two
basic categories of servants, those who were offspring of the family, and those
who were hired by affluent families to carry out the household chores. When this filter is applied to the census,
very clear differences are revealed between the different neighbourhoods, which
may be regarded as indicators of differences in the distribution of family
wealth (Table 6.5 ). The indicator of
wealth is the ratio of servants who were members of the family, to employed
servants. This ratio was highest in
Walpole Rd, eight employed servants and no members of the family. In The Thoroughfare it was 5:1, in the
Market place, 2.3:1 and in Pound St 1:2.5.
Based on this index Chediston St was by far the least affluent
neighbourhood, with a ratio of 0.32:1.
This is borne out by the percentage of paupers (Table 6.6).
Table 6.5
Comparison of frequency of ‘family servants’ and ‘employed servants’
|
The Thoroughfare |
Market Place |
Pound St |
Walpole Rd |
Chediston St |
Family |
5 |
3 |
12 |
0 |
25 |
Employed |
50 |
7 |
15 |
8 |
8 |
During the first
decade, the survival rate of boys in Pound St and Chediston St was about 30%
less than that of girls (Table 6.6). In The Thoroughfare and Walpole Rd, there
was no such sex difference in the mortality of young children. In the Market Place the survival rate of
girls seems to have been lower than that of boys. Market Place families were exceptional with regards the ratio of
widowers to widows, percentage children, ratio of boys to girls and the
percentage of old people (Table 5.6).
The lowest percentage of children was found in The Thoroughfare, which
also had the lowest percentage of old people.
Table 6.6 Variation in sociality between the Halesworth census
divisions
A
|
Households |
Persons |
Paupers |
Widows |
Widowers |
Children* |
Boys |
Girls |
Old people** |
Thoroughfare |
65 |
356 |
0 |
6 |
5 |
62 |
31 |
31 |
62 |
Market
Place |
22 |
96 |
3 |
3 |
1 |
25 |
16 |
9 |
28 |
Pound
St |
97 |
392 |
13 |
20 |
14 |
78 |
34 |
44 |
74 |
Walpole
Rd |
13 |
64 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
16 |
8 |
8 |
16 |
Chediston
St*** |
179 |
798 |
32 |
16 |
19 |
181 |
79 |
102 |
142 |
* age 10 and under: ** age 50 and over: Including ‘courts’
B
|
%Paupers |
Wdrs/wds |
%Children |
Boys/girls |
%Old people |
Thoroughfare |
0 |
0.83 |
17.5 |
1.0 |
17.4 |
Market Place |
3.13 |
0.33 |
26.0 |
1.70 |
29.1 |
Pound St |
3.32 |
0.70 |
19.9 |
0.77 |
18.9 |
Walpole Rd |
0 |
0.50 |
25.0 |
1.0 |
25.0 |
Chediston St |
4.01 |
1.18 |
22.7 |
0.77 |
18.5 |
Differences were
also found in the above vital statistics for the northern neighbourhoods of the
town (Table 6.7). For example, Bungay Road was notable for its low percentage
of widowers, whereas Quay St had the lowest percentage of widows. Mill Hill had
the highest percentage of both widows and older females. All neighbourhoods had more girls than boys,
the biggest differential being in Bungay Road. Spexhall stands out in its relatively low proportion of
natives.
Table 6.7 Variation in sociality in North Halesworth
(percent population)
A Percent population
|
Bridge St |
Quay St |
Bungay Rd |
Mill Hill |
Spexhall |
Boys |
11.4 |
11.0 |
10.9 |
10.5 |
13.5 |
Girls |
11.8 |
14.1 |
13.9 |
12.0 |
14.3 |
Widowers |
1.11 |
1.05 |
0.38 |
2.07 |
2.26 |
Widows |
2.95 |
0.52 |
3.38 |
4.19 |
3.76 |
Paupers |
2.21 |
0.52 |
1.13 |
2.62 |
1.50 |
Old males |
6.64 |
8.90 |
5.26 |
8.90 |
6.77 |
Old Females |
9.23 |
8.90 |
5.64 |
12.0 |
6.02 |
Natives |
48.3 |
47.6 |
37.2 |
44.0 |
24.1 |
Bridge St = Bridge St only (population 271)
Quay St = Quay St; Castle; Hill Farm (population 191)
Bungay Rd = Bungay Rd; Wissett St (population 266)
Mill Hill = Mill Hill; Fenn Farm; Rectory; Mill Hill St;
New Court (population 191)
Spexhall = Spexhall; Spexhall Mill Post; Spexhall Broadway
Rd; Spexhall Rd (population 133)
B
|
Bridge St |
Quay St |
Bungay Rd |
Mill Hill |
Spexhall |
Households |
52 |
36 |
50 |
48 |
29 |
Persons/household |
5.21 |
5.31 |
5.32 |
4.00 |
4.51 |
Servants/household |
0.56 |
0.61 |
0.22 |
0.35 |
0.17 |
Family servants* |
2 |
1 |
3 |
3 |
0 |
Empty houses |
0 |
0 |
5 |
4 |
2 |
*Family members living with family
Comparing the
ages of widowers and widows, it is clear that young women, under the age of 60
had a higher mortality than men (Figs 6.3 and 6.4: Table 5.8). Between the ages of 60 and 70 men had a
higher mortality than their spouses.
Despite these differences in mortality, more or less the same number of
individuals survived as widowers and widows into their seventh decade. Thereafter the mortality of men exceeded
that of their spouses.
All these
differences are indicative of people responding biologically and socially to
the different environments that existed in Halesworth. However, the information is too diverse to
apply standard statistical methods to gauge their absolute significance. Nevertheless, the numbers of people are
large and at the very least the neighbourhood differences provide strong
indicators for the town being composed of a jigsaw of social microcosms.
Fig 6.3 Age
distributions of widowers (blue) and widows (red) in the 1851 census for The
Thoroughfare, Market Place, Pound St and Walpole Rd
Out of 31 widows living in south Halesworth, 9 were
described as ‘washerwoman/ charwoman’, and 6 were paupers. In contrast 5 widows were in receipt of an
annuity (Table 6.8). Altogether, 12
widows (average age 61) were carrying on some kind of business. This may be contrasted with the 21 widowers
(average age 60) of whom 16 said they had an occupation.
Fig 6.4 Distribution of widowers (blue) and widows (red) in
relation to age
Pound Street and
The Thoroughfare had similar numbers of residents, and it is therefore possible
to use these two neighbourhoods to make an assessment of the dynamics of the
population in terms of the origins of individuals (Table 6.9). In this respect, both neighbourhoods
represented about a hundred natal communities, with an average intake of
between 3 to 4 individuals per community.
About a third of these communities had contributed two or more
individuals, the remainder being represented by one individual who was born
there. In other words, most of the
townsfolk in 1851 were colonists. The
Thoroughfare had a slightly smaller proportion of colonists than Pound Street.
Table 6.8 Ages and status of widowers and widows
A Thoroughfare
Widowers (5) |
Widows (6) |
33
(commercial traveller) |
42 ( washerwoman) |
55
(chemist & druggist) |
55 (land proprietor) |
56
(hatter & outfitter) |
66 (annuitant) |
71 (
innkeeper) |
67 |
73 (prop. of
houses & smallholder) |
71 |
|
42 ( washerwoman) |
B Market Place
Widowers (1) |
Widows (3) |
61 (brewer, malster spirit merchant
& farmer) |
75 (pork butcher) |
|
77
(retired innkeeper) |
|
77 (pauper) |
C Pound Street
Widowers (14) |
Widows (20) |
38 (baker) |
28 (dressmaker) |
46 (plumber& glazier) |
32 (charwoman) |
46 (ropemaker) |
35 (milliner) |
52 (brazier & tinman) |
43 (annuitant) |
55 (bricklayer emp.2 men) |
47 (charwoman) |
56 (pauper formerly ag.lab) |
49 (laundress) |
57 (glover) |
54 (annuitant) |
63 (retired innkeeper) |
56 (charwoman) |
66 (formerly ag.lab) |
65 |
70 (ag. Lab) |
65 (pauper; formerly charwoman) |
73 (former ag. Lab) |
66 (carrier) |
75 (sheriffs bailiff) |
66 (pauper; formerly
seamstress) |
75 ( retired
tailor) |
68 (pauper) |
78 (jobbing butcher) |
70 |
|
72 (formerly washerwoman) |
|
76 |
|
76 (pauper) |
|
78 (farmer) |
|
88 (pauper) |
|
94 (formerly washerwoman) |
D Walpole Road
Widowers (1) |
Widows (2) |
44 (curate of
Linstead) |
67 money at interest |
|
81 (money invested annuitant) |
Table 6.9 Births in Halesworth (natives) in relation to
births in other places (colonists).
|
Pound St |
The Thoroughfare |
Total places of birth |
100 |
116 |
Total people |
392 |
356 |
Colonists |
292 |
203 |
Persons per place |
3.92 |
3.07 |
Places with two or more births (% total
places) |
33 (33%) |
41 (35.3%) |
Places with one birth (% total places) |
67 (67.0%) |
75 (64.7%) |
Births in Halesworth |
186 |
153 |
Colonists/natives |
1.57 |
1.75 |
Table 6.10 Places ranked in the top six with respect to
numbers of births
Number of births |
Places of birth for
inhabitants of Pound St |
Places of birth for
inhabitants of The Thoroughfare |
12 |
Holton; Wenaston |
|
10 |
The Saints; Walpole |
|
9 |
Cookley |
Chediston |
8 |
Chediston; Yarmouth |
Walpole;Yarmouth |
7 |
Theberton |
The Saints |
6 |
Beccles |
Wissett |
A total of 40
places of birth were ranked with respect to contributing two and three births
to the census. Of these, only two
places, Chediston and Walpole, were common to Pound St and The Thoroughfare
(Table 6.10).
Regarding the
origins of heads of household, Walpole Rd had the highest percentage of
colonists (about 85%). The lowest percentage of colonists, between 50 and 60
percent were found in Market Place and Chediston St (Table 6.11).
Table 6.11 Percentages of heads of household who were born
in Halesworth (natives) and elsewhere (colonists)
|
Thoroughfare |
Market Place |
Pound St |
Chediston St |
Walpole Rd |
Natives |
25.9 |
42.9 |
34.5 |
40.4 |
15.4 |
Colonists |
74.1 |
57.1 |
65.5 |
59.6 |
84.6 |
A generation
after the 1832 Reform Act the middle class could bring some influence to bear
on education. It had representatives in
Parliament who had begun to make it understood that the British economy needed
an efficient educational system to meet contemporary conditions, and more
particularly the growth of foreign competition. In 1851 the educational system was simple in form. Elementary schools that existed were mainly
financed by voluntary societies of a religious nature; secondary education was
provided by private proprietary schools or by grammar and other schools on
ancient foundations that were often inefficient. There was no central
organization controlling this rudimentary system, and criticism was growing by
the middle of the century, partly because of various structural strains but
also because the facts about the schools were now more fully known and this in
itself influenced values. As part of the 1851 Census, Horace Mann had compiled
a report, 'Education in England and Wales', which revealed the low proportion
of children then attending any school.
Halesworth had
no ancient foundations to support its education. In 1851 there were 839 children up to 15 years of age in the
town. Almost two thirds of these were
classified as scholars, workers or paupers (Table 6.12). Most of those who were classified by the
enumerator were scholars and sometimes they were assigned to a particular type
of establishment, such as Dame School, National School, Infant School, Chapel
and Sunday School. About three times
more boys were described as scholars than were said to be working. A larger proportion of girls were classified
as scholars (a 4:1 ratio of scholars to child-workers).
Table 6.12 Children up to 15 years old in Halesworth 1851
census
Place |
Male scholars |
Female scholars |
Male workers |
Female workers |
Males not determined |
Females not determined |
Male paupers |
Female paupers |
Thoro’fare |
27 |
29 |
9 |
8 |
12 |
10 |
0 |
0 |
Market Place |
8 |
4 |
1 |
2 |
10 |
6 |
0 |
0 |
Pound Street |
31 |
37 |
13 |
10 |
17 |
22 |
0 |
0 |
Walpole Road |
3 |
5 |
2 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
0 |
0 |
Chediston Street |
53 |
89 |
19 |
13 |
47 |
44 |
3 |
6 |
Bridge Street |
24 |
17 |
6 |
6 |
14 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
Quay Street |
16 |
13 |
2 |
5 |
11 |
25 |
0 |
0 |
Bungay & Wissett Roads |
13 |
12 |
7 |
4 |
23 |
27 |
0 |
0 |
Mill Hill, New Court & Fenn Farm |
15 |
14 |
5 |
5 |
9 |
14 |
0 |
0 |
Totals |
190 |
220 |
64 |
55 |
147 |
154 |
3 |
6 |
There were only 9
child paupers (i.e. the family was in receipt of poor relief) in the town. About 36% of children up to 15 years old
were not classified. Of these about one
third were less than five years of age.
Assuming the over fives who were not classified as scholars or
working-children were neither at school or at work, it may be concluded that
about half of Halesworth’s children were not being educated. What alarmed investigators of the
national scene around this time, and provided powerful arguments in the
campaign for compulsory education, were not only the apparent decline in the
proportion of children attending school, but a decline also in the proportion
at work. The consequence was an increasing proportion of young people in the
very margin of society, outcast and neglected. 'And what are these neglected
children doing if they are not at school?' asked James McCosh, after reviewing
the evidence relating to Manchester, in a paper to the National Association for
the Promotion of Social Science in 1867. 'They are idling in the streets and
wynds; tumbling about in the gutters; selling matches; running errands; working
in tobacco shops, cared for by no man . . .
There were some
marked differences in attitudes towards education even within Halesworth’s
small compass. For example, in Bridge
St the proportion of scholars to other children was 1.75:1. In contrast, Bungay and Wissett Roads had
the lowest proportion of scholars (ratio 0.37:1). These differences probably reflect the value placed upon
education by parents, whose attitudes were in turn affected by wealth and
occupation, but we know next to nothing about any local debate. Generally speaking the background to public
education in the 1850s was arguments about values and priorities. On the one hand, education was
about lighting a fire in a child's mind, filling it with desire and delight and
curiosity, and encouraging these human qualities. On the other hand, the aim was for children to be ‘fit for
purpose’, that is to say, educating in order to prepare a workforce that would
meet the economic challenges of the new age of industrialism. These two views
are in fact still dominating the 21st century debate about the role
of education. Previously, the
economic and technical arguments for education had been less powerful than the
arguments for scriptural literacy, with the majority believing that the best
condition of the working classes was one of ‘unenterprising contentment,
uninstructed reverence, and unrepining submission'.
A third element
of controversy was concerned with the poor. Should they be educated? During the course of the eighteenth century
various attempts had been made, particularly in the charity schools, to teach
them reading and writing, or sometimes reading by itself. Such efforts were
concerned not with refashioning the way of life of the poor, but with keeping them
in their due place in society by instruction in the scriptures and the
catechism. Despite this limitation of purpose, the charity schools were often
attacked on the grounds that 'education' threatened 'the great law of
subordination': in the last decades of the century, similar arguments were used
against the Sunday schools. We now see that the
establishment of Sunday Schools prepared public opinion for a general advance
in elementary education. Defenders
of the Sunday School Union, founded in 1785, urged that education produced
'orderly and decent comportment' and deterred children from crime, but their critics
complained that they 'refined and innervated, and consequently disqualified the
recipients for the duties of a humble station'. A few years later when the good
eighteenth-century philanthropist, Hannah More, opened a school for poor
children in the Somerset Mendips, she was accused by local farmers of inciting
village children to mutiny and disaffection.
'The poor’, declared the wife of the leading local farmer, 'were
intended to be servants and slaves: it was pre-ordained that they should be
ignorant.' Her husband added the appropriate conclusion. 'If a school were to
be set up, it would be all over with property, and if property is not to rule
what is to become of us? It may well be
that the attitudes of residents in Wissett and Bungay roads was conditioned by
the fact that they were on Halesworth’s agrarian fringe, whilst the residents
of the relative new commercial population of Bridge Street were generating
urban ideas associated with wealth and non-conformism. It was no accident that
the Congregational Church was eventually sited in Bridge Street.
In attitudes
towards education, Halesworth was not so different from other places. A similar situation was revealed by the
Manchester Statistical Society
and by the Education Aid Society.
Their enquiries in 1865 showed that among the children of Manchester age
between 3 to 12 in their sample, over a half were neither at school nor at
work. Compulsory education was a necessity by the 1870s, not because children
were at work, but because increasingly they were not.
In the 1851
census Halesworth appeared to be well supplied with teachers, with 26 people
engaged in its education system. Many of
these were not born in the town. Three
were described as being associated with the town’s National School. The oldest of these three was George Barham
lodging in Wissett Rd, age 19. The
others were William Sands age 16, lodging at 66 Quay St, who was a pupil
teacher, and Maria Sparrow age 14.
Another pupil teacher was Emma Hayward, age 15 of Mill Hill. There were two schoolmasters, John Mansall,
age 30, who lived with his family in Mill Hill St, and Samuel Smith of
Yarmouth, age 60, who was described as a ‘schoolmaster with no pupils’. There were four schoolmistresses, Elizabeth
Lane of Halesworth, unmarried age 40, in the Market Place, Caroline Wilson a
widow age 54 from Cookley, also living in the Market Place, Susan Fellmingham,
age 69 unmarried, of St Cross, and Sarah Wade, unmarried age 35 of
Halesworth. It is interesting that the
Misses Fellmingham and Wade were living at 166 and 167 Pound St, in a cluster
of teachers, which included the above mentioned Samuel Smith at number 164. One
or more of the above mistresses may have taught at the National School. There was also an infant school, represented
in the census by the teacher Jane Phillips, age 18 who lodged at 49
Thoroughfare. We also know from the
descriptions of scholars that there was a ‘Dame School’, and Infant School and
a National School. These descriptions were only attached to scholars in
Chediston Street, which probably reflects a whim of a particular
enumerator.
Only 13 children
were classed as being educated at home.
Education in the home was also evident from the presence of four
governesses. Two of these were living
in the households of employees of Gurneys Bank. Mary Lendall was teaching the children of Andrew Johnston,
manager of the bank, and a magistrate, at 31 Thoroughfare. Delia Woods, the daughter of his clerk,
William Woods of 71 Quay St, was also described as a governess, and her sister
Jane was ‘a teacher at home’ instructing the youngest daughter, Ellen. There
were two other governesses, Maria Becksmith, who described herself as a
‘British School Governess’, age 24, lodging in Mill Hill St, unmarried from
London and Susanna Dryden at 38, Bridge St.
Table 6.13 Private schools described in the 1851
census
66 |
Market Place |
George Wilson |
Head |
m |
57 |
|
master shoemaker |
Lambeth Surrey |
|
Market Place |
Caroline |
w |
|
|
54 |
schoolmistress |
Cookley |
|
Market Place |
Ellen |
d |
u |
|
19 |
teacher |
Walpole |
|
Market Place |
Mary Ann |
d |
|
|
16 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Market Place |
Walter |
gs |
|
6 |
|
scholar |
Ipswich |
|
Market Place |
Louisa Hodson |
|
|
|
6 |
pupil |
London |
|
Market Place |
Alice Hodson |
|
|
|
4 |
pupil |
Lambeth Surrey |
|
Market Place |
Luke Dickson |
visitor |
|
63 |
|
retired draper |
Denby Yorks |
|
Market Place |
Arthur Lewis |
visitor |
|
4 |
|
|
Northallerton Yorks |
|
Market Place |
Alfred Watson |
visitor |
|
4 |
|
|
Northallerton Yorks |
72 |
Quay St |
Sarah Ellworthy |
head |
widow |
|
49 |
schoolmistress |
Darsham |
|
Quay St |
Harriet Ellworthy |
d |
u |
|
27 |
teacher |
Westleton |
|
Quay St |
Maryanne Ellworthy |
d |
u |
|
26 |
teacher |
Westleton |
|
Quay St |
Lucy Ellworthy |
d |
|
|
17 |
teacher |
Westleton |
|
Quay St |
Samuel Ellworthy |
s |
|
16 |
|
drapers assistant |
Kelsale |
|
Quay St |
Emma Cowles |
|
u |
|
22 |
house servant |
Halesworth |
|
Quay St |
Elizabeth Farrier |
pupil |
|
|
15 |
|
Bedfordshire |
|
Quay St |
Sarah Smith |
pupil |
|
|
13 |
|
Linstead |
|
Quay St |
Julia Read |
pupil |
|
|
14 |
|
Laxfield |
|
Quay St |
Louisa Read |
pupil |
|
|
13 |
|
Laxfield |
|
Quay St |
Mary Mayhew |
pupil |
|
|
17 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Quay St |
Tryphena Mayhew |
pupil |
|
|
13 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Quay St |
Anna Mayhew |
pupil |
|
|
10 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Quay St |
Mary Ann Goddard |
pupil |
|
|
11 |
|
Badingham |
|
Quay St |
Lucy Palmer |
pupil |
|
|
9 |
|
Spexhall |
87+ |
Castle |
Joseph Harvey |
head |
m |
54 |
|
teacher of maths and classics |
Ufford |
|
Castle |
Harriet Harvey |
w |
|
|
43 |
teacher of French music and drawing |
Portsea Hants |
|
Castle |
Mary Harvey |
d |
|
|
11 |
scholar at home |
Halesworth |
|
Castle |
Frederick Harvey |
s |
|
9 |
|
scholar at home |
Halesworth |
|
Castle |
Clara Harvey |
d |
|
|
8 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Castle |
Julius Harvey |
s |
|
6 |
|
|
Halesworth |
|
Castle |
Rosa Harvey |
d |
|
|
4 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Castle |
Alexander Harvey |
s |
|
1 |
|
|
Halesworth |
|
Castle |
Emma Lenny |
|
u |
|
18 |
house servant |
Bramfield |
38 |
Bridge St |
Susannah Dryden |
head |
u |
|
29 |
governess |
Halesworth |
|
Bridge St |
Emma Driver |
pupil |
u |
|
18 |
|
Hadleigh |
|
Bridge St |
Sarah Wellam |
pupil |
|
|
12 |
|
Hadleigh |
|
Bridge St |
Anna Leman |
pupil |
|
|
6 |
|
Westhall |
|
Bridge St |
Sarah Self |
pupil |
|
|
16 |
servant |
Halesworth |
From the census
returns it is evident that there were four private schools. Caroline Wilson’s, was a strange
establishment in the premises of her husband, a master shoemaker, at 66 Market
Place, with two boarders age 6, from London. (Table 6.13) At 66 Quay St lived Sarah Ellworthy, a
widow, who was described as schoolmistress, with three unmarried daughters who
were all teachers. The household
contained nine of their boarders, who came from surrounding villages, except
one, who was born in Bedfordshire.
Another private school was situated at the home of the above governess
Susanna Dryden, with four girl pupils, ranging in age from 6 to 18 years old,
one of whom was a servant. Joseph
Harvey’s school was in Castle House, at the eastern end of Quay St. The Harvey
family is listed in the census but the school did not have any boarders. In The Halesworth Times of July 31,
1855, Joseph Harvey’s establishment was described as a classical, mathematical
and commercial academy. The
advertisement stated that the pupils received a sound liberal and practical
education calculated to fit them for an honourable course through life in
whatever position they may hereafter be placed. French and other modern languages were taught ‘with the correct
continental accent and pronunciation’. It added that Mr. Harvey attached great
importance to moral and religious culture. Castle House the advert states
‘stands in a very healthy and pleasant position; and the domestic arrangements
are on a most liberal scale’.
In the second
half of the 19th century, three Royal Commissions considered the
educational system of the country. In the reports of these commissions may be
found the definitions of the educational situation by the ruling class of the
time, for the education of its own children and those of the other social
classes. The working class had little direct influence on these definitions.
Considering the
alternative to education, there is no necessary correspondence between falling
mortality rates among young people and the growth of suitable employment
opportunities for them. There can be little doubt that by the 1870s
middle-class children, by surviving in greater numbers, constituted a growing
burden on their parents while they were growing up, and an increasing problem
to place in acceptable work when their education was completed. It is probable
that a social class differential in fertility existed much earlier in the
century. Glass has computed negative
correlation coefficients between fertility and status in twenty-eight London
boroughs, which were not notably smaller in 1851 than in 1911 or 1931; nevertheless,
it is from the seventies that the average size of the middle-class family began
its steep decline. The birth-control movement was a symptom of the
superabundance of the young in relation to family resources and to the needs of
the economy. 'It may be possible to bring ten children into the world, if you
only have to rear five, and, while one is "on the way", the last is
in the grave, not in the nursery. But if the doctor preserves seven or eight of
the ten, and other things remain equal, the burden may become intolerable.'1
But other things did not even remain equal: it was unfortunate for the young
that they were most abundant when the economy, whether at the level of
professional or of manual employment, offered diminishing opportunities for
youth and relative inexperience.
Charles Booth reflected in 1903:
“The great loss of the last twenty years is the weakening
of the family ties between parents and children. Children don't look after
their old people according to their means. The fault lies in the fact that the
tie is broken early. As soon as a boy earns l0s. a week he can obtain board and
lodging in some family other than his own, and he goes away because he has in
this great liberty”.
In the last
twenty years of the 19th century; there was a very large and quite
abnormal increase in the labour force aged 20-55 years. .
This 'bulge' had entered the labour market in the late sixties and the
seventies, when the birth rate was as high as in the last quarter of the 18th
century. Moreover, in the
second half of the nineteenth century the survival rates among older children
and adolescents improved much more rapidly than among children aged 0-4 years.
While the annual mortality per thousand declined by 11-3 per cent among boys
aged 0-4 years (from 71 to 63) between 1841-5 and 1891-1900, the decline among
boys aged 5-9 declined by 53-2 per cent (from 9-2 to 4-3), and among boys aged
10-14 by 53-0 per cent (from 5-1 to 2-4). Thus while adolescents were a better
'proposition', since they were more likely to live and so justify what was
spent on their upbringing and education, the wastage among them was small at
the very time that the economy had a diminishing need for their services.
This was the
prelude to the introduction of compulsory education between 1870 and 1880. Not only was there a 'bulge' in young
people, but also advances in technology were in any case displacing the young
worker. In some industries, too, extended factory legislation greatly
diminished his value in the eyes of employers: the administrative complications
raised by part-time schooling deterred mine-owners from employing boys under 12
after the Mines Act of 1860; the Factory Acts Extension Act of 1867. The Workshops Regulation Act of the same
year had similar consequences in a wide range of industries, including the
metal trades, glass and tobacco manufacture, letterpress printing and
bookbinding.
Technical
changes in many industries were in any case breaking the earlier dependence on
juvenile labour: steam power in the lace and pottery industries was being
substituted for children's energy and dexterity; the dramatic decline in the
proportion of young people engaged in agriculture in the second half of the
century has been similarly attributed in part to technical development. A new class connected with the application
of science to agriculture has sprung into being. Young people were no longer central to the economy; they were
moving ever more on to the periphery, into marginal and relatively trivial occupations:
street trading, fetching and carrying, and particularly indoor domestic
service.
The decline in
the proportion of young people (under the age of 15) had set in before the
compulsory education introduced by the Education Acts of 1870, 1876 and 1880.
In 1851 young people under 15 were 6-9 per cent of the occupied population; in
1861 workers of this age were 6-7 per cent of all occupied, in 1871 6-2 per
cent, in 1881 they were 4-5 per cent.
Perhaps the most
remarkable decline in the proportion of employed young people was in the
country's major industry, agriculture. This industry was experiencing
considerable difficulties at this time and its manpower was contracting; but
while the total number employed in agriculture declined by 24 per cent between
1851 and 1881, the number of young people under 15 declined by no less than 40
per cent. Under-15s in agriculture were 21 per cent of all young workers in
1851, and 13.7 per cent in 1881. An opposite trend is marked in the case of
indoor domestic service: under-15s in this employment were 11.6 per cent of all
young workers in 1851, and 19.7 per cent in 1881. In spite of
compulsory education, while the employed population increased by 38 per cent
between 1851 and 1881, young people employed in indoor domestic service
increased over the same period by 55 per cent.
But in spite of
the growing numbers of young people still employed in certain industries, while
the total number of employed people in England and Wales increased by 12-14 per
cent between 1861 and 1871, the number of under-15s employed increased by only
2-5 per cent. This is not because a greater proportion was attending school.
Since education
was first institutionalised to the present day, all too often schools drill
children to get good marks rather than awakening in them a wonder of the
world. The current
emphasis on league tables means that children go to school in order to get
qualifications so that the school doesn't fall down the league table, rather
they should be going to school for something interesting, for a first
acquaintance with a delight that will last them a lifetime. Imparting knowledge by drilling is an
anti-humane education, an education without curiosity and joy and delight and a
wonder of the world. It has been said
that the children of the 1851 Halesworth census were lucky enough to
grow up and go to church, at a time when the King James Bible, the 1662 Book of
Common Prayer, and Hymns Ancient and Modern were the three great texts. Week after week, words were put in
front of them, which they didn't have to understand. They had to say them
aloud, they had to speak, and this involved a joining-in. And if they were
curious about what they meant, they looked them up afterwards. But, oddly
enough, that wasn't the most important thing to do with words. The most
important thing was simply to say them. It gives a kind of confidence.
‘It allowed you to feel that you
could intone, or recite or sing words which sounded wonderful, and although you
didn’t understand them initially, that didn’t matter.. In this way words
enjoyment came first and the meaning was worked out afterwards’.
By the late
eighteenth century the first fully reasoned account of the British economic
past had been assembled. It described, and emphatically endorsed, a revolution
in human affairs. This had entailed the
transformation of a sluggish, predominantly agricultural economy, characterised
by indolence, widespread poverty and the domination of a predatory aristocracy,
into a free commercial society, which was based upon the satisfaction of
reciprocal wants through the mechanism of the market,. As Adam Smith put it, 'every man . . . lives
by exchanging or becomes in some measure a merchant'. This produced a state of things conducive to a highly developed
division of labour, to the rational employment of land, labour and capital, to
'improvement', 'opulence', 'independence' and ultimately the public good. That good included laws whereby the more
affluent were directed to give to the unemployed of their community.
This culture of
‘taking and giving’ provided the general course and meaning of economic and
social change, as the 18th century writers understood it. In
addition, it provided a timeline of gradual
transformation. Real beginnings were traced to the changes of the sixteenth
century, which consolidated and advanced in the late sixteenth and earlier
seventeenth centuries and then markedly accelerated after 1660. Historians
established the main themes of change as:
·
increased
consumption;
·
rising prices;
·
agrarian and
agricultural change;
·
urban growth;
·
the expansion of
manufactures and commerce;
·
government
economic policy;
·
the development of
financial institutions;
·
the interconnected
emergence of widespread wage-labour and of a commercial and agricultural middle
class.
They identified the principal mechanisms of change as:
·
a developing taste
for superfluities and the multiplication of 'wants';
·
the growth of
markets, both domestic and overseas;
·
enhancement of the
division of labour;
·
competition and
the rational employment of accumulated capital 'for the sake of profit'.
And finally they
isolated the basic motivation of change in the self-interested behaviour of
individuals animated, in Hume's words, by 'a spirit of avarice and industry',
or engaged, in Adam Smith's gentler phrase, in the 'universal, continual, and
uninterrupted effort to better their own condition'. As it happened, it was a
history for the most part conceived and written by Scotsmen. Yet it focused
attention primarily upon the growing wealth of England.
Running alongside this timeline of the
accumulation of wealth were surveys of the need for poor relief, which emanated
from a law of 1572. This law empowered
local magistrates to survey the poor in their area and impose compulsory
taxation for their relief. It produced
an important historical discontinuity. True,
Jesus spoke harshly of the rich and ordered them to perform acts of
self-sacrifice and philanthropy, so extreme that few rich Christians have ever
taken the command literally; but the recorded sayings of Jesus about riches and
poverty are ambiguous. It is not surprising, therefore, that the secular
circumstances of Christians have affected their responses to poverty, and that
the New Testament has provided texts for both the social revolutionary and his
enemies.
Funds set aside
for the benefit of the less fortunate inhabitants of Halesworth may be traced
to the 14th century. These
were invested in ‘The Town Estates’,
which consist of certain freehold, and copyhold property vested in and
administered by trustees, for the general benefit of the inhabitants of the
parish. Most of the land lay in Halesworth and Holton; part being purchased
from funds in possession of the townspeople. Some of the old conveyances are
still preserved, two of the earliest dating back to 1340 and 1344 in the reign
of Edward III.
From 1572 there was a gradual modification
of perceptions of the problem of poverty. This led to fuller recognition of the
problems of 'labouring persons not able to live off their labour', a
recognition reinforced by investigations of the industrial depressions of the
early seventeenth century. Moreover, these studies enhanced awareness of the
need for greater regularity in the provision of relief at the level of the
parish. In the wake of the economic crisis of the 1590s, the laws were
overhauled in a manner intended to clarify responsibilities and to simplify
procedures in the interests of their more effective implementation. The poor
laws of 1598 and 1601 fixed responsibility for the assessing and raising of
rates, the relief of the impotent, the apprenticing of poor children and the
setting to work of the able-bodied squarely upon the shoulders of parish churchwardens
and 'overseers of the poor'. Parish officers were also empowered to whip
vagrants and to return them to their places of origin. Henceforward the system
was to be emphatically the responsibility of the parish, with county justices
exercising a supervisory role, hearing appeals and when necessary ordering the
incarceration of 'incorrigible rogues' in 'houses of correction' (originally
envisaged in 1576, but required to be established in every county from 1610).
The next half-century saw the gradual
implementation of the parochial relief system. In 1600 poor rates were already
established in most towns, and thereafter they became increasingly common in
rural parishes, their adoption being hastened by the responses of both local
and central authorities to the emergency years of the 1620s to the late 1640s.
Not infrequently it involved a degree of foot-dragging by parishioners
reluctant to accept the burden of regular local taxation. Yet by 1640, after
the energetic monitoring of enforcement by Charles I's privy council in the
wake of the crisis of 1630-1, the poor rate was an accustomed fact of life in
many parishes. By the 1650s the system was operational in perhaps a third of
England's 10,000 parishes and well on the way to the near-universal
implementation, which was accomplished in the third quarter of the
century. Halesworth’s brick-built Alms
Houses by the Church, date from this time.
They originally contained 12
rooms, each room occupied by a widow and yielding no rent. The date, of the
original gift by Mr. William Gary, attorney, is unknown but the donor died on
July llth, 1686. This building probably
replaced an early one because there are references to "ye almyshouses" in the Halesworth Manorial Court Roll
dated 1478, in the reign of Ed. IV. and again in the Church Communion
attendance register for the year 1594.
Long before
then, however, the surviving account books of parish overseers reveal what
were to become the characteristic features of the system. Those deemed able to
contribute to the rate were listed and assessed. The impotent poor were
identified and paid weekly pensions. Orphan children were placed in households
and subsequently apprenticed. Occasional 'extraordinary' relief payments were
made to those of the able-bodied poor, suffering from temporary crises that
rendered them unable to sustain their households. In addition, parish officers
were frequently made responsible for the administration of private charitable
donations to the local poor - involving, for example, the regular distribution
of bread or the periodic provision of clothing. Matthew Walter, by will dated 2nd July 1589, gave an annuity of
20/- to the poor of Halesworth out of his estate at Holton, which was to be
distributed in bread to poor people on Sundays, at the parish church, after
morning service. In 1611, Robert Launce by will dated 13th Aug, gave £60
towards the purchase of a piece of land, ‘the profits thereof to be distributed
by feoffees of the town with the Churchwardens and overseers to the poor of
Halesworth where most need shall require’. Some made
determined efforts of their own to combat the impoverishing consequences of
scarcity. James and John Keble
were also benefactors at this time.
James by will dated 27th Jan.1650, left to trustees a pightle to the
intent that the trustees should with the rents yearly, at or before Christmas,
distribute bread to the poor of Halesworth.
John Keble by will dated 16th May 1652 left lands in Holton, half the
revenue to be used for the relief of widows, and the other half to bind out
poor apprentices. In May 1700 the sums
of £60 given by John Phillips, and £30 5s. given by Richard Phillips, were laid
out in the purchase of lands in Wenhaston, the money so arising to be expended
as follows:-
‘The churchwardens and
overseers to buy and divide 12 penny loaves every Sunday, and also 12 more
penny loaves the first Sunday of each month, with the advice of the minister
and chief inhabitants in the Church after morning prayer, amongst such of the
poor as should then be present, or have a reasonable excuse for absence, to
every one of them a penny loaf. The tomb of the Phillips in Halesworth
Churchyard is also to be kept in repair by the Churchwardens’.
Emigrants from
Halesworth remembered the needs of their birthplace. The following is a copy of a donation letter from Matthias
Manne:-
To my loving good friends, the minister, churchwardens, and
overseers of the poor of the towne of Hallisworthe in Suff., some six or eight
miles beyond fframlingham. S. Salutem a fonte: I have sent here by this bearer
twenty pounds of good and lawful money of England, to yourself, the
churchwardens, and overseers of the towne
of Hallisworthe, where I was
borne and baptized the 26th of Feb.,
A.D. 1577. My desire is that you would improve it to the best, as the custom
is, for orphauntes and ffatherless
children-the profit I would receive myself during my life, but the stock I
would have successively continued in the hands of the parson, churchwardens and
overseers of the above named towne of
Hallisworthe, by them to be
improved to the best lawful advantage, and the profits thereof to be
distributed in bread to the poore of the towne of Hallisworthe uppon each St.
Matthias's day unto the world's end.
The first distribution to be made on the first St. Matthias's
day, next after my departure out of this natural life, and so to
continue for ever. Thus I commit you
all to the most high God, whoe present us blameless at his appearing thro'
Jesus Christ.-Ipswich, this Two and Twentyth of November, Anno Dmi 1615. Your loving ffriend, MATTHIAS MANNE."
The first
references to charity schools come from the legacies of Thomas Neale, who in 1700 gave £60 for the education
of poor children, and a yearly rent charge of 10/-towards buying them books. In
1701 Richard Porter left a yearly rent charge of £17 6s. 8d. out of a farm, for
a schoolmaster and schoolmistress to teach 20 poor boys and 20 poor girls to
read, and the latter also to knit.
These charitable systems continued to operate into the 20th
century, as related by J.W. Newby who says:
“In my early days, occupants in the old Almshouses and
other "poor widows" received gifts of loaves of bread which were
handed out to them, or their representatives, at the Parish Church after
morning worship on Sundays. Bread also known as St. Thomas's bread was
distributed on St. Thomas's Day. The Town Crier with his bell would go out a
few days before announcing that those who wished for the gifts should make
application on a certain date at the Town Hall and subsequently those who were
to receive them would be warned to attend there on Dec. 21st, when
distributions were made according to the size of the family”…..In the 19?? “gifts were still made at various periods
from these Charities to those who made application, in the form of vouchers,
which they may spend for whatever they consider they need. Many used them to
buy coal”.
The poor-relief
system as a whole, then, was designed to meet both the potentially
destabilising levels of general impoverishment precipitated by short-term
economic crises, and the more permanent problem of poverty occasioned by
long-term economic and social change. That the system could be afforded at all
also demonstrates England's relative wealth: a tax base of 'substantial
inhabitants' existed to fund the system on a regular basis, which was augmented
by the occasional legacy.
'A man's eyes',
says Tregarva (one of Charles Kingsley's characters in his novel Yeast,
written in the 1890s), discussing poverty, 'can only see what they've learnt to
see.' For most of the nineteenth century, Englishmen looked at poverty and
found it morally tolerable, because their eyes were trained by evangelical
religion and a burgeoning political economy. A preacher could spend his life
surrounded by the squalor of a manufacturing town without feeling any twinge of
socially radical sentiment, when he believed that many poor people were
suffering for their own sins, and that the plight of the rest was the result of
spiritual ordinances, which it would be impious to question, and of economic
laws which it was foolish to resist.
Charity could alleviate the suffering caused by these laws, but in any
case the poor had only to wait until death for the end of all temporal
hardships and distinctions. Many men who believed these things were humane; but
pity alone would never provide them with an alternative social theory and
practice. Temporal misery was but a short prelude to eternal joy.
It was often said that responsibility for
this view was formally expressed in the parochial principle, for the vicar was
held to be charged with the care not only of his worshipping congregation, but
also of everybody in the parish. The Church, said one of George Eliot's
clergymen, 'ought to represent the feeling of the community, so that every
parish should be a family knit together by Christian brotherhood under a
spiritual father.' Most clergymen, of course, had to share their territory
with other aspirants to spiritual fatherhood; many resented the competition,
and some (especially in villages) let it divert them from the task of seeking
those people who worshipped nowhere. The fiction that no rival pastor existed
nevertheless had a high symbolic importance in the Church of England. The
parochial principle was dear to Churchmen, both because it gave the clergy a
special position in relation to other ministers, and because it represented the
Church as a living part of the whole community, having a mission at once
spiritual and social.
The ideal community of the above parochial
theory belonged to a rural, pre-industrial England. The urban English today
still dream of that countryside; and three generations ago, when millions were
alive who had known a time when most people lived outside large towns, memory
as well as imagination fed this nostalgia. Nowhere was it stronger than in the
Church, and nowhere indulged with better reason. For in a stable, hierarchical,
rural community, the parish church had an importance that it seldom gained in
towns. The Church Pastoral Aid Society, which described its task as 'the
maintenance of Curates and Lay-Agents in populous districts’, had as its
unspoken aim, the reproduction in an urban environment of the relationship
between church and society, which its members believed to have been characteristic
of an earlier and happier England.
We can turn to the minute books of St
Mary’s Church in Halesworth for a glimpse of the human structure of the system,
when on 15th April, 1836, it was
reported that the Unappropriated Estate was in debt, and it was decided to
reduce salaries of the parish officials. These were:
Organist (A.
Barber),salary reduced from £25 to £20,
Clerk (B. Buller) had
£2 cut from his £12,
Beadle, who was getting
£8/8/0, was dropped to £5/5/0, but he received some consolation that he was
"to be furnished with a new coat every fourth year as before."
Organ blower (R.
Goodwin), was allowed to receive his £3/10/0 as before, and only six shillings
were knocked off the six guinea salary
Sexton (J. Jarmy)
received ?; he was a blacksmith and ironmonger in Chediston Street on premises
now demolished.
With regard to the Christian unity of Halesworth’s giving
community, the Parish Church was renovated in 1858, and in the Halesworth Times
of December 7th of that year, it was stated that the total cost of the
renovation amounted to £1,000, of which £800 had been received in voluntary
subscriptions. An additional £74 was
given on the day of re-opening, so as little as £126 was needed to wipe off the
debt. It was also stated that although the Church could only seat 900 people,
over 1,000 were present at that Sunday evening service of celebration.
The eighteenth century is noteworthy for
the establishment of hospitals and dispensaries, as well as for the work of
these pioneers of public health. Hospitals of medieval times, many of which had
been swept away at the time of the Reformation, were houses of refuge for the
destitute as well as places of succour for the sick. In the seventeenth century
the view gained ground that hospitals should be both places for the cure of the
sick, and centres for the study of medicine. This was in keeping with the
spirit of "the new humanity" and the methods of experiment and
observation characteristic of the scientific movement. Holland led the way.
Clinical teaching was established at Leyden University about 1626 and the Dutch
system entered Britain through Scotland. In this connection, it was Leyden's
system of clinical teaching that inspired the founders of the famous Edinburgh
medical school. The movement for the
establishment of a medical faculty at Edinburgh University was initiated by the
Royal College of Physicians, which had been chartered in 1681. Edinburgh became
a pattern for other centres of medical teaching in and beyond Scotland.
As the
Industrial Revolution swept over the country, many general hospitals were
founded, and in addition special hospitals, such as the lying-in hospitals of
Glasgow and Edinburgh, the London Fever Hospital, the Royal Chest Hospital, and
the Royal Ear Hospital. At first these hospitals were free to all who needed
their services. Later, restrictions involved the charging of fees for
admission, and matrons, nurses and porters all collected their sixpence or
shilling for every service rendered. This system became a crying scandal, and
was not abolished until 1829, when the Royal Free Hospital was founded in
London. Thereafter other hospitals had to follow suit. They became free, as had
been the intention of their philanthropic founders.
The rapid and
uncontrolled growth of towns multiplied the dangers to health resulting from
overcrowding. It was the cholera
epidemic of 1830-2 that alerted townsfolk to the need for the clean up of
insanitary living conditions and better health provisions. One place after another reported the dread
disease, and everywhere the poorest and most overcrowded districts in towns and
cities were noticeably those most affected.
It was around this time that the Halesworth ‘pest house’ came into
being. This was a town farm situated at
the edge of the parish, at the top of Loam Pit Lane, which was organised as an isolation
hospital to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. As it happened it was a little used
community facility. The only record of
it being brought into action comes from the following extract from the
Halesworth Times, January 23rd 1877.
‘Small Pox! This dreaded disease made its appearance in the
town a week ago. Our medical sanitary
officer promptly availed himself of the long-disused pest house, so as to isolate
the case as much as possible and we sincerely hope his efforts may be crowned
with success by the disease spreading no further’.
This brings up
the question of how it came to pass that Patrick Stead left about half his
substantial personal fortune from the malt business to build a state of the art
hospital for the town. First and
probably foremost, his marriage was childless.
This brings up the question of his feelings about promoting the
indulgence and care of the sick. This
may well have emerged in his mind as a conjunction of the pioneering medical
developments in his Scottish homeland, together with his day to day experiences
of the medical needs of Halesworth, where he had lived for 30 of his 81 years. The idea also came at the time of a growing
national debate about how best to provide medical and public health services
for the growing proportion of vulnerable townsfolk. Most of this was committee talk, and one could imagine Stead, a
man of action with the necessary financial resources, wanting to do something
practical and substantial to make a difference to the people of his adopted
town. In this respect, like many of his business initiatives, this enterprise
was not to be boasted about. Finally,
Halesworth as an outstanding giving community could also have influenced
him. At the time he was disengaging
from the town, John Crabtree, a local solicitor, who eventually became one of
the trustees of the hospital committee, had erected the Memorial Homes in 1859 in remembrance of his
wife. They were to be occupied by four
poor widows, who each had two rooms, and received 5/- per week. This
outstanding benefactor to the Town is buried in Halesworth Cemetery. However, we shall never
really understand what motivated Patrick Stead, about 13 years after he had
left the town, to write his
will on the 19th of November, 1867, leaving a provisional bequest of one
thousand pounds in aid of establishing an Infirmary or Hospital in
Halesworth. In detail, he specified
that his initiative should be carried forward by a group of townsfolk
consisting of the Rector of Halesworth and any three parishioners of the town
elected by the parishioners at their annual Parish Meeting. The Will went on to state,
"And in regard to the whole residue and remainder of
my Means and Estate heritable as well as moveable, including any bequests or
provisions which shall be forfeited by any of my beneficiaries quarrelling
about the provisions in their favour or raising litigation thereanent, I direct
and appoint my said Trustees to pay the same to the Rector of Halesworth and
Parishioners to be appointed as aforesaid in aid of establishing a fund for
establishing or maintaining a Hospital in Halesworth."
In other words, there
was more to come. Patrick Stead died in
1872, and finally, after the death of his widow in 1875, the Halesworth
trustees of his hospital project received more than £25,000."
It is difficult to underestimate
the importance of Stead’s generous bequest because it happened at a time when medical services were
only just beginning to develop nationally through philanthropic
dispensaries. As already stated above,
these were places where free advice and medicine were provided, and for those
unable to attend the dispensary, arrangements were made for visitation at home.
These free dispensaries were in fact the forerunners of the modern clinics. The
first was opened in Red Lion Square, London, in 1769, "for the relief of
the Infant Poor." The well-known General Dispensary followed it in 1770.
Before the close of the century many more had been founded, and doctors with experience
of such institutions were enthusiastic about their influence for good. In this climate, Halesworth with its own
hospital opened in 1881, was well in advance of many of England’s far larger
urban centres.
Human memory in the face of physical change
is unreliable. Even something that
happened five years ago has lost its cultural context and requires research to
bring it to the fore. The latter point can be no better exemplified than
with the three-storey building tucked away in the narrows, where Chediston
Street meets the top of Thoroughfare at the Market Place. This exceptionally large and somewhat
overbearing Victorian building in grey brick, with classical motives, was, for
about a century occupied by Roe and Company’s Bon Marche department
store. Its origins go back even
further to the very beginnings of modern mass retailing.
At its peak Roe’s
occupied the adjacent property of the Mansion House, also a large although
relatively smaller structure, that when it was built around three centuries
ago, was the grandest residence in town.
John Prime probably erected this house; the family owned land in this
part of Halesworth in the 16th and 17th centuries and
some of the early Primes were classed as ‘masons’. As a private residence, it passed through the hands of a series
of town worthies; John Prime,
Peter Pullyn, Dr Norford, John Durban, John Woodcock, Robert Gostlin White and
Robert Baas; before being converted into an extension of Roe and Co. towards
the end of the 19th century.
The commercial history of this microcosm of Halesworth’s townscape,
encapsulates the enlargement and collapse of personal goals in the long historical
trajectory of Halesworth’s retail development.
The end of Roes came in the 1950s, since when the premises have been in
multiple occupancy because the town’s local economy could no longer support
such grandiose family enterprises.
The
socio-economic trail to Roe’s actually begins at the turn of the century with
the bankruptcy of John Woodcock, the second generation of an entrepreneurial
family, who was introduced in Chapter 3 as one of the prime movers in the birth
of Halesworth as a brewing and banking centre.
The Woodcocks came to Halesworth from Pulham Market and Harleston, where
they had accumulated wealth as farmers, and drapers. John Woodcock, following in his father’s footsteps, was also a
draper amongst his many other guises, and after his bankruptcy the drapery
premises at the Market Place/Thoroughfare junction (No 228 in the Tithe
Apportionment) came up for sale in 1802.
It came on the market together with the Woodcock’s dwelling, the Mansion
House next door, where John had lived with his father in their early days in
Halesworth. The Mansion House was then
described as a capital messuage (No 229).
The Woodcock drapery was a relatively small shop situated between the
Mansion House and the Kings Arms (No 227, now occupied by Patricks Newsagents).
From
the manorial rolls it appears that Thomas Bayfield, woollen dealer, purchased the property in
1803. Charles Bardwell, also a linen
draper, trading in woollens and silks, rented the property, which was copyold
to the Manor of Halesworth
Thomas Bayfield died in 1844 and his son
Charles Augustine was admitted to the manor court on 27.02.1844 by virtue of
the last will and testament of his father.
Charles had already taken a different career path to his father, and
left home for the life of a village schoolmaster in Ringsfield, where his wife
also taught. In the 1844 Whites
Directory, Mrs Elizabeth Bayfield, his widowed mother, remained as a resident
of Pound Street.
The Bayfield property was next sold to
James Aldred, probably shortly after Thomas Bayfield’s death. Pigot's trade directory for 1839, lists
James Aldred as draper, and hempen cloth manufacturer with premises in Queen St
(alias Chediston St). This is the same
James Aldred, who was introduced in Chapter 3, as a member of a Wissett family
involved with the growing and weaving of hemp.
James died in 1846, having appointed his wife Sarah, his younger brother
Robert Aldred a Wissett farmer, William Leavold of Beccles a merchant, and
Thomas Leavold of Ipswich, a draper, executrix and executors of his will. Sarah was James’ second wife, who he had
married in 1819, and the Leavold’s were his wife’s kinfolk. It seems that the
families in the county drapery trade stuck together, which is probably a
reflection of the local importance of Halesworth as a regional centre of this
trade in Suffolk, with intense competition between its many retail
establishments.
At the time of his death in 1846, James
Aldred was living in the property situated west of the Kings Arms, which he had
bought from John Augustine Bayfield. In
the 1841 census the household consisted of:
James Aldred age 60 draper
Sarah age50
wife
John age
21 draper
William age
18 assistant draper
James Smith age 18 drapers
apprentice
Hannah Judd age 23 female
servant
Mary Wright age 40 charwoman
His Chediston Street property consisted of
a freehold garden, a weaving shed and a drapery shop. This was the remains of his hemp manufactury, which was at a low
ebb. When he died, part was in the occupation of Benjamin Fuller and part
unoccupied, together with the outhouses, yards, gardens. This was to be sold either by public auction
or private contract. He also owned a
farm at Sotherton, which was also to be disposed of. Provision was made in his will regarding the security of John
Bayfield’s mother, because James’ will makes it clear that the sale of this
property was subject to the life interest of Mrs Bayfield. James’ will also makes special provision for
his sons John Thomas Aldred and William Henry Aldred of £100 each ‘for the
great zeal and attention to my business by which I have been greatly
benefited’. The proceeds of the sale of all his properties were to be divided
between four children, James Aldred, Mary Foster, John Thomas Aldred and
William Henry Aldred.
After his father’s death, John Thomas
joined his brother-in-law’s drapery/grocery in the Fenland Market Town of
March, which was about the same size as Halesworth, but growing because it had
become an important rail junction. He
and his sister Mary were censused there in 1851
March Census 1851 Cambridgeshire
High Street
Edgar
Foster 40 draper & grocer St. Neots
Hunts
Mary Foster 39 Halesworth
Michael Foster 15 March
Lucy Ann
9
scholar March
Edward Foster
6
scholar March
George Foster 9mths March
John Thomas Aldred 30 co partner/draper &
grocer Halesworth
Thomas Weedon 27
assistant Middlesex
It was William Henry who carried on the
drapery/grocery segment of his father’s business interests, making a fresh
start in his father’s old premises at the Market Place/Thoroughfare
junction. In the 1851 census William
Henry Aldred, was occupying this property (No 228) as a grocer and draper, with
his wife Ellen. Lodging in the premises
were a cook, a house servant a draper’s assistant and three draper’s apprentices
(Table 6.14).
Table
6.14 Part of the Halesworth 1851 census
showing the properties on the north side of the Thoroughfare as it joins the
Market Place.
35 |
Thoroughfare |
Martha F
Lincoln |
w |
m |
|
34 |
grocer
draper chandler |
Norwich |
|
Thoroughfare |
Harvey N |
s |
u |
1 |
|
|
Halesworth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Mary J
Jillings |
|
u |
|
26 |
drapers
assistant |
Cratfield |
|
Thoroughfare |
Frederick
George |
|
u |
28 |
|
drapers
assistant |
Halesworth |
|
Thoroughfare |
James
Taylor |
|
u |
25 |
|
grocers
assistant |
Becces |
|
Thoroughfare |
Bright
Denny |
|
u |
16 |
|
grocer and
draper apprentice |
Sweffling |
|
Thoroughfare |
Henry
Roper |
|
u |
12 |
|
grocer and
draper apprentice |
Halesworth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Mary Ann
Balls |
|
u |
|
24 |
house
servant |
Wenhaston |
|
Thoroughfare |
Elizabeth
Bone |
|
u |
|
23 |
housemaid |
Brandeston |
36 |
Thoroughfare |
William Cullingford |
Head |
m |
58 |
|
master
gunsmith employing 2 men |
Walpole |
|
Thoroughfare |
Catherine |
w |
m |
|
55 |
|
Uggeshall |
|
Thoroughfare |
Mary
Sillett |
|
u |
|
27 |
houseservant |
Stradbroke |
37 |
Thoroughfare |
Robert
Bass |
Head |
widower |
73 |
|
House
proprietor, smallholder |
Yarmouth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Robert B |
s |
u |
43 |
|
solicitor |
Yarmouth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Ann F |
d |
u |
|
42 |
|
Yarmouth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Elizabeth |
sister |
u |
|
82 |
|
Yarmouth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Frances |
sister |
u |
|
76 |
|
Yarmouth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Maria
Aldred |
|
u |
|
30 |
cook |
Wenhaston |
|
Thoroughfare |
Emma
Cooper |
|
u |
|
27 |
housemaid |
Wissett |
|
Thoroughfare |
Elizabeth
Woolnough |
|
widow |
|
42 |
washerwoman |
Cratfield |
38 |
Thoroughfare |
William
Aldred |
Head |
m |
28 |
|
draper and
grocer |
Halesworth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Ellen M |
w |
|
|
30 |
|
Denton |
|
Thoroughfare |
Margaret
Brown |
|
u |
|
23 |
drapers
assistant |
Southwold |
|
Thoroughfare |
Jonathan
Palmer |
|
u |
19 |
|
drapers
apprentice |
Spexhall |
|
Thoroughfare |
Charles
Parker |
|
|
16 |
|
drapers
apprentice |
Burgh St
Peter |
|
Thoroughfare |
Edward
Higham |
|
u |
15 |
|
drapers
apprentice |
Bramfield |
|
Thoroughfare |
Amy Taylor |
|
u |
|
18 |
house servant |
Rumburgh |
39 |
Thoroughfare |
George
Taylor |
Head |
m |
42 |
|
innkeeper |
Wyndham
Norfolk |
|
Thoroughfare |
Mary Ann |
w |
|
|
41 |
|
Bruisyard |
|
Thoroughfare |
Frances |
d |
|
|
4 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Thoroughfare |
Sarah Cook |
minlaw |
widow |
|
66 |
annuitant |
Kelsale |
|
Thoroughfare |
Fanny
Hugman |
visitor |
m |
|
42 |
|
Framlingham |
|
Thoroughfare |
Mary
Mayhew |
|
u |
|
21 |
housemaid |
Rendham |
|
Thoroughfare |
Alice
Coleman |
|
u |
|
21 |
cook |
Beccles |
|
Thoroughfare |
John
Taylor |
|
u |
13 |
|
waiter |
Wissett |
The 1851 census
also shows that there was another drapery/grocery only three doors away from
the Aldreds owned by the widow Martha Lincolne. The Lincolne’s story is told later. Suffice to say, William Aldred saw the Lincolne enterprise as an
opportunity to expand his own business, and bought the premises in 1856. He then sold his property next to the King’s
Arms to John Henry Gostling chemist and druggist, for the sum of £500. The
rolls describe this property as:-
‘That messuage or tenement formerly of John
Woodcock, wherein Thomas Bayfield did formerly inhabit and dwell afterwards in
the occupation of James Aldred late of the said William Henry Aldred or his
undertenants and now in the occupation of the said John Henry Gostlin’. With ‘rights of way from street over lands
of Kings Arms and use of well or pump belonging to the Kings Arms (to pay a
third part of expense of upkeep of the pump)’.
In 1861 we
find him in a very much enlarged former Lincolne establishment (Table 6.15)
Table 6.15
Halesworth Census 1861: 10. Thoroughfare.
Name |
Age |
Designation |
Birthplace |
W
H Aldred |
38 |
grocer/draper |
Halesworth |
Ellen
Aldred |
39 |
wife |
Denton |
Ellen
Aldred |
7 |
daughter/scholar |
Halesworth |
Gertrude
Aldred |
2 |
daughter |
Halesworth |
Kathrine
Andrews |
20 |
governess |
Royston
Herts |
Ellen Moore |
22 |
drapery
assistant |
Walpole |
Maria
Stanton |
21 |
drapery
assistant |
Pulham Nfk |
Maria
Mathews |
18 |
drapery
assistant |
Stevenage
Herts |
Anne Kine |
16 |
drapery
assistant |
Horham |
Benjamin
Roe |
21 |
drapery
assistant |
Thrandeston |
Frederick
Fuller |
18 |
drapery
apprentice |
Westhall |
Robert
Gowing |
19 |
drapery
apprentice |
Wingfield |
George
Baker |
27 |
grocer’s
assistant |
Lyng Nfk |
Frederick
Lee |
21 |
grocer’s
assistant |
Bristol
Glos |
Edward
Gooch |
17 |
grocer’s
apprentice |
Framlingham |
Edwin Drake |
16 |
grocer’s
apprentice |
Walsham le
Willows |
William
Davy |
14 |
grocer’s
apprentice |
Wilby |
Maria Clements |
29 |
cook |
Dennington |
Ruth
Whiting |
22 |
housemaid |
Webread |
Emma Haward |
25 |
nursery
maid |
Halesworth |
Ellen
Haward |
24 |
house maid |
Halesworth |
It is possible to map the
changes in ownership of Aldred’s original smaller Thoroughfare property and
those adjacent to it, towards Chediston Street. In the central portion of the Halesworth Tithe Map of 1839 the
plots are marked with numbers, which refer to their ownership at this
time. A comparison of the property
layout in 1839 at the junction of The Thoroughfare with Chediston Street has
been compared with that in a modern map (Fig 6.5A & B) and the census
descriptions of 1841-61 (Table 6.16).
Fig 6.5 Comparison of
premises in Market Place/Thoroughfare in the Tithe Map (A) with a modern map
(B)
In map A; Numbers refer to plots in the Tithe
Apportionment. In map B: numbers refer
to to the Tithe Map plots (e.g. –9 =
229; -8 = 228). MP = Market
Place; MG = Memorial Garden; C = Church.
The sequence
of buildings; Mansion House, James Aldred’s and the ‘Kings Arms’ in 2005 are
depicted in Fig 6.6.
Table
6.16 Enumerator’s designations (East to
West) into Thoroughfare from Market Place in relation to plot numbers in the
Tithe Map and Apportionment
1841: year & occupiers |
Lincolne |
Bunyan |
Cullingford |
Baas |
James Aldred |
Kings Arms |
Tithe map number |
234 |
233 |
232 |
229 |
228 |
227 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1851: year & occupiers |
Lincolne |
Lincolne |
Cullingford |
Bass |
WilliamAldred |
Taylor (Kings Arms |
Tithe Map number |
234 |
233 |
232 |
229 |
228 |
227 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1861: year & occupiers |
Aldred |
Aldred |
Aldred |
Bass |
Bass |
Kings Arms |
Tithe Map number |
234 |
233 |
232 |
229 |
228 |
227 |
Fig 6.6 Disposition of
the Mansion House, James Aldred’s Thoroughfare property, and the former Kings
Arms (Nov 2005)
The first part of the property
trail from Lincolnes shop to Roes ‘Bon Marche’ can be followed through the
following timeline summarised from the Abstract of Title of William
Henry Aldred (SRO ref LXIX 182/B/2), and other associated materials in the
Cross & Ram archive held in the Lowestoft County Record Office (Table
6.7.).
1816 (29th
October)
William Lincolne snr. bought a
property known as ‘Hatchers’ from John Howard for sum of £975. The Deeds of Hatchers begin with death of
John Aldred, copyholder of the Manor of Halesworth, in March 1772. The relationship of this Aldred, if any, with
the Wisset Aldreds and William Henry is not clear. The property received its name from the next copyholder, John
Hatcher.
Hatchers was where William
Lincolne started his business of grocer, draper and tallow chandler i.e. the
plot referred to as 234 in the Tithe Apportionment. At the time of this purchase he had just arrived in Halesworth
age 25 from Essex with two young sons.
1831 (4th
July)
William Lincolne snr. bought a
property knowns as ‘Wyards’ from William Henchman Pedgrift for sum of £700. The
deeds of Wyards begin with admittance of Mary Wyard to the Manor of Halesworth
in 1794.
1839
William Lincolne was listed as
grocer, draper and tallow chandler in Pigot’s Halesworth Trade Directory. As a
measure of the importance of Halesworth as a local centre of the
grocery/drapery trade, and the keen competition in this business area, there
were 10 drapers listed in the town at that time, eight of them incorporating a
grocery business. Lincolne was also described
as an agent to the Yorkshire Fire and Insurance Office in Robsons Suffolk
Directory for 1839.
1841
Agreement between William
Lincolne of Manchester and surveyors for the sale of a piece of land in Common
Street, leading to Chediston Street. This transaction probably refers to William Lincoln jnr., who
would then have been age 25. Around
this time he is described as a warehouseman of Manchester.
William Lincolne snr. was
present in Halesworth with his family in the 1841 census (Table 6.17A). The relative position of the Lincolne
premises in relation to its neighbours is shown in Table 6.17B.
Table
6.17 Halesworth Census 1841
(A) The
Household of William Lincolne (No 234 Tithe Apportionment) Born in Suffolk
William Lincoln h age
50 grocer No
Mary " w
age
49 No
Napier " s age 18 druggist
app. Yes
Elizabeth " d
age
15 Yes
Henry " s age
13 Yes
Lucilla " d
age
9 Yes
Marianne " d age
7 Yes
William Haward age 27 draper 's
asst Yes
Eliza Mumford age
23 female
servant Yes
Mary Ann Grey age
19 female
servant Yes
(B) Market Place/Thoroughfare junction premises in a west to
east sequence
Pt235 |
Pt235 |
234 |
233 |
232 |
229 |
228 |
227 |
Bedwell |
Dowsing |
Lincolne |
Bunyan |
Cullingford |
Baas |
Aldred |
Kings Arms |
tailor |
watchmaker |
grocer & draper |
harness-maker |
gunsmith |
banker |
Grocer & draper |
|
1843 (24th
November)
Conditional surrender made
between J Harriet Sheriffe (of Southwold) and William Lincolne snr. for the sum
of £1200 on security of Lincolne’s properties of ‘Wyards’ and ‘Hatchers’. This is an important financial arrangement
because it raises the question as to the purpose of the money raised through
what was essentially a mortgage on the two properties. William Lincolne snr. appeared to have
possessed the personal finance to purchase Wyards and Hatchers, because the
manorial rolls make it clear that these properties were not encumbered by any
third party loans. In the year he
bought Wyards William had just arrived in Halesworth, age 25, from Witham in
Essex with two infant sons. Barely three years previously he had married Mary Napier, a resident of central London.
Their third child was baptised in Halesworth two years after he purchased
Wyards. Yet he was able to command
almost a thousand pounds to set himself up in business and develop a substantial
enterprise. Was he backed with a legacy
or a dowry?
1847 (22nd May)
Death of William Lincolne snr.,
owner of the drapery and
chandlery business listed at 35 Thoroughfare in the 1851 census (Table 5.2
above), and referenced to plots in the Tithe Apportionment, numbers 232, 233,
234 (Table 5.4 above). In William’s
will his son John was given the option of purchasing the property providing he
leased it to the trustees of the estate, namely William Lincolne jnr, (the
eldest son), Mary Lincolne (wife) and William Prentice of Stowmarket. This is a rather strange arrangement. It indicates that William jnr. was well
provided for and that John was wealthy enough to take up the option. The fact
that in the will, William jnr. was referred to as a warehouseman in Manchester
and John was a soda water manufacturer in Cambridge bears this out, in that
they both seem have left Halesworth before their father died and had
successfully set up in businesses on their own account.
1851
Although in the 1851 census (Table 5.2) John Lincolne’s wife
Martha was present in the Halesworth property with their one-year old son
Harvey Napier, her husband had not yet taken up the option set out in his
father’s will. In fact he did not purchase the family property until three
years later. It seems Martha was
supervising the business whilst her husband John was in charge of their
Cambridge mineral water enterprise. The
inference is that the executors, his elder brother William and William
Prentice, a merchant in Stowmarket, continued to carry on the business after William
snr. died, but at a distance. Widow Mary Lincolne disappears from the scene
around this time. It is likely that the family was anxious to dispose of its
Halesworth enterprise because of the large mortgage it was carrying. Again this turn of events raises the
question of what Harriet Sheriffe’s loan was actually used for. In passing, their mineral water business is
an interesting development because the Somerfield family moved from High
Wickham to Halesworth to establish a non-alcoholic drinks enterprise on the
corner of Market Place and Chediston St., just across the road from where the
Lincolne’s premises was situated.
Somerfield’s was subsequently occupied by Prime and Cole’s garage.
1854 (13th March)
Sale made between William Lincolne of Manchester, warehouseman
and William Prentice the elder of Stowmarket (the trustees of William Lincolne
snr.) and John Lincolne of Cambridge for the Halesworth property, which was
subject to £1050 remaining on the loan payable to Harriet Sheriffe.
1854 (23 November)
John Lincolne admitted to the court of the Manor of Halesworth
with respect to the copyhold of the above property.
John Lincolne then entered into the sale of the property to
William Henry Aldred for the sum of £1350 (£1050 was still outstanding on the
loan payable to Harriet Sheriffe).
William Aldred paid £300 to John Lincolne for the absolute purchase of
the property, subject to him taking responsibility for paying £1050 to Harriet
Sheriffe. John Lincolne was to hold the
property in trust to William Aldred until Sheriffe’s financial interest was
taken care of.
1856 (25th July)
John Lincolne surrendered the property into the hands of the
lord of the Manor of Halesworth to be held in trust for William Henry Aldred,
subject to payment of £1050 to Harriet Sheriffe.
1856 (2nd August)
William Henry Aldred appeared before manorial court with respect
to the above surrender, seeking to be admitted copyhold tenant of the property
held in trust for him, and permission was granted.
1856 (4th August)
William Henry Aldred paid £220
to J Crabtree, bailiff of the court, for absolute enfranchisment and manumising
of the copyhold property ‘for quiet enjoyment free from incumberence’.
1856 (11th
August)
William Henry Aldred presented
to the court ‘a grant bargain sale and release’ to Harriet Sheriffe for the sum
of £1050 with interest.
1856 (25th
August)
Acknowledgement of satisfaction
and discharge by J Harriet Sheriffe with respect to conditional surrender made
to William Lincolne snr.
1859 (1st February)
William Henry Aldred paid
Harriet Sheriffe £1057 18s and 10d for the discharge of all principal and
interest on the security.
Essentially,
this sequence of legal manoeuvrings was to transfer the mortgage, owed to
Harriet Sheriffe, a Southwold moneylender, on the Lincolne premises to William
Henry Aldred. He thereby came to own an
establishment which, judged
by the 17 staff who were resident at the time of the 1861
census, had grown
considerably from what it had been in William Lincolne’s time ten years earlier
(Table 6.3). The business was
described in Harrods 1864 directory as ‘W. H. Aldred; linen &
woollen draper, silk mercer, wholesale family grocer & candle
manufacturer’. The
inference is that site was occupied by the building that we see there today. This is a very large three-storey block,
fronted with white brick, standing prominently on the north side of the road to
Chediston at the junction of the Thoroughfare and Chediston Street, facing the
Market Place. It abuts directly upon the street commanding a frontage of 86
feet. This prominent commercial building, vast by any previous
criteria of Halesworth’s retail culture, still towers above its
neighbours. The Aldred archive contains
no evidence of its construction and we can only assume that it was built by
William Lincolne snr. with the loan of £1200 that he obtained from Harriet
Sheriffe. He seems to have arrived in
Halesworth with personal capital sufficient to purchase Wyards and Hatchers,
which comprised the site on which the new store was built. In terms of style the building is a simple
version of the classical façade, derived from the style of Italian palazzos,
which was favoured by town planners of seaside resorts and mass-produced middle
class urban terraces of the 1830-40s.
It has an outstanding frontage and it’s a pity that the cramped position
does not allow pedestrians to stand back for a better view (Fig 6.7; 6.8).
Fig 6.7 The former Halesworth Bon Marche (Nov 2005)
In the 1851 census the Lincolne business
had housed five live-in shop assistants.
This may be regarded as a half way stage towards the arrangements
eventually seen when the store was in the hands of William Aldred. The situation in 1851 probably reflects an
initial phase of construction at the western end, with the shop premises on the
ground floor, living quarters for the Lincoln’s on the first floor, and staff
bedrooms on the top floor. At this
time, Cullingford’s gunmaker’s premises still existed, situated between Lincolne’s
and the Mansion House. The next phase
was the replacement of Cullingford’s with an extension of the western façade in
a similar style. This housed the
drapery and grocery departments on the ground floor, a storeroom on the second
floor and the staff quarters on the top floor.
The extension actually occupied two thirds of the site formerly
described as ‘Wyards and Hatchers’. The
west end now became the dwelling house and in a survey carried out in 1902 it
had an entrance hall, dining room, sitting room and staircase on the ground floor,
a front bedroom, two dressing rooms, a nursery, fitting room, and a staircase
which led to a long passage landing running the length of the building with
access to seven bedrooms. Altogether the property provided accommodation for 21
people.
It is interesting to speculate on the
reasons why the sons of William Lincolne snr. did not wish to carry on his
business. John, who moved to Cambridge,
may have become interested in the mineral water business by interaction with
the brewery and mineral water factory, which were operating on the other side
of the Market Place. William jnr’s move
to warehousing in Manchester may reflect his experience with the chandlery and
wholesale sides of his father’s enterprise.
Fig 6.8
Roe & Co: Proposed new shop fascia (circa 1960)
There is no doubt that James William Aldred
obtained Lincolne’s premises at a bargain price. William Lincolne’s untimely death when he was about to develop
his business with the building loan from Harriet Sheriffe cut short his
aspirations to establish a grocery drapery dynasty in Halesworth. From the grave he tried to set the scene for
a family arrangement whereby his two sons William and John would share the
profits as the business developed.
However, this was not to be, probably because his sons had left
Halesworth and established successful businesses of their own that were already
moving in different directions. The
will makes it clear that there were other sources of money to support the
family arising from William snr.’s business portfolio, and the debt to Harriet
Sheriffe was a financial burden that neither John nor his brother wanted to
clear. By paying only £300 to John
Lincolne for the business it seems that William Aldred obtained a property
worth at least £3000 and he had also obtained the freehold from the Manor of
Halesworth Essentially the deal
involved the seamless transfer of the Sheriffe mortgage to Aldred, which he was
able to pay off out of profits within three years.
William Henry Aldred died in 1885. The executors of his will were his wife
Ellen Maria of Seafield House, Kirkley, his brother John Thomas Aldred of
Ravenscroft, Farquher Road, Upper Norwood, Surrey, and his son-in-law The
Reverend Charles Courtenay
He left everything to his wife, and after her death to two daughters, Ellen
Louisa Courtenay, wife of Rev. Charles Courtenay, of Upper
Armley, Yorkshire and Gertrude Sarah Davis, wife of Rev. Edward Davis of
Budleigh Salterton, Devon. The gross
Personal Estate amounted to £20, 522.18s.11d and the net personal Estate
was £20, 217 .1s 0d
There is no doubt that William had accumulated a
considerable fortune from trading in Halesworth. This can be measured against the value of around £20 an acre for
good quality Suffolk farmland at this time. It is interesting to make a
comparison with another second-generation local entrepreneur, James Smyth, head
of the Peasenhall engineering works founded by his father. Smyth died in 1880 leaving a personal estate
with a gross value of £34,053.
14s.11d. James Smyth’s father, also
named James, had started life as the local village blacksmith and went on to
found the firm of agricultural engineers that made the village of Peasenhall
famous throughout the world for the manufacture of the Smyth patented
horse-drawn drill. The personal
fortunes of each man would amount to around £2 million in current terms. With respect to William Aldred, he was the
second millionaire produced by the Halesworth Victorian commercial environment,
the first being Patrick Stead, merchant and maltster. Although he was worth less than Stead, William Aldred was the
first native Halesworthian to reach these heights of prosperity. He took early retirement in his 50s, moving
to a newly built villa on the Esplanade at Lowestoft, where we find him listed
in Kelly’s Directory for 1883. This
made way for one of his employees, Benjamin Roe who had been left in charge of
the Halesworth store to make a move towards purchasing the premises as a going
concern.
Local records of Lincolns begin in the Chediston Baptismal
Register, with the following children born to a Stephen and Sarah
Lincoln:
Stephen
21.08.1785
William
19.10.1789
Sarah
23.04.1793
John
28.03.1797
Martha 5.04.1799
Samuel
13.11.1801
Mary
7.10.1802
The surname was
spelled without the terminal (e)
With respect to the Lincolne business in Halesworth, which was
contemporary with the above Lincolns, the Baptism Register of the Independent
church records this family with reference to the children of William and Mary
Lincolne who baptised the following children:
Mary 28.02.1818
Frances 9.01.1820
John 16.04.1821
Napier* 21.07.1823
Elizabeth Sarah 17.02.1826
Henry
Harvey 5.10.1827
Matilda
14.08.1829
Lucilla
Stanley 13.01.1832
Marianne Harriet 18.01.1834
* Mary
Napier married William Lincolne 29.12.1813 at St Bride Fleet St London
Two other sons were born to the above couple before they arrived
in Halesworth. They are recorded in the
list of Witham Independent Baptisms for the county of Essex.
William and Mary
Lincolne - William 18.09.1815
- Abraham 23.10.1816
So far there is
no evidence of any connection between the Chediston Lincolns and their
Halesworth Lincolne contemporaries. There
were also Lincolns in Cookley and other nearby villages so it seems that the
arrival of the Essex Lincolnes was a coincidence, and not due to cross-county
kinship ties between Lincolns and Lincolnes.
There was a
contemporary marriage between a John Aldred and Sarah Lincoln who was probably
one of the Chediston Lincolns. This
took place in Halesworth 2.11.1813.
However, there is no evidence of any connection of the bridegroom with
the Aldred family of Chediston St and the Thoroughfare. To add to this puzzle is the fact that, in
1769, a person named John Aldred was admitted to a property in the
Thoroughfare, that eventually came into the hands of James Aldred by way of
William Lincolne, being one of the properties upon which the new store had been
built (Table 6.7). Again there is no
evidence for a kinship link.
Regarding
the fate of William and Mary Lincolne’s other children, the Beccles and Bungay
Weekly, 10th October 1865, page 4 relates that:-
‘On
July 31st at the Cathedral Hong Kong, Edmund Sharp Esq., solicitor, to Lucilla
Stanley Boardman, fifth daughter of the late Mr William Lincolne of
Halesworth.’
Frances Lincolne married Jonathan Corbin Bishop in Halesworth in 1840. They and
their children went to Australia. He died 14th July 1906 and she 7th June 1903
in Goodwood, South Australia. It is
probable that Abraham Lincolne also went to Australia too because an artist of
that name appears to have painted, in Australia, pictures of Halesworth. One Internet site said of him –
"Abraham Lincolne was a local
resident and amateur artist, sketching in the Kiama district between 1840-44
whilst employed as superintendent of the Woodstock Mills at Jamberoo, and
produced highly detailed pencil drawings of properties and landscapes at both
Kiama and Jamberoo. He left Illawarra in 1844 and eventually settled in
Victoria."
Abraham’s dates are given as 1815-1884,
which would fit with the birth of William Lincolne’s second son.
To put the Linclolne/Aldred enterprise into context, it was in this
period that department stores originated in the European retail sector for
women’s drapery, at a time when shopping for a variety of ready made goods was
more difficult. It was not until the start of the nineteenth century that a
form of mass-produced clothing developed. It was of a simple basic style,
mainly for ordinary men and women and unsuitable for the high fashion market of
the upper classes. These goods could not compete with high class tailoring, and
it was not until the 1850s that standards of manufacture began to gradually
improve as the century wore on. The only acceptable ready-made items for the
wealthy were free size garments like mantles, cloaks and shawls. There was
still a local demand for bespoke tailoring and the Knights family of London
Road are an example of a small family tailor that continued to operate in
Halesworth into modern times.
Until the 1850s all sewn
clothes were entirely stitched by hand. In Britain London firms produced partly
made clothes and these were sold on to country dressmakers and drapers. The
partially completed bodices or partly made clothes were then completed locally
to ensure a good fashion fit. Dressmakers or the customer herself usually did
this. From early Victorian times this was very common, and during William
Aldred’s lifetime it evolved into the skirt being fully made and the matching
bodice fabric being sold for individual styling. Short notice mourning clothes
were made and sold in this manner since the 1860s and led the way for the concept
of ready-made women's garments.
Although sewing
could be a sweat trade, it was parcelled out in Halesworth to self-employed
seamstresses. It was also considered a
gentle art and a skilled refinement for women. The customer or her maid was
often quite experienced at making up garments. The mid 19th century mass
marketing of the domestic sewing machine by Singer successfully introduced the
concept of hire purchase. Then the introduction of paper patterns helped make
home dressmaking more successful. At
the same time, the acceptance of better fitting, ready made goods, combined
with easier travel for all classes, eventually led to the development of
drapery departments in multiple stores.
The reasons for
the commonly found association of groceries with drapery is not at all
clear. Groceries were based on the sale
of tea, coffee, preserved meats, salt, sugar and biscuits. These were all ‘dry goods’ that were either
imported, or available in a form that could be moved around the country from
specialised producers to retail outlets.
With the demise of local weaving, the stock of drapers was also imported
via a network of agencies and commercial travellers. The common basic accounting procedures of maintaining a suitable
level of stocks with an appropriate inventory system, may be all there is to
the association of the two trades in the same premises. Regarding the question of why there should
be so many grocery/drapery establishments in Halesworth, this may go back to
the town developing as a regional market for locally produced hempen cloth, but
there is no firm evidence to support this assumption.
Now, ordinary people all over
the world obtain clothes from a very wide variety of global sources. We shop
from the Internet, from mail order, from TV Channels, from the High Street of
large towns or a nearby outlet mall a few miles away. The basic idea for this kind of retailing may be traced back to
the beginning of the 19th century when Aristide Boucicaut in 1838
started the Bon Marche (‘good price’) store in Paris. This establishment evolved into the first department store by
1852, displaying a wide variety of goods in "departments" under one
roof at a fixed price, no haggling or bargaining, with a "money-back
guarantee" allowing exchanges and refunds, employing up to 4000 with daily
sales of $300,000. The department store was thus born, offering a variety of
merchandise and services and organized in separate departments. The idea spread rapidly through Europe and
across to North America, and the department store and its restaurant would
become anchors of urban retail centres in the 19th century and into the next
millennium.
This is why the emergence of Aldred’s prototype department store
in Halesworth, very close in time to the beginning of this revolution in
shopping, is a local landmark in the history of consumerism, and a key to
understanding the modern world, including globalization. Studying consumerism
helps connect us to wider issues in historical analysis and global
understanding of our use of natural resources. It is something that every one lives day by day as we fill our
plastic bags with goods from the four corners of the Earth. In the context of
the broader human experience, consumerism rather than industrialisation is the
more surprising development. Because of
its clear detrimental impact on the environment, many would say that it is one
aspect of human behaviour, above all others, that demands the most serious
effort at historical exploration, explanation and action.
Benjamin Roe
went to work for William Aldred as a young man from Horham, where he was
born. In the census of 1871 he was
managing Aldred’s store, where he is described as a grocer, draper and
candlemaker, employing 10 men, 8 women and 8 boys. Twelve of these employees, who were not born in Halesworth,
boarded at the shop. Three of these came from Winchester, Guildford and
Lowestoft, and the rest originated in Bungay, Beccles and other Suffolk
villages. A cook and a domestic servant
are listed at the property. In 1874,
with a partner Frances William Hall, a draper from Alford in Lincolnshire, he
entered into a business partnership with William Aldred for a period of 5
years. The arrangement was terminated
17th July 1878 and Roe and Hall negotiated the purchase of the
business and premises for the sum of £4000 to be paid in annual instalments of
£600 plus 5% interest.
After William Aldred’s death his trustees maintained
the mortgage. In 1897 the principal on the loan amounted to £2000. On Benjamin
Roe’s death in 1903 the business was still, subject to a mortgage of £2000 and
valued for estate duty at £3699. The
partnership with Hall had been terminated in 1878. After his father’s death his son Ernest continued the
business. It is interesting that the
business had been started by the Lincolne Independents and was continued by two
generations of Roes who were pillars of the local Congregational Church. The family was prominent in the affairs of
the town, and Ernest Roe was chairman of the urban district council for a
quarter of a century.
From their
already exceptionally large premises, Roe and Co. expanded, into the adjacent
Mansion House and increased the variety of goods for sale, including
furniture. An engraving of the
establishment in the 1920s shows a horse and carriage and an open-topped
limousine in waiting outside the store.
At this time the shop was described as a ‘Bon Marche’. It was selling groceries, drapery, furniture
and oils and petrol. There was an
undertaker’s department and even a glove-cleaning service. Discounts were advertised for cash
purchases. Such was its novelty that
special excursion trains were scheduled from Southwold to Halesworth, which
actually promoted the Roe shopping experience.
In this respect, Roe’s had followed a worldwide pattern of retail
development, which led to the birth of the privately run department store. Roes continued its business in Halesworth,
latterly under Benjamin’s son Ernest, until the mid 1960s, when the family
interests were extinguished.
Consumerism can be seen as a set of institutions and practices,
particular kinds of stores, sales gimmicks, and advertisements, even public
policies. For decades Roes placed its one page advert displaying its massive
range of buildings in the local Almanack.
Advertising is often the easiest initial entry to the study of
consumerism, and is why the first studies of eighteenth-century British
consumerism focused on shopkeepers and their tactics. But the second aspect of
consumerism is a set of personal interests of entrepreneurs like Benjamin Roe,
and their orientations, and motivations.
Although difficult to access from our present post-Christian society,
this second aspect is what ultimately makes consumerism both intriguing and
important. In Benjamin Roe, the unifying cause was Congregationalism, with its
emphasis on personal freedom within a social framework of like-minded people
pursuing trade. Regarding the
over-riding philosophy, James William Newby, the Halesworth Congregationalist
and author put it this way:
“As Free Churchmen we claim the
right to worship God in our own way, and we further claim that those who feel
called to preach have a perfect right to do so. We assert that there are two realms in which men and women should
have absolute freedom – without fear of persecution or intolerance – the realm
of religion and of politics; and any society of people or any nation which does
not permit this, is bound to fail, sooner or later”.
The history of William Henry Aldred, Benjamin Roe
and Frederick Hall between 1864 and 1892 is summarised in the following entries
in trade directories for Halesworth and Lowestoft (Table 6.18)
Table
6.18 Summary of history of Halesworth’s
Bon Marche
Year |
Directory |
Entry |
1864 |
Harrods |
Halesworth:
W H. Aldred linen and woollen draper, silk mercer
Market Place; wholesale and family grocer, candle
manufacturer Market Place |
1869 |
Kellys |
Halesworth:
W.H.Aldred grocer
and draper Market Place |
1869 |
Kellys |
Lowestoft:
Private
resident, W. H. Aldred, 1 Esplanade |
1872 |
Kellys |
Lowestoft:
Private resident,
W.H.Aldred, 1 Esplanade |
1873 |
Kellys |
Halesworth:
W.H. Aldred grocer
and draper Market Place |
1875 |
Kellys |
Lowestoft:
Private resident, W.
H. Aldred, Esplanade House |
1879 |
Kellys |
Lowestoft:
Private resident,
W.H. Aldred, Seafield,The Esplanade |
1879 |
Kellys |
Halesworth:
Roe and Hall (late Aldred) drapers, grocers and tallow chandler
Market Place |
1883 |
Kellys |
Halesworth:
Roe and Hall drapers, grocers and tallow chandler Market
Place |
1883 |
Kellys |
Lowestoft:
Private resident, W.H. Aldred, Seafield, The Esplanade |
1885 |
|
Death of
William Henry Aldred |
1888 |
Kellys |
Halesworth:
Roe and Hall
drapers, grocers and tallow chandler Market Place |
1892 |
Kellys |
Halesworth:
Roe and Hall drapers, grocers and tallow chandler Market
Place |
It is possible
to follow the origins of the Aldred business and its further development by
Benjamin Roe from the collection of deeds deposited in the Lowestoft CRO by the
solicitors, Cross and Ram, who acted for Halesworth’s two manors and the
property owners of the town (Table 6.19).
At the time
Ernest Roe died in 1957 the business had been taken over by Edward F. Lee, who
continued running it into the early 1960s.
Traditional grocery businesses were then in decline. The main store was
sold, The Mansion House continued as a furniture store and the drapery was
transferred to the old Kings Arms.
Halesworth’s famous Bon Marche died a slow death, and today, although
the component buildings are intact, it is virtually impossible to imagine its
glory days when it was Blything’s retail Mecca.
Table 6.19 Evidences of
title to properties in Halesworth ( Ref 182/B: Lowestoft CRO)
The
following deeds all relate to premises within the Chediston St/Market
Place/Thoroughfare junction. The bundles have been reconstructed using the
property descriptions, the names of past owners and/or occupants and the
abstracts of title
182/B/l House and shop, Market Place 1724-1878
1724 Messuage 1724
1726 Messuage in the Market Place, Halesworth 1726
1808 Messuage and shop in the Market Place 1808
1813 Dwellinghouse, spacious shop and capital cellars in
1813 the front of the Market Place
1839 Freehold messuage and shop in the Market Place 1839
1849 Evidences of title to the property purchased by
Thomas John Bird Bedwell of Halesworth, post master from John Lincolne of
Halesworth grocer agent for William Lincolne of Manchester, warehouseman, 1849
Includes:
1724 Bond for £82.00, 1724 (II)
1746 Bond for performance of covenants, 1746 (VII)
1754 Declaration of Thomas Brooke, mortgagee, 1754 (X)
1762 Final concords, 1762 (XI-X3I)
1767 Receipt for £30 received by Charles Aldrich from
Richard Smith, 1767 (XIV) 1813 Particular and conditions of sale,
1813 (XVJJ)
1839 Declaration of James Aldred re execution of the
will of William Curtis, 1839 1840 (XXI) Probate copy of the will of
William Curtis, 1840 (XXII)
1849 Abstract of title of messuage belonging to William
Lincolne, 1849 (XXIV)
1878 Probate copy of the will of John Bird Bedwell, 1878
(XXVII)
see also 182/B/4 (27 items)
182/B
182/B/2 House, shop, chandlers office and warehouses
in 1735-1903
Halesworth
and a dwellinghouse, with stable etc, part used as a shop in the Market Place
1735 Customary tenement with hempland abutting the
common way from Cheston [Chediston] to
Halesworth
1745 Part of a messuage and privy house
1761 Piece of land 13p x 62p with a messuage upon
it and a piece of land 32ft x 12ft
1766 Part of a messuage with a yard containing halfr
(missing) in Halesworth and part of a messuage with privy house
1767 Piece of
land 13p x 62p with a messuage upon it
and a piece of land 32ft x 12ft
1769 in Halesworth Piece of land 13p x 62p with a
messuage upon it and a piece of land 32ft x 12ft
1772 Part of a messuage in Halesworth with a yard
containing halfr
1772 Messuage in
Halesworth
1776 Piece of
land 13p x 62p with a messuage upon it and a piece of land 32ft x 12ft
1794 Shop, chamber over the shop, kitchen and chamber over
the kitchen with part of the courtyard, orchard and cellar and the other
undivided half part of the premises
1794 Half part of the tenement, the hall and chamber
over the hall, shop next to doorway and chamber over the shop and one part of
the cellar, court and orchard and a shop, chamber over the shop, kitchen and
chamber over the kitchen and part of the courtyard, orchard and cellar and the
other undivided half part of the premises
1813 Messuage in
Halesworth with a yard containing halfr and a piece of land 13p x 62p with a
messuage upon it and a piece of land 32ft x 12ft
1813
Dwellinghouse and shop in Halesworth
1813 Messuage and farm lands in Halesworth and
Holton
1825 Dwellinghouse in the Market Place with stable
etc
1843 Dwellinghouse, shop, chandlers office,
warehouses in Halesworth and
dwellinghouse in the Market Place with stable etc, part used as a shop
Evidences
of title to the property purchased by Benjamin Roe of Halesworth, grocer and
tallow chandler and Francis William Hall of Halesworth, draper from William
Henry Aldred of Halesworth, grocer, draper and tallow chandler, 1878
Includes:
1735 Copy admission of Lydia Betts and Mary Wyard, 1735
(I)
1745 Copy Admission of John Buckenham and Ann his wife,
1745 (H)
1750 Probate copy of the will of John Wills, 1750 (IH)
1761 Copy admission of James Wills, 1761 (IV)
1761 Copy of surrender James Wills to William Farrow,
1761 (V)
1766 Absolute surrender James Willes to Joshua Moore,
1766 (W)
1767 Copy admission of William Kirby, 1767 (IX)
1767 Copy admission of Joshua Moore, 1767 (X)
1769 Copy admission of John Aldred, 1769 (XI)
1769 Observations on the title, 1769 (XII)
Assorted receipts, 1769-1822
1769 Absolute surrender Joshua Moore to Mrs Ann
Reynolds, 1769 (XVI)
1769 Copy admission of Ann Reynolds widow, 1769 (XVIH)
1772 Copy admission of John Hatcher, 1772 (XIX)
1776 Surrender George Reynolds to Mrs Ann Crispe, 1776
(XXII)
1776 Copy admission of Ann Crispe wife of John Crispe,
1776 (XXIII)
1779 Absolute surrender John Crispe and Ann his wife to
John Hatcher, 1779 (XXVH)
1779 Copy
admission of John Hatcher, 1779 (XXIII)
1794 Copy admission of Thomas Pallant, 1794 (XXX)
1796 Copy admission of Lydia King,1796 (XXXI)
1813 Copy admission of John Hatcher the younger, 1813
(XXXII)
1813 Abstracts of
title, 1813 (XXXV), 1855 (LVUI-LX), 1878 (LXVUI), 1891 (LXIX)
182/B
1813 Absolute surrender John Hatcher senior to John
Hatcher junior, 1813 (XXXVI)
1813 Extract from the will of John Hatcher junior, dec,
1813 (XXXVII)
1816 Absolute surrender John Howard to William Lincolne,
1816 (XXXVUJ)
1816 Schedule of title deeds, 1816 (XXXIX)
1816 Copy admission of William Lincolne, 1816 (XL)
1816 Conditional surrender William Lincolne to John
Howard, 1816(XLI)
1822 Acknowledgement of satisfaction of conditional
surrender William Lincolne to
John Howard, 1822 (XLIH)
1825 Copy admission of William Henchman Pedgrift, 1825
(XLV)
1825 Conditional surrenders William Henchman Pedgrift to
John Youngs, 1825 (XLVI-LI)
1830 Absolute surrender William Henchman Pedgrift to
William Lincolne,1830 (LII-LIII)
Property 4 (New
store’ Bon Marche, built on the site of
Properties 1, 2. & 3)
1855 Bond for securing £1050, 1855 (LXI)
1855 Admission of John Lincolne, 1855 (LXH)
1856 Absolute surrender John Lincolne to William Henry
Aldred, 1856 (LXIII)
1856 Admission of William Henry Aldred, 1856 (LXV)
1878 Deed terminating partnerships, 1878 (LXX)
1897 Assignment
of debts from executors
of James Clarke, dec to Messrs Roe and Hall,
1897 Bond for securing £2,000, 1897 (LXXIV)
1903 Letter from Stanford & Broom describing and
valuing the premises, 1903 1903 (LXXV) Estate duty on the death of Benjamin
Roe, (LXXVI)
(This bundle
of deeds is now stored as 1 box and 4 portfolios 17.11.98)
As
shown above, Harriet Sheriffe played a key role as the financial backer of
William Lincolne’s Halesworth project to create his dynastic drapery
business. She was the second daughter
of Thomas Sheriffe, a super-rich Rector of Uggeshall. According
to the Tithe Apportionment of 1838, in addition to the greater tithes of
Uggeshall, Thomas also had a substantial annual income of a £380 rent charge,
derived from 43 acres of glebe land.
This considerable income was augmented by his possession of the living
of the parish of Sotherton, from which he received an additional £275 a
year. He made a good marriage with the
family of Affleck baronets of Dalham, near Newmarket, and successfully
continued the Sheriffe family tradition of dealing in real estate. He died
possessed of much land and was in negotiation to purchase estates in Peasenhall
and Framlingham. In his various
financial dealings Thomas continued in the vein of his forebears, who, since
the 17th century had been merchants and property owners in Diss and
its surroundings.
Thomas Sheriffe became associated with the property
boom in Southwold towards the end of the 18th century, when, along with several
other local rich clergymen, through the Harbour Act of 1789, he was appointed
one of the Harbour Commissioners. As to how Thomas became a member of this very
influential urban body we need look no further than his ecclesiastical living
of Uggeshall with Sotherton, which was in the gift of the Earl of Stradbroke,
Uggeshall’s major landowner. The Earl
was the prime mover in getting Southwold’s Harbour Act accepted by Parliament,
and Thomas Sheriffe was one of his bondsmen so to speak, and no doubt thereby
he was a staunch supporter of the Earl’s proposals for the commercial
development of Southwold. There was another connection between Southwold and Uggeshall at that
time in that John Thompson, probably the wealthiest merchant of Southwold,
owned farms in Uggeshall and the adjacent parish of Stoven. Thompson was intent on realising the
potential of Southwold as a seaside resort.
He would certainly have come into social if not financial contact with
Thomas Sheriffe, his local rector.
Thomas Sheriffe used his links with Southwold as an
opportunity to make his own investment in the town, and financed the building
of the ‘Centre Cliff Houses’, a terrace of three substantial
neo-classical cliff top dwellings, which still exist today to the north of
South Green. These properties were
described by Robert Wake, in his book ‘Southwold and its Vicinity’ (1842) as
follows: -
"
Centre Cliff Houses, as they are called, present a very handsome and
commanding appearance- not less on account of the gracefulness of the buildings
themselves, than of the loveliness with which their enclosed shrubberies and
tastefully-arranged and very carefully-tended flower-plots, have contributed to
their decoration. These have been erected for the accommodation of lodgers, by
the REV. THOMAS SHERIFFE; and consist of fine spacious and handsomely decorated
rooms; -the group contributing not slightly to our local beauties.”
The lodgers
referred to, were upper class families who were beginning to visit Southwold
for the summer season. The first
stagecoach between Southwold, Norwich and Yarmouth was inaugurated in
1822. The central house (known by the
name of Centre Cliff) is of a more grand design than the two properties
abutting either side (East House and South House). This indicates that Centre Cliff was
built first and the others added later.
According to Bottomley, Sheriffe’s Centre Cliff development was
completed in 1829. In this period the town was developing rapidly as a seaside
resort and began to spawn appropriate leisure facilities such as a racecourse
and a reading room. As noted above,
John Thompson was an important local developer and created the first outdoor
bathing pool (Thompson’s Folly). He
also opened The Casino (a subscription reading room) on St Edmund’s Hill
in 1800, which by the 1840s had become the joint property of a group of eight
shareholders led by the Earl of Stradbroke.
The shareholders included three clergymen, one of whom was Thomas
Sheriffe. Clearly, pressure was growing
for the Corporation to release common land for building, and this prompted the
formation of what may be described as the town’s first conservation group in
1807. The group took a lease on a piece
of land called ‘St. Edmunds’, or the Gun Hill, for the purposes of preventing
the erection of buildings on the southern cliffs. Its battery of cannons had been disarmed in 1819. At this time a scattering of fishermen’s
cottages around the Green was being demolished to provide building plots for
many grand villas and terraces.
To all intents
and purposes Thomas Sheriffe was an active resident at a time when Southwold
metamorphosed from a 18th century front-line naval asset, to a
burgeoning 19th century peacetime holiday resort. Although he maintained his base in
Uggeshall’s rectory, Thomas Sheriffe is actually described as a residential member
of an 1837 committee of Southwold, established to supervise enlargement of the
seating accommodation of the parish church; a response of the town to increased
numbers of seasonal visitors and wealthy residents. In the same year he was listed as a trustee of the newly opened
‘Southwold Medical and Surgical Institution’, which included a dispensary for
the relief and assistance of ‘the sick poor, lying-in-women and infirm
persons’.
Harriet
lived in Uggeshall until the death of her father in 1842, after which she moved
to Southwold. She was a major beneficiary in her father’s will, receiving all
her father’s real and personal estate.
Out of this she had to pay an annuity to her stepmother, who also
received a legacy of £800. From then on, as a rich
money-lending spinster, Harriet played a prominent role in Southwold
society.
The diary of James Maggs of Southwold for the period 1818-76 is a mine of information about the inhabitants of the town around this time. In Feb 1853 he notes:
“The sea at intervals has made alarming inroads opposite the Gun Hill and as far to the North as the Long Island Cliff (including Centre Cliff) scarcely leaving sufficient width for the standing of the bathing machines opposite the houses of Miss Sheriffe.”
We find Harriet in the town’s 1851 census
listed as an unmarried lady of South Green, age 58, described as ‘land
proprietor’.
Her
substantial household is listed in the census as: -
Harriet
Sheriffe age 58 yrs land proprietor born Uggeshall
Isaac Buxton age
48 yrs butler born Ashfield
Martha Buxton age 49
yrs housekeeper born All Saints
George Danford age 50
yrs coachman born Yoxford
Maria Danford age
45 yrs domestic born Peasenhall
Jane Elven age
25 yrs housemaid born Cransford
Emily Hotson age
28 yrs lady's
maid born
Southwold
Rachel Reynolds age 19
yrs housemaid born Redisham
Ellen Thurston age
17 yrs housemaid born All Saints
William Balls age
20 yrs footman born Brampton
William Barber age 12 yrs
errand
boy born
Uggeshall
She was still living
at South Green in 1861 on a similar scale:-
Harriet Sheriffe unm age
67 yrs lady born Uggeshall
Jane Pratt
age 35
yrs cook born Cransford
Charlotte Bokenham age
36 yrs ladies
maid born
Southwold
Lydia Goodrum age 20 yrs general servant born Henham
Henry
Clarke
age 38
yrs butler
born Loddon
Alfred
Girling
age 29
yrs coachman
born Brampton
David
Girling
age 19
yrs page
born Brampton
Sarah Sheriffe, her stepmother, bequeathed most of
her estate to Harriet, providing relatively minor legacies of £100 to her son
in law Rev. Thomas Sheriffe of Henstead and £500 to his son Thomas Bowen
Sheriffe. Harriet took possession of the
Centre Cliff Buildings as part of her father’s estate. The following provides firm evidence that
she was living in Centre Cliff from at least 1855 to the time of her
death in 1869. In 1855 Whites Directory she is listed at Centre Cliff. In
1856 she entertained the lifeboat crew at Centre Cliff. Her will of 1869 states that she was residing
at Centre Cliff, which, together with South House and East
House was one of her bequests.
Before the move
to Southwold, she was evidently well established as a local money-lender, when
she came into contact with William Lincolne.
There are also indentures that indicate that she was financing property
deals as far away as Fressingfield, and her will describes her extensive
property dealings with the manor of Saxtead.
However, the days of the private financier were numbered. Banks were being established in market towns
and a branch of the Norwich Crown Bank had appeared in Southwold as early as
1819.
The full extent
of Harriet Sheriffe’s great wealth is revealed in her will. She died possessed of the three Centre Cliff
Houses and was residing in the middle property. In total, she left several tens of thousands of pounds, which
would place her in today’s millionaire category. The bulk of her wealth passed to the family of her late nephew,
Thomas Bowen Sheriffe of Henstead Hall. The family had coalesced around his
widow’s marriage to Heneage Bagot-Chester and the
Sheriffe estate of Henstead Hall. She
appointed Bagot-Chester as an executor along with her constant lawyer John
Crabtree of Halesworth, who no doubt brought William Lincolne’s financial
requirements to her attention. In fact
there was quite a cosy association of Halesworth’s top lawyers with East
Suffolk’s bankers and landed gentry.
They were a relatively small group holding the strings of the towns
economic development. For example,
Rector Thomas Sheriffe was a trustee of the will of Peter Jermyn, the
Halesworth solicitor, and was an associate of the Turner banking brothers of
Yarmouth, who had a branch of their bank in the town. A measure of the rewards that came to these well-heeled market
town solicitors, whose wealth grew with the town, is evident in the house and
grounds of the Crabtrees, who were Jermyn’s professional successors in
Halesworth. From the Halesworth tithe
map, it can be seen that the extensive pleasure grounds of the Crabtree
property occupied much of the land east of The Thoroughfare as far as the
river.
It is interesting to reflect on Harriet’s life in
relation to the property rights of women at this time. During most of the nineteenth century they
were dependent upon their marital status. Once women married, their property
rights were governed by English common law, which required that their husbands
legally absorb the property that women took into a marriage, or acquired
subsequently. Furthermore, married women could not make wills or dispose of any
property without their husband’s consent. Marital separation, whether initiated
by the husband or wife, usually left the women economically destitute, as the
law offered them no rights to marital property. Once married, the only legal
avenue through which women could reclaim property was widowhood.
In contrast, women who never married maintained
control over all their property, including their inheritance. These women could
own freehold land and had complete control of property disposal. The rationale of the law was that if husband
and wife are "one body" before God, they are "one person"
in the law, and the husband represents that person. In recognition of this law,
fathers often provided their daughters with dowries to protect them from
unscrupulous husbands. Prenuptial marriage settlements provided a means for
separate "pin" money to be put in trust for a bride in order to
provide her with income. Pin money is an estate, which the wife was to possess
for her sole and separate use, and was not subject to the control of her
husband. This dowry was the only separate property that married women could own
and control in accordance with the law of coverture. We have an example of this
in the marriage of one of the Sheriffes of Henstead, where the husband died
relatively young and his wife had a personal income from a trust fund that had
been set up as part of the marriage settlement. Her son had to wait until his mother’s death before he could lay
his hands on the capital.
The lifetime of these
people coincided with the growth of banks as local institutions. Most 'country
banks' were established from the mid-eighteenth century onward as developments
of the existing businesses of local merchants, carriers, brewers or solicitors.
Money was required for rural economic expansion, which for the
most part in Suffolk meant the replacement of wooden thatched family housing by
larger brick-built live-in shops and houses. The investment required was at
first met by loans from other property owners, who were eventually replaced by
bankers drawn from the same wealthy category.
The Sheriffes of Uggeshall and Southwold were one such family of local
financiers who continued this tradition of private financiers into the 19th
century.
As a rich clergyman involved in speculative property
development, Thomas Sheriffe falls into the same category as Rev. Henry Uthoff,
Rector of Huntingfield with Cookley, and also absentee incumbent of Aldham
(near Hadleigh). Uthoff was another
affluent pluralistic clergyman who invested in Southwold’s property boom. According to Munn, Uthoff built the large
bow-fronted house facing east on to South Green, now called Regency Lodge,
in 1828. Munn says that he also built Park
Villa to the west, which was positioned in extensive grounds overlooking
the marshes. In any event, Henry Uthoff was clearly a man of financial and
social substance, being related to the Vanneck baronets of Heveningham Hall
through the female line. In 1844, his
annual rectorial income from Huntingfield and Cookley alone amounted to £800,
and in this respect he was ranked as the richest clergyman in the whole of
Blything Hundred. Wake states that Uthoff was living in Regency House,
Southwold (circa 1842), but in the 1844 Whites Suffolk Directory he appears in
Huntingfield, where he died in 1848 age 90, having spent 65 years as its
Rector.
An alien landing in Halesworth any time between 1750
and 1850 would have observed a world of many shopkeepers, small manufacturers and
farmers, maintaining a steady ebb and flow of individuals between town and
country. Technological change was making many of the traditional solutions to
economic problems less functional. Products were not complicated and consumers
had information from a variety of sources about which goods were available and
their quality. Halesworthians inhabited a world of microeconomics where each
person sought their own self-interest, but was constrained by morality, markets
and government.
Adam Smith observing the beginnings of this phase of industrialism said:
“It is thus that man, who can subsist only in
society, was fitted by nature to that situation for which he was made. All the
members of human society stand in need of each other's assistance, and are likewise
exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary assistance is reciprocally
afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the society
flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by
the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one
common centre of mutual good offices”.
He argued that
humankind was by nature self-interested. This is not to be confused with
selfishness. The individual would pursue his or her own self interest, but, at
the first level of social constraint, a moral system directed largely by
sympathy, would check inappropriate or unjust behaviour. However, Smith argued
that our moral sentiments could be corrupted;
“This disposition to admire, and almost to
worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or at least, to neglect,
persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to
establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society,
is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of
our moral sentiments”
Due to this "corruption" of moral
sentiments, the market was then necessary to provide a second level of checks
on behaviour. Smith argued that the butcher would not provide you with dinner
out of benevolence, but the market was a mechanism by which his self-interest
would be channeled into a behaviour pattern that would be consistent with the
needs of society. Perhaps one of the best-known quotes from Smith reveals the
role of the market directed by self-interest:
"It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their
regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but
to their self love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their
advantage."
The British capitalist system came of age in the century from
1750 to 1850 really as a result of three revolutions. The first was a political
revolution: the triumph of liberalism, particularly the doctrine of natural
rights, and the view that government should be limited in its function to the
protection of individual rights—including property rights. The second
revolution was the birth of economic understanding, culminating in Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations. Smith demonstrated that when individuals are left
free to pursue their own economic interests, the result is not chaos but a
spontaneous order, a market system in which the actions of individuals are
coordinated and more wealth is produced than would be the case if government
managed the economy. The third revolution was of course the ‘Industrial
Revolution’. Technological innovation provided a lever that vastly multiplied
humankind’s powers of production. The effect was not only to raise standards of
living for everyone, but also to offer the alert and enterprising individual
the prospect of earning a fortune unimaginable in earlier times, and with this
justification adding the appellation ‘gentleman’ or ‘gentlewoman’ to their
name.
Halesworth today, immersed as
it is in the supermarket era, still has its self-employed butchers and
bakers. Indeed, they remain a force to
be reckoned with throughout Europe. An EC analysis of
overlap between different forms of retail distribution for January to October
1998, indicated that although supermarkets, for example, reach out to 97% of
all consumers, 60% of supermarket customers also go to the butcher's, 75% to
the baker's and 18% to the greengrocer's.
A similar proportion of hypermarket and discount store customers regularly
shop at the butcher's, baker's and greengrocer's. Butcher's and baker's shops
cater for 60% and 72% of all consumers, and of these, 98% also shop at
supermarkets, 78% at hypermarkets and 85% at discount stores.
One such Halesworth shopkeeper
of Smith’s time, both butcher and baker, was Samuel Kemp, a contemporary of
James and William Aldred, who between 1839, when his presence is first
recorded, and 1873, two years before he died, a period of 36 years, offered his
services to the public at 7 Bridge St.
He was 45 years old in 1839 and he had probably lived there long before
his name entered the town directories.
Samuel, and those who occupied 7 Bridge St after his death, may be taken
examples to illustrate a thickening of Halesworth’s built environment with two
aspects of humanity that link us all with Adam Smith’s analysis of the human
condition; namely the roots and branches of our being. The roots of being consist of our affinity
with nature, because of our biological origins, and our affinity with the past,
because of our ancestry. The branches
of being are the day-to-day connections made on Halesworth’s streets with
family, neighbours, and with people as friends, colleagues or customers. A ‘roots and branches’ approach to define
our place in the world can be
the catalyst that fuses everyday life with history and genealogy together at a
place to spell ‘belonging’. It allows and encourages “a people-centred approach
to history”, instead of being limited to an events-centred approach that
concentrates on celebrity; and they do it without sacrificing events-centred
history.
The first event to begin the story of Samuel Kemp is his baptism
in Bruisyard one 16th
November 1794. He was of country
stock, connected by birth with the ancient clan of Suffolk Kemps that can be
traced back to before the Norman Conquest.
Through two millennia they had increased in numbers in a relatively
small group of villages along the eastern edge of the clay plateau between
Dallinghoo and Chediston. Samuel of
Bruisyard married Mary Watling in St Mary’s parish church Halesworth on 26th
Jan 1825. She had been baptised in
Spexhall on 26th April 1793.
Marrying at the age of 30 was unusual, and probably indicates and
economic constraint on the part of Samuel. He was the youngest son of a family
consisting mostly of girls. Although
nothing is known of the wealth of the family in Bruisyard, his grandfather Kemp
was of a long line of yeoman farmers.
It is reasonable to assume that he came to Halesworth to seek his
fortune in business. In 1839 he seemed
to be still probing a way forward.
Then, he was dealing in groceries and sundries, but five years later he
was described as a butcher and confectioner in White’s 1844 directory. In the 1851 census he is again entered as a
butcher, age 54. This year sees him
close to the heights of prosperity.
This is signalled by the Court Rolls of Rectory Manor where we find him
admitted on 8th July 1851 with respect to property purchased from
the estate of the late Robert Winters for the sum of £125. The admittance was described as follows:
‘One
messuage or tenement together with one house at the East end of the aforesaid
tenement then late built by Ann Bungay together with the yards to the same
belonging as they were divided by metes and bounds and lie between the King’s
Highway leading from Wissett to Holton on the part of the North and a piece of
land then late of Enoch Reeve on the part of the South one head thereof abutted
upon the Copyhold lands of the said manor then late in the occupation of John
Cone on the part of the West and the other head thereof abutted upon the lands
then late of Henry Johnson on the part of the East with the appurtenances in
Halesworth held by the yearly rent of one penny and suit of Court. And also one piece of land containing by
estimation two perches were the same more or less as the same were then
inclosed with pales and laid in Halesworth aforesaid’.
The tenement was referred to as:
That
tenement or cottage late of the said Robert Winter deceased divided into 4
dwellings siutate in Halesworth aforesaid together with the yards outbuildings
land and appurtenences thereto belonging or appertaining as the same premises
were in several occupations of William Genery, Francis Girling, Charles Haward
and George Day. Together with one
moiety or half part of the well standing and being partly on the said
heriditaments thereinafter bargained and sold and partly on the adjoining
premises he the said Samuel Kemp his heirs and assigns paying one half part of
the expense of keeping the said well and the going gears therein in repair.
These cottages and their
households appear in the 1851 census (Table 6.20 ). The house ‘newly built by Ann Bungay’ is presumably the property
at 131 Wissett Rd, which according to the census was occupied by Richard
Hollingsworth, a sawyer.
Table 6.20 Copyhold
cottages belonging to Samuel Kemp with their tenants in the 1851 census
132 |
Wissett
Rd |
|
William
Genery |
head |
m |
32 |
|
bargeman |
Blythburgh |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Maria
Genery |
w |
|
|
31 |
|
Needham
Norfolk |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Sarah
Genery |
d |
|
|
9 |
scholar |
Halesworth |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
John
Genery |
s |
|
6 |
|
scholar |
Halesworth |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Rebecca
Genery |
mother |
widow |
|
66 |
|
Cratfield |
133 |
Wissett
Rd |
|
Samuel
Hollingsworth |
head |
m |
24 |
|
sawyer |
Holton |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Harriet
Hollingsworth |
w |
|
|
28 |
|
All
Saints |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Samuel
Hollingsworth |
s |
|
2 |
|
|
Holton |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Ephraim
Hollingsworth |
s |
|
10m |
|
|
Halesworth |
134 |
Wissett
Rd |
|
Charles
Hayward |
head |
m |
39 |
|
bargeman |
Halesworth |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Mary
Hayward |
w |
|
|
39 |
|
Halesworth |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Charlotte
Kerrison |
visitor |
u |
|
26 |
a
farmers daughter |
Pullham
Norfolk |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Charles
Kerrison |
visitor |
|
|
1m |
|
Halesworth |
135 |
Wissett
Rd |
|
George
Day |
head |
m |
46 |
|
farm
labourer |
Yoxford |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Jane
Day |
d |
u |
|
15 |
servant |
Halesworth |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Henry
Day |
s |
|
13 |
|
child
at home |
Halesworth |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
Charles
Day |
s |
|
9 |
|
scholar |
Halesworth |
|
Wissett
Rd |
|
George
Day |
s |
|
5 |
|
scholar |
Halesworth |
As we shall see from his will,
he was also in the process of accumulating capital wealth in property
elsewhere, probably from a mixture of his own efforts and inheritance.
In the 1855 White's directory, we find Samuel Kemp
still in Bridge Street as a baker confectioner, and butcher. In Kelly’s directory, fourteen years later,
when in his mid 70s, he was still extending his business activities. He is described as running a servant’s
registry office i.e. an employment agency, from the Bridge St premises. This was a novel business in those days, but
one guaranteed success because of the reliance of most households in the town
on domestic help. The last directory
reference is in the Harrod’s publication for 1873 where his is still operating
the servant’s registry as well as the butchery. This was the year his wife died.
She was buried in her native village of Spexhall. Samuel himself died on 31st October 1875 and was also buried in
Spexhall. John Cady and Charles Cady were Samuel Kemp’s executors, both
farmers, one of Kirkley and the other of Reydon. They were the sons of Samuel Cady of Spexhall.
His household effects were valued at under £100 but his real
estate was worth considerably more. The
Halesworth property consisted of the four copyhold cottages above, and his
copyhold dwelling house, presumably 7 Bridge St.
On the 18th
Dec 1875 the court of Rectory Manor began the process of dealing
with his copyhold property.
At
this Court it is presented by the homage that Samuel Kemp who late held certain
lands and tenements by Copy of
the Court Roll of the said manor died since the last Court seized thereof And
because no person comes to this Court to take up or be admitted tenant to the
same premises therefore the first proclamation is in due form of law made for
want of a tenant.
The court took up the case again on 1 Jan 1877 to hear that that
the copyhold cottages or tenements had gone to auction and had been bought by
George John Clarke, painter, for the sum of £345. There is no mention of the
house to the east of the cottages, which was part of Kemp’s original purchase
in 1851, being included in the sale. In fact, Clarke owned the adjacent
property to the south (this could in fact also be considered as being to the
east) of the cottages. This was
probably the house ‘late built by Ann Bungay’ because it shared a well with the
cottagers, who at that time of Clarke’s purchase were George Day, Ann Clarke,
Frederick Haward, and John Hayward. It
appears that George John Clarke bought the property for his nephew, Frank
Clarke a carpenter of Bury St Edmunds.
Frank Clark was admitted to Rectory Manor with respect to the
property. There is no further reference
to the Clarkes in the manorial rolls (1854-92).
Eventually, 7 Bridge St was
bought by a baker, Charles William Ellis, who moved there from his premises in
Pound Street. Ellis’ shop was first
depicted in the Halesworth Almanack at the turn of the century (Fig 6.9). This is a photograph of a compact dwelling
house with an integral shop front, abutting an earlier plain building to the
right. Its appearance is generally
characteristic of top quality urban architecture of the late Victorian
period. For want of more precise
information it is assumed that it was in fact built by Charles Ellis on the
site of Samuel Kemp’s premises. The Ellis family used the picture to advertise
their bakery for many years in the Halesworth almanacs. This in itself is evidence of family pride
in the shop as an indicator of the family’s financial worth.
Fig 6.9. 7, Bridge
St/Rectory St corner at the turn of the 19th century; as it was
until the 1940s
The other properties in Samuel Kemp’s will
were four freehold cottages in Darsham, occupied by William Lane, John Evans,
Jonas Crisp and George Walker, and two cottages in Holton tenanted by John
Scrutton and John Green. The Darsham
properties are of interest in that the Kemps of Rendham and Sweffling, from
whom his father was descended, had long-standing family interests in Darsham
over the years. For the nineteenth century and earlier times, property, and in
particular land ownership rather than occupation was more fundamental to status
especially to the upper strata of society. The social position of a traditional
non-business elite was based upon land.
In this context, the Kemp’s distant roots lay in the fixed agricultural
area owned by a few wealthy people, who did their best to father sons to carry
name and fortune to generations yet to come. Samuel
Kemp’s marriage did not produce children and as we have seen, the modest wealth
that he had accumulated over a lifetime as a shopkeeper was left to his wife’s
distant relatives. We can just about
get an inkling of his sense of lifetime achievement from the first sentence of
his will, which runs, “This is the last Will and Testament of me Samuel Kemp of
Halesworth in the County of Suffolk Gentleman… “ In his own mind the decision
to leave the countryside for the town had taken him beyond the status of both
shopkeeper and farmer.
In 1580, when a check was made on all folk taking communion at St
Mary’s parish church, we can say that the entire population of Halesworth
subscribed to the universal theory of the Church, which was founded upon the
following four pillars of Christianity:
that Jesus Christ founded a society, which in Scripture is called
the Church;
that on the day of Pentecost the Holy Ghost came into this Church,
according to Christ's promise;
that thereafter there were added to the Church daily by the rite
of baptism such as were made disciples, and were brought into the way of
salvation;
that Christ appointed twelve Apostles through whom He would rule
the Church, and who should minister His Word and the sacraments of His grace.
But can we say this
with confidence?
Up to the 16th century, it was held by the whole body of Christian
people that all who desired to be saved ought to enter into this visible
society by baptism, and ought to continue in the unity and obedience of this
one universal Church. It was held that the Apostles, acting under the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, had ordained three orders of ministers-bishops,
priests, and deacons-in whom were continued the authority and the powers which
Christ had given to themselves. It was always and everywhere held that the
government of the Church, and the continuance of the ministry of the Church by
ordination, were committed to the chief of these three orders, the episcopate.
At the time of the St Mary’s census, just over 40 years had passed
since Henry VIII, anxious for a male heir, had ensured the permanent popularity
of the English reformation by abolishing the monasteries and sharing the loot
with almost everyone. The division
between Roman Catholics and Protestants was thereby created. He had executed around 60 people for "religious"
reasons, among a total of about 130 political executions, before his sickly
teenage son, Edward VI, succeeded him.
Shortly after, the first Book of Common Prayer was introduced, written
in English, and emphasising a prime requirement for people to participate in
the Eucharist. It also required the
Bible to be read (at home) from cover to cover. Fast days were retained for
economic reasons, supposedly to help fishermen, but saints' days were not.
In these ways the interface with a medieval God Almighty was cut
to the bone, and in 1552, the Book of Common Prayer was revised to suit the new
established Protestant world. There was to be no more "real presence"
at the Eucharist (the "black rubric" permits kneeling, however), no
vestments, no signing of the cross at confirmation, no holy oil, no reserved sacrament,
and no prayers for the departed.
All this spiritual upheaval seems to have been accepted in
Blything without social protest.
However, after the death of Henry’s son in 1553, Mary Tudor
("Bloody Mary"), a militant Roman Catholic, become queen. Popular at
first, she soon married the hated Philip II of Spain. Persecution of
Protestants began and in an effort to put the clock back, Mary appointed new
bishops and dismissed all married priests. During her reign, about 300
Protestants are burned, including 5 bishops, 100 priests, and 60 women. An
attempt by Cardinal Pole, Mary's archbishop of Canterbury, to restore
monasticism failed when, among 1500 surviving monks, nuns, and friars, fewer
than 100 were willing to return to celibacy. It is difficult to believe that
these tumultuous upheavals did not affect many spiritual convictions, and only
four years after Mary’s accession, barely 12 miles from Halesworth, a small,
but highly significant crack appeared in the beliefs of Suffolk society with
the martyrdom of John Noyes, a Laxfield shoemaker, who spoke against the
transubstantiation of bread and wine.
From 1564, when the word "Puritan" appears for the first
time, Suffolk saw all the denominations of the church established in its
villages. Baptists were born out of the
Radical Reformation, which began during the 16th century. Not until Cromwell’s Protectorate did the
Congregationalists make much progress. About that time the name Independents
was first introduced. In 1658, when the
Savoy Synod met in London, over 100 of their churches were represented. With
the Restoration came repression for the Independents, partly relieved by the
Toleration Act of 1689.
The Presbyterians held the theory of the Divine authority of the
ministry, holding that the authority resided in the presbyters, and only
acknowledged bishops as being of the same order as presbyters, but appointed,
for the sake of discipline, to the exclusive performance of certain functions,
and to preside over the rest.
The Independents started from the diametrically opposite principle
that any number of Christian men might form themselves into a Church (i.e.
Congregation), and that such Church had the power to govern itself, to elect
its own ministers, there being no difference of order between the ministry and
the laity. The Church was to regulate
all questions of discipline or of doctrine with no interference.
The first rule of the Congregational Union of England and Wales
lays down "as the distinctive principle of Congregational Churches, the
scriptural right of every separate Church to maintain perfect independence in
the government and administration of its own affairs." Or, as another
exponent of its principles says: "The distinctive principle of
Congregationalism is that a Church is complete in itself, and that all
questions of faith, discipline, and membership are to be settled by its
members." The same principle when carried into civil politics was
republicanism, and naturally put those who held it into an attitude of
antagonism to the authorities of a monarchical state; and we find the sect all
through its history acting as a political as well as a religious party. Brown, a clergyman of the Church of England,
was the founder of the sect, and he established the first separated
congregation in London about 1568.
Methodism dates from 1729, when a group of students at the
University of Oxford, England, began to assemble for worship, study, and
Christian service. Their fellow students named them the Holy Club and
"methodists," a derisive allusion to the methodical manner in which
they performed the various practices that their sense of Christian duty and
church ritual required.
The leaders of 19th century Congregationalism were proud of having
firm roots in middle-class prosperity. 'We regard it as a significant and
cheering fact,' said the Rev. E. Jones in 1852, 'that we number in our ranks so
large a proportion of the middle classes of this country, the backbone and
sinew of its strength and probity, of its intelligence and industry’.
Independents were prominent among the people into whose hands the industrial
and commercial wealth of England was flowing. A Nonconformist writing of
Lancashire in 1869 noted that 'in the more important towns they have collected
larger and more influential congregations. In Manchester as a young pastor,
Joseph Parker preached in 1858 to a congregation in which, he remembered later,
'every man seemed to be looking at me over the top of a money-bag. These, 'the
Congregational millionaires of Cavendish Street Chapel', were unusually rich
for their sect; Parker believed that his salary of £425 was higher than any
Independent minister had ever before received. But money-bags were common
enough equipment for Independents elsewhere; 'as a community,' said a speaker
to an assembly of the Congregational Union in 1878, . . . our resources are
mainly derived from trading transactions. . . .Three years later the chairman
of the Union said that his own people were probably the wealthiest among
English Nonconformists. At Wolverhampton in 1891 the secularist lecturer F. W.
Foote could raise a laugh by suggesting that the advice 'sell what thou hast,
and give to the poor' was not followed by the leading Congregational minister
in the town and the rich in his chapel.
The princes of Independency gave generously to their churches.
Profits from Joshua Wilson's silk, Francis Crossley's carpets, the Wills'
tobacco and Titus Salt's alpaca found their way to the architects and builders
of new chapels and the ministers who preached in them, and sometimes to
Congregational and other evangelists among the poor. King among these princes
was the knitting millionaire Samuel Morley. He was a Victorian Christian
employer, tough but scrupulous; a proud embodiment of what he called 'the
perseverance, the industry, the intelligence, and, I add unhesitatingly, the
integrity, which, for the most part, distinguishes the trading and mercantile
classes of England’. He was a Liberal,
willing to allow the working classes to take part in politics and expecting
them to remain upright and deferential; a campaigner for Nonconformist rights,
insisting firmly but without bitterness that a gentleman was a gentleman
whether a Churchman or not; and a devout Evangelical quite as anxious to spread
gospel truth as to sell clothes.
However, by this time,
a trend was going against the established church. Surveys carried out in the 1850s showed that only around 50% of
the population attended church regularly.
This had fallen to 30% by the end of the century and coincided with increased
leisure activities at weekends, particularly on Sundays. A national marker appeared in 1896, when the
major museums opened on Sunday, and became increasingly ‘the people’s secular
church’.
Studies of economic development in the 19th
century have demonstrated that religion could exert an influence through
information and credit networks; and with the
Ellis family’s appearance in the Thoroughfare is revealed Halesworth’s strong
current of Nonconformism, which helped many a business along within the chapel
fraternity. For
some families, religion was the primary factor in defining a sense of
community, of belonging, and of shared values.
Evidence for the existence of such self-maintaining cultures was
strongest in industrial cities of provincial England. In those flourishing communities, the leading members of the
Nonconformist chapels were the local captains of industry, the spearheads of
municipal reform and the magnates of the local Liberal party. Nonconformist families formed an urban
governing class, which, through intermarriage, and business and political
associations, had national ramifications with regards the growth of British
prosperity. This was in fact a
remarkable turn around in the fortunes of the minority urban groups that, as
early as the 17th century, defined themselves as
‘independents’. Although relatively few
in number, they impressed Daniel Defoe on his tour through Suffolk as a
spiritual force to be reckoned with.
Visiting Southwold in 1722 he commented:
“There is but one church in this town, but it is a
very large one and well-built, and of impenetrable flint; indeed there is no
occasion for its being so large, for staying there on Sabbath-Day, I was
surprised to see an extraordinary large church, capable of receiving five or
six thousand people, and but twenty-seven in it besides the parson and the
clerk; but at the same time the meeting-house of the dissenters was full to the
very doors, having, as I guessed from 6 to 800 people in it”.
Their local impact through trade was summarised by the journalist/printer, and preacher of Halesworth’s Independent Congregational Church, James W. Newby, local historian who wrote a history of the Congregationalists in Halesworth and its surrounding communities.
‘In the reign of William IV, who ascended the throne in 1830, the
Congregational Union of England and Wales was formed (May 1831), and
Congregationalists took their parts manfully in the passing of the Reform Bill
of 1832, since which time the day became brighter for our denomination, as in
truth for all others, although when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837
many Congregationalists seemed to make an apology for living, and it was true
that Nonconformists were regarded by some as belonging to a different nation.
Many owners of property inserted in their leases a clause to the effect that
there should not be built on the land " a beerhouse, Dissenting Chapel, or
other nuisance." Yet trade began to revive. In the Eastern Counties nearly
every thriving business was founded by some Free Churchman, and this is true
also of Yorkshire and Lancashire. These great employers spent much of their
money on Chapel buildings.’
It was in
this self-help vein that Congregationalism began in Halesworth when a local
private individual, Rusting Moor, resolved in 1793 to build a Meeting House in
Pound St. From this time onwards,
several of Halesworth’s Congregational deacons were representatives of
the town’s entrepreneurial culture as their church developed from an initial membership of eight men and
four women. One of the most
prominent was William Lincolne. As
related above, he came to Halesworth from Witham in 1816, with a family
consisting of his wife, two little boys and their nurse, and was admitted to
the local Congregational church by ‘transfer’ from the Witham
Congregationalists. He was a grandson of the Rev. William Lincolne, who had
been a pupil of Dr. Doddridge, one of the most influential teachers in the
Congregational training academy at Northampton. The Rev Lincolne had commenced his ministry at Beccles
Independent Church in the middle of the 18th century. He eventually moved to
retirement in Bury.
A brief biography of his grandson, William Lincolne the
Halesworth draper, was written by one of his sons based on extracts from his
father’s diary. This account indicates
that from the commencement of William Lincolne’s period in Halesworth, he
instituted family worship at his drapery establishment. In a letter he refers
to his open-minded attitude towards his employees.
"You
will rejoice to hear that ———— stands proposed to the Church. She entered my
family not twelve months since, a gay and thoughtless girl, with plenty of High
Church prejudices—an additional testimony to the correctness of my system—never
to make dissenting training a pre-requisite to entering my service. If they are
not what I wish in this respect, I always say, that my hope and prayer shall be
that they may become so, and the Divine Blessing has in several instances
attended this course."
His arrival in Halesworth more or less coincided with the
vigorous Congregational pastorate of the Rev John Dennant, who came to
Halesworth from Bicester in Oxfordshire in 1791. Within a decade of his arrival
four enlargements of the Pound Street chapel were required to meet the needs of
its expanding membership. Eventually, plans for a new chapel in Quay St were
made under the chairmanship of William Lincolne, who was one of the benefactors
(Table 6.21). It is a measure of the
national success of the local community of Independents that the money was
provided from far and wide for this project.
Table 6.21 Summary
accounts of the for building the Quay St Chapel
Items of Expenditure.
£ s d
Purchasing
ground with taking up, etc.
210 0 0
Contracts
for Building
1163 8 0
Extras 126 0 0
Brick
Wall 139 10 0
Palisades 30 16 0
Lawyers
Bills
54 6 8
Sundry
other matters including Architect,etc 96
0 0
Paid
Bank for interest
68 7 0
Expenses
of Collecting 50 0 0
1938 7 8
Value
of old Chapel 150 0 0
£1788 7 8
Funds Raised.
£ s d
Subscriptions
received in Essex viz: Witham,
Maldon,
Booking. Colchester, etc.
94 1 3
Norfolk—viz
: Norwich, Yarmouth and Harleston 55
13 0
Suffolk—viz
: Stowmarket, Ipswich, Beccles,
Wrentham.
Sudbury etc , ... 154
19 10
Other
Places—Bath. Poole, Southampton, etc.
41 16 0
London
and its vicinity
246 8 0
From
Persons in Halesworth not of the
Congregation,
including £40 from the bank of
Messrs
Gurney & Co,and the late David Lloyd Esq.74 17 0
Producing
a Bazaar
83 7 9
Collections
at opening 102 11 8
Collections
at Anniversary 31
15 9
Collecting
Books and Cards 68
16 2
Profit on " Memorials of a beloved
friend" 25 0 0
Legacy
of Mr. N. L.
15 12 0
Wm.
Lincolne's, Nov. 9
9 1 9
Ground
for Vault
10 0 0
Subscriptions
and Donation among the people
to this
time 774 7
6
£1788 7 8
The number of members at the time of opening the New Chapel was
124 (which did not include some who lived at considerable distances), and the
seating capacity was 900. On the opening day, however, the people were counted
out at one of the services and 1,500 were present. The total number of members
since the Church's formation is 1,377, and the following is a list of Deacons
and Deaconesses. The year given is that in when membership is first recorded:—
Jabez Cole, Yoxford 1793 S. W. Hadingham, Halesworth l858
Wm. Benstead, Wenhaston 1793 Benjamin Roe, „ 1859
James Utting. Chediston 1796 Nathan Chipperfield „ 1861
Jno. Haward. Hevenmgham 1802 Walter Henry Ives, „ 1861
Thos. Burnett. Halesworth 1803 Elijah Francis, „ 1861
Wra. Harper. Wenhaston 1810 John Henry Gostling „
1866
Wm. Lincolne, Halesworth 1817 Robert E. Haward „ 1870
George Edge, Halesworth 1822 John Sago „ 1873
John George. Wenhaston 1823 Charles Wm. Ellis „ 1879
Robert Aldred. Wissett 1823 John Cole „ 1881
Wim. George, Wenhaston 1824 James Bezant. Bramfield
1885
Gibbon Thompson, Blyford 1830 *F. Lambert, Halesworth
1892
Samuel Roper, Halesworth 1838 W. E. Fairweather „ 1901
Wm. Stanford, Halesworth 1840 W. T. Hayward Holton 1901
George Haward, Bramfield 1840 *J. W. Newby, Halesworth 1908
Jno. Lincolne, Halesworth 1840 W. W. Frost „ 1909
Joseph B.Harvey,Halesworth 1843 *H.
L. Fairweather „ 1919
Geo. Rackham. Halesworth 1850 *M. B. Beverley „ 1921
Wm. Howse, Cookley 1850 *J. L. Sampford. Holton
1925
Samuel Brown, Halesworth 1854 *Chas. Hurst, Halesworth 1925
Deaconesses.
*Mrs. F. E. Botwright 1898
Mrs. A. Woodyard 1899
Mrs. W. G. Groom 1912
Mrs. A. Muttitt 1924
*Mrs. W. R. Ward 1903
John Dennant continued as pastor for 44 years, during which time
William Lincolne and then Benjamin Roe, who eventually succeeded to Lincolne’s
drapery business, were deacons who took key roles in the development of the
town’s commercial community and its relations with the townsfolk. The great
size of the church is proportional to the impact made by its congregation on
the business life of the town.
From the records of the church, it is revealed that in
1857, the minister had a period of anxiety when some of the male members went
to him and invoked a special meeting to have the accounts explained to them. The secretary
and treasurer at the time was George Rackham, and as a result of the meeting,
special resolutions were carried, one being eulogistic of the secretary's
services. Another resolution considered that the offices of secretary and
treasurer were too burdensome to be imposed upon one individual and recommended
that the two offices be disunited. This was carried and also another that
Rackham continue his office of secretary as heretofore. The ultimate result,
however, was then of Rackham as secretary, and ultimately as a deacon. He later
became a member of a New Congregational Church in the town in 1866, when a
split in the Church occurred, and which lasted over a period of ten years. It
is on record that he was reinstated when the Church was reunited in 1877. His
wife died in 1878, and he lived until 1894.
But let us quote from the Halesworth Times dated March 6th of that
year:—
For
nearly 20 years, commencing from the year 1850, George Rackham took a prominent
part in the political district, fighting vigorously but unsuccessfully, against
having a confederated and unconsecrated Chapel at the Cemetery, fighting in the
battle against Church Rates, and for the abolition of university tests as well
as for the fiscal and other reforms of that period. In 1868, owing to overwork,
his health gave way, and an eminent London specialist warned him that nothing
but an outdoor vocation would save his life. The death of Mr. Daniel Forman,
Clerk to the Blything Guardians, led to the election of Mr. Charles White as
his successor, leaving a relieving officership vacant at Wenhaston. Mr. Rackham
was elected, his votes being more than the other candidates combined. He held
the office until 1893, when he retired, the Guardians giving him a pension. He
went back to London and revisited the scenes of his earlier journalistic
activities."
As a Congregationalist, James W. Newby was well placed to commentate on the commercial
life of the town. He was the epitome of self-improvement, having left the local
Elementary School at the age of 11 to develop his freedom through an innate
talent to tell a good story. He
represented the second generation of a family that had come to Halesworth from
the country, with a pedigree going back to the yeoman farmers of
Sweffling. In this connection, the
Halesworth Newbys were cousins of the Kemps through a marriage between the two
families, which took place in Sweffling in 1778.
Public service
was the Independent’s legacy, and with respect to James Newby, this tradition
was carried forward in his children, particularly Derek and Donald. During the authors’ research into the flow
of Halesworth’s retail trade the opportunity was taken to hear about the latter
days of Roe’ business from Derek Newby who, as a boy, was employed by the
Company. The following paragraphs, were written by Derek Newby, and
as a personal reminiscence, his account provides a vivid picture of the size
and importance of the Company, and highlights how it came about that a
significant part of the retail history of Halesworth was terminated with the
closure of the ‘Bon Marche’.
“Ernest Edwin Roe was born on 18 September
1871 presumably in Halesworth, as according to Ivan G Sparkes his father had
moved to Halesworth in the 1850's. He died, peacefully in his sleep on 4th
August 1957 in Gothic House, Halesworth to where he had moved from his Market
Place premises to be cared for by Miss Grace Woodyard. He was buried in the old
part of Halesworth cemetery on the right hand side of the Chapels and in
addition to the above details the inscription on his headstone reads
"..... who rendered great public service, County Councillor, Chairman of
Halesworth Urban District Council for 26 years." I remember his passing
quite clearly as this was imminent and early in the morning Miss Woodyard
slipped a note through my parent's front door at 38 Thoroughfare, which quite
simply said "peacefully at 3 a m this morning".
From
the records I have (Gales Almanacs), in 1901 a firm named Roe & Company was
trading from premises in Halesworth Market Place as Wholesale and Retail
Grocers, Tea Dealers, Provision Merchants, Drapers, Milliners, Dressmakers, and
Complete House Furnishers. By 1906 they had added Undertakers to their range of
services.
I know that E E Roe had a brother named
Stanton who served in the Boer war and whom I clearly remember walked with the
aid of a stick. I suspect (but am not sure) that he played a part in the
business, as the advertisement published on the front of my Gales Almanac did
not show E E Roe as the sole proprietor of Roe & Company until the 1921
edition. This continued until 1931 when records show that it changed then to a
limited company. The business had become one of the biggest employers of labour
in the town and two other directors’ names were included on all the stationery
and letterheads from then on. These were F E Botwright & H W Smith. At one
time shop assistants were recruited from all parts of the country and many
lived in the spacious accommodation afforded by the three-storied building
containing numerous rooms above the shops. At one time there were 17 shop
assistants engaged in the grocery departments in addition to three horsemen and
four warehousemen working in the cellars accessed by stairs from the shops, but
from ground level at the rear. In the drapery, millinery and dressmaking
departments a further 23 ladies were employed all under the supervision of Mr
Botwright who also carried out the duties of undertaker. Mr Smith supervised
and worked in the retail grocery department. Mr A E Woodyard who lived at
Gothic House with his maiden daughter Grace, made bespoke coffins for the firm,
as well as being an undertaker in his own right. Miss Woodyard also offered
lodging accommodation to bank clerks and other professional people working in
the town. Mr Roe would have been there as a paying guest. In those days
practically every building firm, large or small, competed for the job of
burying people, there being very few cremations and nothing like the attendant
paraphernalia offered by undertakers today (see my article published in
"Team Times" in August 2000). There was a manager/cabinet maker, an
upholsterer, and boy (me) engaged in the furnishing department who were also
answerable to Mr Botwright. Three lady cashiers/ book-keepers worked in the
"counting house" as it was called, and it was from a desk here that E
E Roe directed operations and kept a watchful eye on what was going on.
On the domestic side there was a housekeeper, cook and housemaid all living on
the premises and these were kept busy, as many of the shop assistants were
employed on a full board basis.
I
started work in the furnishing department in January 1939 when I was fourteen
and two months old. The furniture manager was Mr Archibald Haward a staunch
member of the Congregational Church and I was to learn the furniture trade,
i.e. how to lay carpets and linoleum, cut loose covers and general upholstery,
etc. etc. I was also to run errands for the drapery department. On the first
day I started work Mr Haward and the upholsterer were laying carpet in a large
house and this necessitated moving a piano. On attempting to do this Mr Hoard
had a heart attack and died on the spot. Mr Botwright, another adherent to the
Congregational Church and sidesman there, then spent more time in our
department until a replacement was found for Mr Haward. Botwright was a fiery,
dapper little man with a moustache. He too had a kind streak as on Thursday mornings
(early closing day) he gave me two half-crowns and sent me to Beverley's for a
4oz tin of St. Bruno Flake tobacco which was 4/8d, the fourpence change, which
was a tidy sum in those days, I was allowed to keep. Both he and his fellow
director Mr Smith, always seem to have little say in the overall running of the
firm and there was no doubt who the real boss was! Mr Haward was eventually
replaced by his brother from the London area. At this time Roe & Co. Ltd
were offering to fully furnish a two up and two down cottage for £50. Included
in this was lino on all floors, stair carpet, one double bedroom suite, and one
single bedroom suite suitable for a small room, one three piece suite and one
dining room suite with sideboard, table & four chairs, kitchen table (made
to measure on the premises), two fireside chairs and two kitchen chairs, two
rugs and two doormats. I enjoyed going out with the upholsterer and laying the
lino in these farm cottages and sometimes being sent with the horseman on the
country rounds to help with the unloading of items of furniture. The war broke
out in the September of that year and our drapery and furnishing departments
were immediately inundated with demands for blackout material including heavy
curtains, many needing to be made and fixed by us and we were kept very busy for several months before trade in
these departments eased off, and soon after I was sixteen I asked Mr Roe if I
could transfer to the grocery department as I was becoming bored with less to
do in the furniture department in wartime. I think that he was pleased
about this as several of his male members of the staff were members of the
territorial army and were mobilised soon after war was declared and they were
not easily replaced. I quickly adapted.
Either Ernest Roe or his firm owned several cottages in various parts of the
town, also some meadows in Halesworth on the western side at the top of London
road. Here in the summer months, the horses employed to pull wagons around the
villages on weekdays would be walked up the London road each evening by the
last horseman back to the shop after the rounds, and put out to graze after
their days work. In the winter months they would be fed and watered and spend
the night in the stables at the rear of the market place premises. The four
wheeled wagons were also housed in this area of the property. The Masonic Hall
in the Market Place was also part of the firm's premises and the ground floor
(later opened as a wine shop), was used as storage for large quantities of
sugar which when I joined the firm in 1939 came in 2cwt sacks and had to be
weighed and bagged up into blue 21b bags by the assistants. Loose tea in chests
also had to be weighed into 4-ounce packets, but in this case the assistants
had learned to make a suitable cone shaped packet from a square sheet of paper.
Butter, lard and margarine came in 281b slabs and these items too, had to be
weighed into 8oz slabs and wrapped in greaseproof paper.
At one time during the war when sugar was
rationed I remember an emergency load of one ton of sugar being delivered in 10
x 2cwt sacks, each taking two fit men to lift them.
Some of the assistants in the grocery departments were supplied with a bicycle
and cycled out to the villages to take orders from regular customers. The
written orders would then be prepared by the assistants working on the counters
and delivered later in the week. The order-taker the next week would then
collect the cash when visiting for the order for the following week. Roe &
Co ran both grocery and clothing clubs into which people could pay any amount
at any time. This enabled customers to buy items of clothing or furniture when
they had paid sufficient or nearly sufficient cash in. Amounts varied from
sixpence to five shillings a week, but this amount was rare, the average being
two shillings or less. Records were kept on cards retained by the customer and
the cashiers in the office and country customers who seldom came into
Halesworth would pay the order taker when he called. The Club system helped to
keep customers loyal to the firm as they were often allowed to have goods in
excess of the amount paid in, the firm knowing that the remainder would be
paid. During war time the order taker had the additional task of cutting out
and collecting the appropriate coupons from the ration books. He then had to
reconcile these and his cash in the counting house upon his return. The wagons
therefore had regular rounds on each day of the week delivering groceries and
other items sold by the firm to householders and shops in the surrounding
villages and parts of the town. They would also oblige some other shops in the
town who were not competing with them by delivering items for them. People
paying into the grocery or Christmas Club would normally use this cash to pay
for the many extra items they would need at Yuletide. Ernest was a heavy man
with a grey moustache. Being born during Victoria's reign he was a hard
business man and expected the maximum from his employees. He gave credit and
lent money to many people. He was a bully with a kind streak, but in retrospect
he was fair, although he would roar at any of his employees if he thought that
they were undercharging or guilty of any waste or anything else to his cost.
When the retail grocery orders were prepared for delivery the routine was for
one assistant to read the items from the bill or invoice and another to check
the items into a box. This way was deemed to be foolproof, but mistakes were
occasionally made and if a customer came into the shop and complained of a
shortage of any item in their box woe betide the culprit who, if Mr Roe
discovered the error, would be made to feel very small indeed. There were few
who dared answer him back, but if anyone did he would quieten down.
He
never married and devoted himself to his business, the affairs of the
Halesworth Congregational Church (now the URC), Halesworth Urban District and
the County Council at Ipswich where he represented Halesworth for nearly as
long as he was Chairman of Halesworth U D C . County Council meetings were held
the first Tuesday in Ipswich every month and he and Mr George Clarke who lived
at Blythburgh and represented several villages nearly always to travelled
together.
Mr Clarke had a car, but when it was his
turn Mr Roe hired Mr J H Cole who had garage with hire cars at the top of
London Road.
As
far as I am aware Major F J Rodwell, a solicitor who served in the First World
War, with offices in the Thoroughfare carried out the duties of Clerk to the
Council until just after the Second World War when it became necessary for the
Council to have a clerk of its own.
My memory goes back to when I was 7 or 8 years old and apart from the above my
knowledge of E E Roe's activities in the Church and town is limited. Ivan
Sparkes has covered these in Volume 6 of his Halesworth Through The Ages. I do
know that he lent money to a lot of people, partly to keep them out of trouble
and partly to finance their businesses. In this respect he was a sort of
philanthropist. He also allowed people to run up debt with him and seldom
pursued them vigorously if they made the smallest effort to pay some off. He
also allowed his meadows in London Road to be used for town fetes, etc. and
provided his wagons to organisations that entered floats on Carnival and other
Joy Days in the town. He would also allow the wagons to be used as platforms
for the Liberal and Conservative candidates in the Market Place at the time of
General Elections. Little was heard of the Labour party as being serious
opposition to the Liberals in these parts until after the war. Ernest Roe never
openly displayed his political colours, but there is little doubt that with his
background of allegiance to Independence and his association with Free Church
people his vote went to the Liberals.
I
left the firm in November 1942 being called for service in the RAF and did not
exercise my right to resume employment with them. However, I did maintain an
interest in what was going on there as I was living with my mother who was
still dealing with them after the war, and I spent five years from January 1947
until May 1952 in the offices of a large firm of building contractors who were
using the former indoor bowling green attached to the Angel Hotel as their
headquarters. Apart from my four and a half years service in the RAF I have
lived in or near Halesworth all my life.
To my knowledge Messrs Botwright and Smith
retired around 1943 or definitely towards the end of the war and at this time
Mr Roe would be about 74 himself and obviously needed to ease up. He therefore
invited Mr E F (Larry) Lee to become a working director of the firm. Mr Lee
would be in his early forties and had not been called into the armed services
because, I believe of his age and involvement with the Royal Observer Corps.
This was a nationwide organisation with branches across the country,
particularly on the east coast because of our proximity to the continent, whose
members learned to identify aircraft. They were linked with Anti-Aircraft
defences and the idea was for them to alert the authorities when enemy aircraft
were approaching so that the appropriate action could be taken. They had air
force blue battledress and also wore a beret, something like a Home Guard
outfit only with a blue uniform. Most of the members were too old, physically
unfit, or engaged in essential work and therefore exempt from service in the
Armed Forces. Larry Lee was second man in Barclays Bank where Roe & Co
banked so he would know the score, prospect wise! He had been in
the town for several years before the war and was a leading light in the
Observer Corps.
Roe
and Co Ltd continued to trade with E E Roe at the helm until the early 1950's
but he had taken up residence with Miss Woodyard at Gothic House, as his
domestic staff had gone and none of the reduced workforce was living in. By the
time he died in 1957 Mr Lee had stepped into his shoes in the business and by
becoming Chairman of Halesworth U D C and County Councillor for Halesworth.
Neither he nor his wife had anything to do with the Congregational Church.
Mr Roe resigned the position of Treasurer at the Church but before he did so he
bought a detached house on the Holton Road, which he gave the Church and which
became The Manse. Previous Ministers at the Church had lived in 23 Station
Road, which was rented accommodation.
Mr
Roe's estate was valued at £33,000. and we think that the majority of this went
to his late brother's family.
After
Mr Roe died Mr Lee took over the entire business, but by the early 1960's it
would appear that (and this is pure conjecture although I am sure that it is
not far wide of the mark) the grocery business was in decline and Mr Lee who by
this time was approaching retirement age himself decided to dispense with that
side of the business. He therefore put the large building and the Masonic Hall
up for auction, bought the former Kings Arms Hotel and moved the drapery
department there and continued to run the furnishing side of the business. He
did not seek re-election to the County Council and my brother took his place on
that Authority. Mr Lee moved to Sheringham with his wife and came to Halesworth
each week. As his staff diminished so did his activities and the business was
eventually run down and closed. He had continued to own the only motor hearse
in Halesworth with Miss Woodyard and Clifford Woolnough organising funerals as
there were very few other people doing them by that time”.
Charles William Ellis was another non-conformist colonist
retailer. He came to Halesworth,
probably sometime in the 1860s, from Hingham, a small market town in Norfolk,
where there were established communities of Independents and Quakers. Charles William was a baker and
confectioner, who married a Southwold girl and set up his business premises in
Pound St. In his early days in the town
he was a leading member of the Methodists, even laying a foundation stone for
their new Pound St chapel in 1877, but in 1879 he transferred to the
Congregational community, and was appointed a deacon in 1896. The development of the family fortunes is
summarised in Tables 6.22 and 6.23.
Table 6.22 Halesworth census
Halesworth Census 1871
Pound Street
Charles William Ellis 31 Hingham
Emma Ellis 29 Southwold
Wallace Ellis
3
Halesworth
Gertrude Ellis
6mths Halesworth
Table 6.23 Entries of Ellis family in Kelly’s and White’s trade
directories
Charles William Ellis snr.
1896: Kelly’s Directory baker and shopkeeper Pound
Street
1873: Harrods Directory shopkeeper and baker PoundStreet
1875: Kelly’s Directory baker
and shopkeeper Pound Street
1879: Kelly’s Directory baker
and shopkeeper Pound Street
1883: Kelly’s Directory baker and shopkeeper Pound
Street
1888: Kelly’s Directory baker and
shopkeeper Pound Street
1891-2: White’s Directory grocer and baker London Road
1900: Kelly’s Directory baker and shopkeeper London
Road
1896: Kelly's Directory baker
and shopkeeper Pound St
Charles William Ellis jnr
1896: Kelly's Directory baker
Bridge Street
1900: Kelly’s Directory baker Bridge
Street
1925: Kelly's Directory private resident The Bungalow, Holton Road
1925: Kelly's Directory baker
7 Bridge
Street
1925: Kelly's Directory glass
and china dealer 6 Bridge St
Bruce Ellis
1929: Kelly's
Directory baker
84 London Road
P. A. Ellis junior
1929: Kelly's
Directory tobacconist
45 Thoro'fare
Charles William snr. died in 1906 in possession of an estate
worth £2,740, which consisted mainly of a cluster of 8 properties close to his
shop in Pound St. This puts him towards
the top of the Halesworth retail entrepreneurs.
Samuel Kemp’s shop at 7 Bridge St was bought for his son, also
named Charles William. As mentioned in
the previous section it was probably Charles William jnr. that built a new
bakery and confectionary shop on the site of Samuel Kemp’s butchery. By 1925 he was also in possession of 6
Bridge St next door to the north, which he ran as a glass and china shop. In this year Charles William jnr. let 6
Bridge St as a butchery, to T. H. Parke of Metfield. Then in 1927 the lease was transferred to another butcher, Mrs H.
L. Cullen of Lowestoft.
The two adjacent properties of 6 and 7 Bridge St are built in
the same styles with unique patterns of ornamental brickwork, indicating that
the same builder constructed them both.
This supports the idea that Ellis developed the two properties together
on the sites of two former establishments, one of which had belonged to Samuel
Kemp. In the 1851 census, 6 Bridge St
was occupied by William Sadd, a ‘baker’s man’ and his family. Charles William’s
son, Bruce Ellis continued with his grandfather’s bakery in Pound St until
1972.
Despite these success stories of Independent families we must not press
the Halesworth model of Congregationalism and business success too far. The Congregational chapel represented a
substantial proportion of the town’s business families, from millers to
hatters. On the other side, the communicants of St Mary’s parish church
represented the likes of Patrick Stead and the agrarian landowners. These two religious establishments
highlighted the bipolar nature of the town’s prosperity. The evidence for Halesworth suggests that
the Congregationalists were a dominant force, but there is really not
sufficient evidence to apportion the town’s wealth between the two religious
groups.
On the church side we may cite the life of F. E.
Wright, a prominent Halesworth builder.
The Halesworth Times of March 30, 1972 paid tribute to Frederick
Ernest Wright on his retirement, at the age of 90, from the Parochial Church
Council on which he had served since 1908 being one of the oldest residents of
the town. He had also given up the office of people's warden, which he had
occupied for 21 years. For a few years he also served on the Urban District
Council.
During his lifetime Frederick Wright had served the Church of
England, first in the parish of Wenhaston, three miles away, where he was born,
and for nearly all his years at St. Mary's in the town. For ten years, as a
boy, he sang in the choir of St. Peter's. Wenhaston. At one time he was
carrying out the duties of churchwarden, serving as treasurer of the Church
Council and taking his place in the choir. He played his part in the life of
St. Mary's under six incumbents. Regular church attendance was an important
matter in his early days so that there were often times when not everybody
could get a seat in the church.
It was soon after he left Wenhaston School that he was
apprenticed to Wallace Ellis who followed the building trade in the village.
When he came to Halesworth in 1908, three years before marriage, he set up in
business on his own. At one time he employed about 20 men. In conversation with
the reporter, Frederick Wright recalled that he once employed a Beccles man
named Frederick Cole. For 18 years Mr. Cole cycled from his home at Beccles
early every morning to reach the builder's yard at the site now occupied by
Ridgeons, at precisely 7.55 a.m. In the evening he covered the same course in
the homeward direction.
Reflecting on his work, Wright said his firm built the first six
houses ordered by the Urban District Council.
They were put up in 1921 on a piece of land off the old Bungay Road up
from the railway station. Over the years he had erected "a good
number" of houses in the town and neighbouring country parishes on behalf
of private clients. He converted the old boys' school, a short distance from
his home, into a children's home. Now the property consists of tenements.
He looked back on many changes during the remarkably long period
he had been in business in the Suffolk town. During the town’s growth it had
gained a variety of new industries and had lost others. He recalled the closure
of four maltings, a carriage works, two boot factories and two breweries.
During the 1914-18 war Frederick Wright was in the British Red
Cross Society for a time. As part of the war effort Countess of Stradbroke
threw open her home, Henham Hall, for use as a hospital.
"We used to meet the
hospital trains at Halesworth Station and take the casualties by motor
ambulance to Henham Hall. They came
direct from France. The journey did not take long. He remembered seeing
soldiers ‘with mud on their boots’, just as they had come from the trenches”.
The outbreak of war had meant the end of his business. "I
had to shut up because they took all my men." he said. After his service
at Henham he was drafted to Ipswich to engage in aircraft construction and he
lived on the spot "We did the building at Portman Road, where the football
ground is now," he explained.
For a long time Freemasonry had been one of the interests of Mr.
Wright. One of the oldest members of the Prudence Lodge, Halesworth, he went
through the chair twice, in 1937 and l943. He got provincial honours in
1953. He also belonged to the Masonic
Chapter and had occupied the Chair. A member of the local Court of Foresters,
Mr. Wright was listed as the second oldest on the books.
Fig 6.10 Number of industries in relation to number of different
denominations (chapels) in early 19th century market towns
In all his civic activities Frederick Wright was
typical of generations of Halesworth’s businessmen. He fits into a pattern revealed by several national studies of
large numbers of 19th century urban communities, which have revealed
that both religion and class are the main determinants of being successful in
business. For example, one wide-ranging
statistical study showed that given that a person was a member of the town
elite, other things being equal, membership of the Church of England markedly
reduced the chances of being a businessman.
Conversely being Jewish or a member of the Church of Scotland increased
the chances. However, Nonconformists showed a weaker tendency towards business,
although this was only at the 10% level of significance. Church of England
membership, attending Oxford or Cambridge Universities, and being in the elite,
reduced the likelihood of being a businessman by slightly more than the
religious affiliation. By contrast, attending public school, although a
negative influence, was smaller and less statistically significant.
This type of study, but restricted to a county scale, was carried out for Suffolk by a local historian Gwen Dyke in the 1950s (Fig 6.10). With respect to the towns she selected for her project, a scatter diagram of industries against different non-conformist denominations is wide, but it does indicate a general trend for the two parameters to be positively related. Of particular interest is the cluster of 7 towns with a low number of industries in relation to the number of denominations. The existence of such towns demonstrates that spiritual independence was not always the drive for economic betterment.
In Dykes’ study, Halesworth and Woodbridge were
two outstanding towns with a particularly high number of industries in relation
to their denominational diversity. Were
they exceptions to the general rule? In
which case Halesworth has other strong factors in favour of its high level of
business activity. Sticking to the
general dimension of religious freedom, the level of non-conformity is not the
only factor in Halesworth’s favour.
Going back in time, in the 1767 national Census of Papists, Halesworth
returned a relatively substantial number of Catholics, all prospering in trade,
a saddler, a draper, three shoemakers and a tailor, all of them born in the
parish, and some were still in houses the family had occupied in the Hearth Tax
of 1674. The Census was undertaken at
the request of the House of Lords as a result of press agitation over the
perceived laxity of the Anglican bishops in tolerating the presence of Papists
within the parishes of their dioceses.
Protection of the Halesworth Catholics was probably down to the Bedingfield
family, who, although not dominant in the town, were not constrained in their
patronage by any overbearing resident gentry.
In fact, historically, the level of central control in Halesworth had
always been relatively low. Throughout
the medieval period three competing manors had regulated the town’s business
life. By the 18th century
this had been reduced to two. The
‘Manor of Halesworth’ passed through the hands of a succession of absentee
lords who regarded it as a personal business asset. ‘Rectory Manor’ was also subject to a changing series of lords
because it was an important church asset, managed by successive Rectors of
Halesworth, who controlled the allocation of land to the north of the
river. Both manorial organizations
seemed to have taken a flexible approach to the distribution and sale of
copyholds, and this was probably an important factor in attracting new
businesses to the town. To this we may
add the random appearance of exceptional individuals like Robert Reeve, brewer,
and Patrick Stead, maltster, who in any place would be likely to give a lasting
boost to the local business environment.
As a general principle we can say that it is probable that each town
developed in its own peculiar way, and that non-conformist freedom was just one
of many factors influencing its economic development in the 19th
century.
Finally, there is the problem of putting changes of
the retail community into an historical context. Halesworth was sited at a convenient inland river crossing, which
a thousand years later determined the 18th century financial
investment that connected a minor bridging point with the sea. Dating from this
time, the physical remains of its maltings symbolise the processes surrounding
the introduction of sea-borne capitalism into the countryside. The premises of the bankers that colonised
the town still dwarf most of the vernacular buildings. Environments are not passive; they perform,
they have effects; they extend the local to the national and beyond. Through the stream of culture carried by the
likes of Frederick Wright, Halesworth is a resource to feed the imagination of
those who follow its roads and footpaths and attempt to resurrect people in
whose footsteps they tread. The culture
stream of the mind carries important universal messages of power, deprivation,
grief and goodness. It is in this
sense that the authors took up their task of compilation and research; one of
us to enhance her local birthright, and the other to reach back to a community
that was lived and worked by his relatives down to the present day. Being thereby selected by Halesworth we
have brought our own subjectivities, histories and geographies to the town, and
it is our combined viewing of it that gives it its significance, or indeed its
irrelevance, to others. However, the
hope is that this personal quest may influence some of those who shop unseeing
in Market Place and Thoroughfare, to attach themselves to the locale through
their own personal thread of cultural ecology, and create a landscape of the
mind. The lack of this cultural thread
is well understood by every colonist, particularly those arriving in Halesworth
as part of the process of counter-urbanisation, where rural life is preferred
to town and city living.
The British
industrial revolution was well and truly embedded in Halesworth’s culture by
the middle of the nineteenth century, by which time half the population of the
country lived in urban areas, where less than half of them had been born. A large proportion of this townward movement
of countryfolk to Halesworth ended up in the tightly packed rows and yards of
Chediston Street. The classic
description of the outcome of this national high-speed investment in
urbanisation is that written by a contemporary social reformer, J. P. Kay, who
describes the settlement of Irish immigrants along the banks of the river
Medlock in Manchester.
" A portion of low, swampy ground,
liable to be frequently inundated, and to constant exhalation, is included between
a high bank over which the Oxford Road passes, and a bend of the river Medlock,
where its course is impeded by weirs. This unhealthy spot lies so low that the
chimneys of its houses, some of them three stories high, are little above the
level of the road. About two hundred of these habitations are crowded together
in an extremely narrow space, and are inhabited by the lowest Irish. Most of
these houses have also cellars, whose floor is scarcely elevated above the
level of the water flowing in the Medlock. The soughs are destroyed or out of
repair; and these narrow abodes are in consequence always damp, and on the
slightest rise in the river, which is a frequent occurrence, are flooded to the
depth of several inches. This district has been frequently the haunt of hordes
of thieves and desperadoes who defied the law, and is always inhabited by a
class resembling savages in their appetites and habits. It is surrounded on
every side by some of the largest factories of the town, whose chimneys vomit
forth dense clouds of smoke, which hangs heavily over this insalubrious
region."
Here we have
the main features of the picture of 19th century urbanisation
wherever it occurred. The standard
entrepreneurial formula was the availability of cheap land and proximity to
industrial activity, allied with a brick-building technology to maximise the
packing density of houses and people.
This conjunction of immigrants and a riverine environment had clearly
occurred in Chediston Street by the time of the 1851 census. This ‘barracks of industry’ was revealed at
the end of the century in the first large scale Ordnance Survey maps (Fig 6.11A ), which show a labyrinth of rows
of small terrace cottages running down towards the Blyth, the whole
overshadowed by the massive imprint of the Halesworth Brewery. However, very
few, if any of the inhabitants of Chediston St worked there. Smoke-polluted air, and the absence of
sunlight and fresh air were not only to be found in the expanding cities. At this time, the statutory definition of
overcrowding was such that a family of four adults and eight children could
live in a four-roomed house, and yet not be regarded as being in need of
re-housing.
Fig 6.11 Chediston Street: 1904-1975
A 1904
Yards listed
in the 1851 census: Ba = Baker’s; Co = Collett’s; Cl = Clarke’s; Me = Melan’s;
Pr = Prime’s; CoL = Collett’s Lower; Ch = Chappell’s; Ne = Newson’s
B 1975
When
Chediston Street was first developed for mass housing, probably sometime in the
first two decades of the 19th century, immigrants were at the mercy
of the speculative builder, who could build whatever type of house gave him the
biggest profit. The builder, or
builders, left their mark in Chediston Street in its ‘Yards’. These were characteristic of this part of town,
and consisted of irregular groups of small dwellings, off the main road to
Harleston, separated from each other by a narrow alley or a long wall. The miseries of day to day living in
Chediston Street were largely the result of this unrestricted private
enterprise, which is partly revealed in the names of the yards. These names could have reflected the owners
of the narrow fields and closes of wet pasture running down to the river that
were developed to run up houses, back to back and facing each other across
narrow alleys. It was probably by good
fortune, rather than deliberate planning, that sewerage was separated from
water supply and the community avoided disease of epidemic proportions. From the time of its first settlers,
Halesworth’s geology seems to have favoured a supply of good deep well
water. This was an important factor in
the siting of breweries and a mineral water factory in the town. It also greatly lessened surface
contamination from cesspools and dung heaps.
Cross contamination had wreaked havoc through England’s city dwellers in
the great cholera epidemic of 1830-2.
A significant
landscape element in the 1904 map of the Chediston St community is the large
area marked ‘Allotment Gardens’.
Allotments started as a rural 'dole' in the early 16th century. They
were usually charitable allocations to those people who, after the enclosure of
the village open fields, ended up with virtually nothing. The allotments of Chediston St are an
indicator that Halesworth had aligned itself with the Victorian allotment
movement, albeit probably as an afterthought on the part of the Urban District
Council. The relatively large patch of
land so designated shows that the town’s leading liberals and property owners
were moved to provide a counterweight to the town’s pressures of population
growth and urbanisation. Generally, the allotment movement brought the culture
of the urban labouring poor more closely into line with the mainstream values
of respectable mid-Victorian England.
A major argument for the provision of allotments in the 19th
century was that if the labouring population had some property, then they would
see sanctity in the property of other classes. Also, it was no doubt thought
good for the labourers' moral well being that they should be gardening in their
leisure hours. The liberal-minded citizens encouraged allotments because they
were a compensation for low wages. They
enabled more independence and were a partial antidote to the cramped and
unhealthy existence. Some heated politics revolved around the provision of
allotments at the end of the 19th century, with the occasional election of
'allotment candidates'.
Provision of
land for allotments had become a public duty, but prejudice against applying
public enterprise to solve the need for the proper housing of immigrant workers
died slowly. On a national scale, public authorities provided only 5% of new
working-class houses built between 1890 and 1914. Halesworth’s first council houses were not erected until 1920s,
on Bungay Rd to the north of the station.
A London-based working men’s housing association reached Halesworth at
around the same time, where it was responsible for erecting a small estate at
Mount Pleasant- a name that proclaimed freedom at last from the jerry builders
of the damp valleys.
Although slum
clearance was first initiated with the Housing Act of 1875, it only began in
earnest in the second decade after World War 2, when, as part of national
policy, the Borough Council began to thin out Chediston Street’s congested
yards, and started building new homes on higher land with a suburban allowance
of space. Comparison of the layout of
Chediston Street in 1904 with 1975 (Fig 6.11 A B) shows clearly that the rows
had all but disappeared and properties with a good allowance of internal space
and gardens had been built on the site of the allotments.
An
interesting aspect of the 19th century expansion of Chediston Street
is that an uncontrolled, or improperly controlled, outgrowth of a small market
town had become the home, not of an ethnic minority as in the Medlock community
of Manchester, but of the representative citizen drawn from nearby villages.
The proportion of colonists in the Chediston Street community was about the
same as that for the town as a whole i.e. around two thirds. There are no statistical differences in
status and occupations between the families of Chediston Street and its yards,
nor with the other areas of the town.
In all parts of the town the neighbourhoods comprised a mixed population
of labourers, small craftsmen, and journeymen with a good scattering of
paupers. Nevertheless, it seems that by
reputation at least, the neighbourhood was a place apart, to be avoided if one
had the choice. Regarding the social
impact of ‘demon drink’, the neighbourhood was served by six public houses, but
even so it was not over-provided when one considers that the town, at one time
or another, had a total of around thirty pubs in a radius of about half a mile
from the Town Bridge. However,
Halesworth’s only 19th century murder took place there, which was
particularly notorious because the victim was one of the town’s constables (P.C.
Ebenezer Tye killed by John Docker on Nov. 25th. 1862) and
therefore created a perception of a lawless community.
Quite soon
after it was developed, Chediston Street seems to have become a community
adrift from the church, and its Mission Room stands today as a reminder that
the community was once regarded as a Godless outpost in need of salvation. It appears that an undenominational Gospel Mission had been
established in Chediston Street as an early response to a perceived need for
focused evangelism. This initiative was
hijacked by the parish in 1898, when the influential god-fearing families of
Cross and Ram presented the Rector of Halesworth with a Mission Room in Prime’s
Yard for regular services and lectures. This urgent effort to place a
spearhead of the Church into the heart of an indifferent congregation, just a
few hundred yards from St Mary’s Church, is the origin of the present
building. The residents of Chediston St
also attracted the attention of the Salvation Army. Derek Newby recalls that
between the wars, the Salvation Army, had a Corps in the town, and held meetings
in a second ‘tin tabernacle’ next to the Mission Room. Up until the Second World War they also had
open-air meetings on Sunday evenings on the corner of Rectory Street and would
seek offerings from those en-route to both chapel and church!
After 1851,
the positions of the yards were not noted in subsequent censuses, and were
never marked on a map, so they have to be located from the perambulation of the
recording officer who carried out the 1851 census. From this census it is possible to tabulate the relative
positions of the yards and their households in relation to the main spine of
Chediston St (Table 6.24). The
population was virtually the same in 1901, but the Yards were not
designated. To get an idea of their
positions in the landscape, the 1851 distribution has been transferred to the
1904 map by following in the recorder’s footsteps and noting the positions of
key features, such as Rectory Lane, the public houses and entrances off the
main road (Fig A). This map gives an
approximate picture of the design of these yard features, which are not found
anywhere else in Halesworth.
Table
6.24 Distribution of Chediston St
household’s in 1851 census
Group |
Chediston St |
Baker's |
Collett's |
Parson's Lne |
Chilver's |
Clarks's |
Mellan's |
Primes' |
Chappell's |
Newson's |
Almshs |
1 |
3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 |
|
2 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3 |
3(+1) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 |
|
|
13 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5 |
|
|
|
3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7 |
|
|
|
|
3(+1) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
8 |
5(+1) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
9 |
|
|
|
|
|
17(+2) |
|
|
|
|
|
10 |
7(+1) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 |
|
|
|
|
12 |
4(+1) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
13 |
|
|
4(+2) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
14 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
15 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
10(+1) |
|
|
|
16 |
6 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
17 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3(+1) |
|
|
|
18 |
34(+1) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
19 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7 |
|
|
20 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5 |
|
21 |
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
22 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 |
|
23 |
26(+2) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
24 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
14 |
25 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
26 |
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
27 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
Group = Block’s of households listed consecutively
by enumerator
Total
households = 166; including 3 households in Parson’s Lane, excluding the
Almshouses
(+) = empty houses
Table 6.25 Persons designated as paupers in Chediston St: 1851 Census
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
9 |
ChSt |
Collett’s
Yd |
Joseph
Pryor |
head |
married |
77 |
|
pauper
whitesmith |
Peasenhall |
10 |
ChSt |
Collett’s
Yd |
Thomas
Goodwin |
head |
widower |
80 |
|
pauper
late schoolmaster |
St Andrews |
13 |
ChSt |
Collett’s
Yd |
Sarah
Mills |
head |
widow |
|
84 |
pauper |
Metfield |
14 |
ChSt |
Collett’s
Yd |
Sarah
Mills |
head |
widow |
|
76 |
pauper |
Halesworth |
28 |
ChSt |
Chilver’s
Yard |
Lucy Gower |
head |
unmarried |
|
47 |
pauper |
Bulcamp
House |
35 |
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
Elizabeth
Bird |
head |
widow |
|
52 |
laundress
pauper |
Westhall |
|
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
Mary Ann
Bird |
grandau |
|
|
13 |
pauper |
Bulcamp
House |
|
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
Harriet
Bird |
grandsn |
|
|
9 |
pauper |
Bulcamp
House |
|
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
James Bird |
grandsn |
|
2 |
|
pauper |
Bulcamp
House |
41 |
ChSt |
Clark’es
Yard |
William
Hart |
head |
|
73 |
|
ag lab
pauper |
Heveningham |
|
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
James Hart
|
son |
unmarried |
28 |
|
ag lab
pauper |
Chediston |
|
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
Samuel
Ducker |
grandsn |
|
15 |
|
pauper |
Halesworth |
46 |
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
James
Edwards? |
head |
widower |
66 |
|
pauper |
Cookley |
48 |
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
? Clark |
grandfh |
|
96 |
|
pauper
late sawyer |
Southwold |
|
ChSt |
Clarke’s
Yard |
Elizabeth |
grandmo |
|
|
91 |
pauper |
Halesworth |
62 |
ChSt |
|
Henry
Lockwood |
head |
married |
30 |
|
shoemaker
pauper |
|
70 |
ChSt |
Prime’s
Yard |
James
Chilves |
head |
married |
69 |
|
ag lab
pauper |
Halesworth |
75 |
ChSt |
Prime’s
Yard |
William
Alexander |
head |
married |
74 |
|
thatcher
pauper |
Mendham |
77 |
ChSt |
Prime’s
Yard |
Hannah
Bird |
head |
Wife? |
|
41 |
pauper |
Wrentham |
|
ChSt |
Prime’s
Yard |
Eliza Bird
|
daughter |
|
|
13 |
pauper |
Halesworth |
|
ChSt |
Prime’s
Yard |
James Bird |
son |
|
10 |
|
pauper |
Halesworth |
|
ChSt |
Prime’s
Yard |
Louisa
Bird |
daughter |
|
|
8 |
pauper |
Halesworth |
|
ChSt |
Prime’s
Yard |
Maria Bird |
daughter |
|
|
6 |
pauper |
Halesworth |
|
ChSt |
Prime’s
Yard |
Charlotte
Bird |
daughter |
|
|
4 |
pauper |
Halesworth |
88 |
ChSt |
|
Rebecca
Heffer |
head |
unmarried |
|
84 |
pauper |
Huntingfield |
96 |
ChSt |
|
Emma
Foreman |
head |
widow |
|
85 |
pauper |
Halesworth |
113 |
ChSt |
|
Robert
Samson |
head |
married |
73 |
|
ag lab
pauper |
All Saints |
133 |
ChSt |
Newson’s
Yd |
William
Stocks |
head |
widower |
76 |
|
labourer
pauper |
Halesworth |
1 & 2 = fef no in Chediston St.; 3=
yard; 4= family category; 5= statis; 6= age males; 7= age females;
8=occupation; 9=place of birth
Regarding the special economic status of those who lived in Chediston St, it is possible to locate those at the bottom of the social pyramid from the 1851 census. At that time there was a total of 15 families (28 persons) censused in the ‘street’ that were classed as paupers. Of these, most (24) were to be found living in yards (Table 6.25). Eleven of them were born in Halesworth and almost half of them were age 65 and over. A remarkable proportion of the elderly were living into their 80s and 90s, which indicates that health was not a major issue for the yard folk.
There were eight children listed as paupers, all members of two families named Bird, both of which were headed by widows. Three were the children of the unmarried daughter of Elizabeth Bird (age 52) living in Prime’s Yard. Elizabeth was herself a pauper, but her daughter, Hannah (age 38) is described as a washerwoman. Both were born in Westhall. Hannah was unmarried and her children had all been born in Bulcamp workhouse.
A second Bird family listed in the 1851 census lived in Clarke’s Yard. Here, another Hannah Bird, a laundress pauper, was head of household and she had five children aged between 2 and 13.
Hannah and her husband James, an agricultural labourer, were present in the 1841 census, when they were located in Collett’s Yard and headed by James Bird an agricultural labourer.
James
Bird 30 (died 1849)
Hannah Bird 30
Ann Bird
6 (died 1845)
Eliza Bird 4
James Bird 1
Slum ecology, of course, revolves around the supply of settlement space, and in the two Bird families we have the necessary conditions used to define slums from Dickensian times to the present day. Central to the definition are poverty, overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure. In this regard, the Bird households symbolise important additional Victorian gender issues of widows and single mothers. At this time there was one other Bird family in Halesworth, again headed by a widow, at Mill Post. No occupations were given for this widow, Mary Bird, and Robert her 20-year-old son.
Eleven years later, two Bird females were the victims of necessity when they were imprisoned for stealing a few pence worth of turnip tops and turnips. Sarah and her daughter May, both field workers, are an example of what widowhood and poverty could lead to.
Halesworth Times: Wednesday February 12th 1862
Magistrates
J.W.Brooke chairman, Rev. Henry Owen, Rev, W.C.Edgell, A. Johnston,
T Rant & H.A.S.Bence.
Sarah Bird and May Bird, mother and daughter, were charged with having,
on the 7th day of February last at Halesworth, wilfully and maliciously done
damage to the property of Mr. William Atmer of Halesworth, by stealing and
taking away some turnip tops and turnips, for the value of 6d; his property.
Both prisoners pleaded guilty and excused themselves for committing the
offence from being in a state of destitution. They are however old offenders.
The Chairman said destitution was no excuse for stealing - the law had provided
for the destitute, and want would not palliate offences of that kind. The Bench
sentenced each to 14 days imprisonment in Ipswich gaol with hard labour.
This was probably
the Sarah Bird living in Chediston Street in 1861. She was unmarried with two children.
Sarah and the two
elder children, Mary Ann, age 25 (probably the May Bird who was sentenced with
her mother), and James (age 13), were all classed as ‘worker in the fields’.
Sarah also had a grandaughter, Isabella (age 2) living in the household, who
was probably the daughter of Mary Ann.
Elizabeth Bird
who was recorded as a head of household in the 1851 census was still a
laundress pauper living in Clarke’s Yard. In the same household were her
unmarried daughter Dinah, a washerwoman, age 38, and the three grandchildren
who were present in 1851, now classified as paupers. These children were probably Dinah Bird’s offspring. The Sarah Bird, who was imprisoned for
stealing turnips, was possibly Elizabeth’s other daughter. Neither men nor marriage figure in these
Bird households.
We must be careful not to dwell too much on the designation of pauper. Although in dire straights, they were a minority in the Street and the town. Also, there were families in the Yards that were coping, if not having some measure of success. For example, the Adams at 122 Chappell’s Yard was a family of eleven, composed of two adults, born in Halesworth, Benjamin age 47, a journeyman bricklayer and his wife Mary, age 45. Their nine children were age 5 to 23. Four were classed as scholars, and the others all had jobs; Benjamin (23) was a journeyman bricklayer like is father, Fanny (21) was a fitter of lace and collars, James (19) was a journeyman carpenter, Robert (17) was the second journeyman bricklayer in the family, and Amos (15) was a labourer. The Adams were typical of many families in Chediston Street that, on the face of it, adapting to the economic realities of life in a mid-19th century market town.
The effects of the first long bout of Halesworth’s housing
redevelopment, which began in the 1920s was evident in the 1975 O.S, map. Chediston Street’s Victorian yards had
largely reverted to green spaces.
Today, the view along the beck, from the footpath that runs from the end
of Chediston St to the river, is truly rural, and has probably changed little
from what could be seen by the Birds from the bottom of Clarke’s Yard.
"Sustainable
development" has become a catch-all phrase for forms of economic
development, which stress the importance of environmental quality and the
conservation of nature's assets. Definitions of sustainable development abound,
and some analysts worry that if sustainability eludes formal definition, it cannot
serve as a basis for formulating appropriate environmental policy. ……There is
also an underlying assumption that sustainability is desirable - it is a policy
objective we ought to seek to achieve. In other words, deep questions of ethics
and morality are involved in the sustainability debate.
R. Kerry Turner Earth Scan: Blueprint 2
Up to the outbreak of the Second World War, small towns had long
played an important role in the economy of rural England. Their initial function
was often established by Royal Charter in the 15th or 16th century or, like
Halesworth, even earlier. Their prime role was as mercantile centres to serve
the needs of their rural locality. There was a close working relationship
between businesses and households within a town and in the immediate
surrounding countryside. The Royal Charters were an early example of town
planning, often establishing a minimum distance of around 7 miles between
markets to ensure that they would not compete with each other. Over the years, these towns developed other
functions. They became the base for the administration of local government,
they also formed an increasingly important focus for social activity, and the
location of charitable institutions such as almshouses, hospitals and schools.
Associated with all these developments of a close-knit society, they grew in
importance as centres of employment and population.
Through the last millennium, Halesworth’s economy was following
a fundamental trajectory of economic development. Named the Bucklin model (Figure 7.1) this represents a scheme
based on charting average retail costs against the level of economic
development and urbanization. Where the purchasing power of the population is
low and diffuse, then periodic markets and fairs will dominate the retail
system. As economic development takes hold, purchasing power increases and can
be concentrated so that the operating costs of the fixed dealer fall, and the
periodic market becomes regular and permanent.
This will first be consolidated in structural terms within a special
market place. Eventually, in
operational terms, shops open throughout the week rather than on a specific day
or days. A market hall may appear.
Craftsmen-retailers can now establish fixed live-over shops. With further economic development, the
production of consumer goods becomes larger in scale and more standardized; it
also becomes concentrated in favoured locations. The small-scale craftsman is
thus undercut, though survival is possible by concentration on quality, and the
meeting of individual demands. Even so, the specialist retailer, whose
expertise is in retail business rather than in the product, becomes
dominant. Further increases in scale
bring large retail institutions, the department store for example, into being.
All this is necessarily based on the growth in both personal mobility and the
nationwide movement of pre-packaged, standardized products. There is no doubt
that Figure 7.1 fairly represents the process of change which took place in
British retailing, although perhaps a little greater allowance should be made
for overlap; periodic markets (e.g. ‘Sunday Markets’) have certainly not
disappeared from the retail scene in Britain, although they now tend to be held
on land away from urban centres in order to reduce operating costs. What
however is much more difficult, is to relate the points at which the graph
lines intersect, i.e. the time at which one form of retailing succeeds another
as the dominant, to specific historical periods, rather than referring to the
very vague concepts of economic development and urbanisation.
There are a number of histories of retailing, some dealing with
the topic in general, of which the best known is Davis's ‘A history of
shopping’ published in 1966, but most deal with specific periods or with
special aspects. Unfortunately there is little in the way of clear consensus as
to when the critical transformations took place, a problem which is made all
the more difficult since they occurred at different times in different
places. London was clearly the leader,
and there were also differences in shopping behaviour between social
classes. Different groups shop at
different times of day and home visits and delivery services make an
appearance.
Fig 7.1 Bucklin’s model of the history of retailing
Most historians of this phenomenon agree that a major
transformation pivoted about the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Before that point,
shop, workshop and home, were all combined in one, that is, craftsmen-retailers
produced goods for sale on the same premises where they lived, often with a
number of apprentices. The skills handed on to the apprentices were concerned
with the product, not with retailing as a business. Thus the tea merchant
bought supplies in bulk from London and was an expert on teas, not someone
selling a ready-packed standard product. The cabinet maker constructed and sold
furniture usually made to a specific order, he did not simply sell factory
manufactured goods. Prices were not fixed, there were no tickets indicating the
cost of the goods and 'abatement' could be negotiated; in short, prices were
determined by haggling. The streets were unpaved and unlit so that 'shopping'
as such, in the modern sense, did not exist; rather, marketing was carried out
by those lowest in the social scale, and where high quality goods were
concerned, they were brought to the house for inspection. Shops did not
advertise, although there were signs for the illiterate. The weekly market and
the itinerant trader were the basic mainstays of the system. After the 1820s
all these conditions were gradually reversed. Permanent brick-built shops
appeared and improvements in glass production meant that they could have
lighted windows for display. Specialist non-resident retailers sold goods that
were nationally distributed under brand or company names. These goods were
offered at fixed prices and there was no abatement. Streets were paved and lit,
so that visits to large, well-stocked shops became a pleasure and, indeed, a
pastime for the well off. Restaurants and teashops came into being to give the
opportunity for rest and further to enhance the enjoyment of shopping. Shops
began to publicise themselves and the national producers advertised nationwide
the standard goods they were distributing. A wholesale system came into being
as an intermediary between producer and retailer. The old weekly market became
no more than a possibly busier day for shops, which were open all week, and in
many cases 'all hours'. Annual fairs lost all their 'selling' function and
became devoted to pleasure. It is true that such a transformation did not
affect all types of shops uniformly. Perishable foodstuffs, such as fruit and
vegetables, continued to be offered mainly in the open markets and market halls. Greengrocery was one of the last operations
to be located in fixed shops.
Halesworth’s ancient guild of grocers would have dealt with luxury or
semi-luxury dry goods, such as tea, coffee and sugar. The description of changes in retailing, which has just been set
out, certainly epitomises the transformation of Halesworth and can be traced
through the census returns from 1851.
Some have located a national critical point of inflection in the
slow evolution of the retail trade in the epoch of Elizabeth I and the early
Stuarts in London. It was in the
capital city that retailing began to come of age and to take seriously the
business of wooing the consumer. Something that we nowadays recognize as
shopping had begun. London was highly
exceptional, but even so, and, referring back to Figure 7.1, the break was
identified between the periodic market and the craftsman-retailer rather than
the coming of modern shopping.
Another break, associated with the rise of consumerism, may
be seen in the historical development of sport in Western society from the
seventeenth to the twentieth century.
This firm trend conveys how sport both shapes and reflects the history
of individual nations, and its origins are reflected in the competitive spirit
in close-knit social groups. The starting point was the hamlets and villages,
which were isolated microcosms of all human behaviour that gave worth and
self-sufficiency to human primates. In
particular, the growth of sport and leisure activities began to increase
substantially during the late 19th century, at a time when the production of
goods shifted away from the home. As a
national culture developed that idealised the purchase of mass-produced commodities,
the production of sporting goods became a significant industry.
Sport has been increasingly organised and regulated from
the time of the Ancient Olympics up to the present century. Behaviours
necessary for food and survival became regulated activities done for pleasure
or competition on an increasing scale, for example hunting, fishing, and
horticulture became the focus for local gatherings of people who shared these
passions, and wanted to become the best. The Industrial Revolution and mass
production brought increased leisure, which allowed increases in spectator
sports, less elitism in sports, and greater accessibility to all classes of
society. These trends continued to gather momentum with the advent of mass
media and global communication. Professionalism became prevalent, further
adding to the increase in sport's popularity through the cult of personalities.
Not only has professionalism helped increase the popularity of sports, but
additionally the need to have fun and take a break from a hectic workday or to
relieve unwanted stress of mass production, has grown with the other
professions that constitute consumerism.
The Western World now exhibits a passion for sport as
spectators and participants in contemporary society. Sporting experiences
constitute an integral component of life, and buying into it is an integral
part of consumerism. Trying to
understand how the people of the past thought about sport and engaged in
sporting behaviours before the age of television, endorsements by sports stars,
and big-time professional and college athletics, will generate lively classroom
discussions in school and university, as instructors and students investigate
the role of sport in cultural history.
Suffolk has come a long way from the days when the major
competitive activity at village level hinged on the fighting activities of its
menfolk. Alan Jobson referring to the
relative fighting qualities of his home village of Westleton captured this era.
“We were so renowned in this that visitors in gangs would
come from nearby villages to try their weight with ours, and we would fight
them home again until they had had enough.
Blood flowing, clothes off piecemeal; until we and they were half naked”
The murderous 19th century inter-county activity
of ‘camping’, is a significant Suffolk landmark in the development of sport
hooliganism.
Almost from the moment that it was codified on the playing
fields of major public schools, football developed from the ad hoc arrangements
of amateurs at a rate comparable to today’s computer industry. Within ten years of the rules being first
published there was a national league.
Industrial plutocrats saw the game as a vehicle for prestige, so they
paid the better talent to turn out for their teams. Amateurism is gone.
Sport’s sole purpose, allied with consumerism, is to generate cash, or
in the case of the Olympics, to regenerate an entire city economy.
In an account of the sporting facilities in 20th
century Halesworth, Derek Newby highlights a change from the ad-hoc
arrangements for townspeople to participate in football, cricket and tennis, to
the organisation of funds from central and local government for establishing
standard playing facilities of pitches and courts, as a political imperative
that yielded votes. This national
movement gathered momentum in the town after the Second World War when
concerted efforts were made to transfer activities from the time-honoured
‘grace and favour’ use of pastures grazed by cattle and donkeys at the
outskirts of the town, to a permanent sports ground
“When the
war ended in 1945 Admiral Bruen had left Highfield and the meadow had been sold
and the new owner had planted it with apple trees - and somehow (possibly by
compulsory purchase) the Bungay Road Playing Field had passed into the
ownership of East Suffolk County Council who wanted it for a new school. It is
believed that the foundations of the present Middle School were laid before the
outbreak of war, but construction was not resumed and the school was not
completed until the 1950's.
The
result of this was that the homecoming footballers and heroes of the 2nd world
war had no suitable pitch and for a time played their matches on Fen Farm
meadow off School Lane. The surface there was far from satisfactory as it was
bumpy with molehills and indents of cattle hoofs, and to complicate matters
there is a footpath running through the centre of what was the pitch. The
football club continued playing at a variety of venues, sometimes on their
opponent's grounds, although the cricket club still used the school field in
Bungay Road, having been given permission to do so for some time after the new
school was built. There were two grass tennis courts in one corner of the field
before the war, but football was seldom played there. Halesworth Tennis Club
was reformed after the war and used two hard courts at the top of Dairy Hill
owned by Mr E E Roe. These were subsequently sold and the land used for
bungalows and the tennis club moved to grass courts in the grounds of
"Fairstead" at Spexhall by courtesy of Mrs Rupert Steward. The club
was busy fund-raising with a view to buying land and laying their own hard
courts. Several enquiries for sites were made including one for the site of the
present fire station. The Club was told that this was left to the town and had
to remain an open space as a play area for mothers to take their children
"forever". Within a year or so the power of big brother at County
Hall had again stepped in to take what it wanted from the citizens of
Halesworth and half the land was used for the fire station. A substantial tiled
shelter had been erected at the cemetery end and now stands derelict. At least
half an acre is now unused and overgrown with blackberry bushes. But back to
sport! By the beginning of the 1950's Halesworth Tennis Club had raised over
£600 towards what they hoped would be their own courts, but before they could
find a suitable site a headline, "All over the world to fight but now
nowhere to play" appeared in the Halesworth Times and this produced an
offer from Mr F Gowing who owned two meadows at the top of Dairy Hill. These
both had quite steep slopes to Loampit Lane, but the offer was accepted by the
football club. Halesworth Urban District Council. as the local rating
authority, then decided that facilities were needed for all sports, and held a
public meeting inviting representatives from the sports clubs to attend. The
eventual result of this was the formation of The Halesworth Playing Fields
Association. The original constitution of this incorporated a clause stating
that the committee appointed to run it should comprise of two people from each
user club, two members of H U D C and two from the general public. The Town
Clerk at the time. Mr I C Clare, was its first secretary. Initially the Tennis
Club viewed the project with some suspicion as they were the only potential
user club with any capital and it's members were not impressed with what they
had seen of public courts in neighbouring towns. Nor were they too happy with
the offer on the table which was to part with their £600 to acquire Mr Gowing's
land in return for which they would., at some unspecified time in the future,
be rewarded with the restricted use of two tennis courts. The Council agreed to
contribute to the overall cost each year, but it was up to the Clubs to be
responsible for and improve the facilities for their particular club to suit
their own requirements. A central cricket square was laid, but the outfield
encroached on to the football pitch and there was little room for a separate
hockey pitch. It was also difficult to keep children and dog owners off it when
it was not being used for cricket. The hockey Club had been formed and was
using a field opposite Wenhaston Grange, but the cricket club soon returned to
the school grounds, courtesy of the headmaster, and room was made for a hockey
pitch on the playing field.
The
first pavilion, initially to be used by all sports, was a wooden structure
built by Mr F G Read, a town councillor and engineer at the United Dairies. For
a variety of reasons the combined use did not work very well with the football
and cricket members, although the tennis club who had been persuaded to join
the combined playing field venture were fairly well satisfied with the two hard
courts that had been put down and the terms they had negotiated for their
exclusive use of them. Their pavilion accommodation was separate and included
facilities for ladies as well as men and these were satisfactory.
It is clear that contemporary leisure now drives and
consolidates global cohesion, mutual understanding and world development. It encompasses a whole raft of disparate
activities such as adventure and risk-taking, eating fast food, visiting
heritage sites and theme parks, downloading pornography, or taking illegal
drugs (with or without accompanying clubbing). Many of these activities in turn
involve the mass consumption of commercially provided goods and services, which
offer the usual dilemmas of choice and freedom, commercial agendas and personal
uses. The topics can be points of departure to examine leisure activities
critically, and to focus on real-life complexities, including ethical dilemmas
and aggressive nationalism.
It is in this wide perspective of social change that the
study of the history of sport, recreation and leisure, facilitates a more
comprehensive understanding of consumerism. Interconnections between sport and
other aspects of culture are reflected in sport and religion; sport and the
search for community; sport and modernisation; sport and health reform
movements; sport and gender issues; sport and race relations; sport and rural
culture; sport and technology; sport and education; sport and politics; and
sport and consumerism. The study of the history of sport, recreation, and
leisure illuminates most contemporary critical issues in social, cultural,
economic, and political history.
Halesworth’s pride in its achievements
as a market town came to a head in the early 1970s. If one looks to an occasion, it was probably articulated at the
annual dinner of the Halesworth Urban District Council, held at the Rifle Hall
in October 1970. The town’s
representative on the County Council and chairman of the UDC, Donald Newby
responded to a toast “To the Town of
Halesworth” as follows:
‘After years in the wilderness we are going
ahead. Our rateable value has doubled
in the past six years. Apart from
Felixstowe, a much larger community than us, our population is expanding faster
than any other small town in East Suffolk.
This is significant.’
When we look closer for the origins of
this euphoria we see that it was really fuelled by a recent burst of prosperity
and was not really the culmination of a century of continuous economic
development. In truth, the population hardly
changed between 1850 and 1950, and in line with this the town’s physical
environment was not noticeably different.
Comparisons between the 1883 and 1904 Ordnance Survey maps, which span
the economic momentum of early Victorianism, show that the only housing
developments had been on the outskirts.
To the east this had involved some houses at the bottom of Loam Pit Lane
behind Holton Terrace. To the north,
all that had happened was a few properties had been built on Bungay Road
between the level crossing and the Patrick Stead Hospital, and on the north
side of Wissett Road next to the Gas Works.
To the south, one of the two mills at the top of Pound Street had gone
and a Court House had been erected to the south of the livestock market. Between 1904 and 1927 the maps show that the
second Pound Street mill had disappeared and a water tower had been erected on
the site of the other. There were some
gaps in the maze of Chediston Street terraces and a line of Council houses had
appeared from the level crossing along the east side of Bungay Road. A Council school had been built on Wissett
Road in 1923 to unite the Pricilla Johnson Infants and Girls School in Rectory
Lane (1853) with the boys school in Holton Road (1862). In 1946 it became the
Area School.
A brochure publicising the town’s celebrations
for the Festival of Britain was published in 1951. Here the
passage of half a century was evaluated in low key. The tone of the report was ‘we could do better’, and the town’s
progress (or lack of it) was punctuated by reminiscences of people of the
past. The following selections set the
tone.
Education.
The
second world war arrested the building of the new Secondary Modem School, which
is badly needed to meet the requirements of the new Education Act. However 430
children are catered for in the building known as the Area School, but work
under considerable handicaps. Never-the-less, up-to-date methods of teaching
are employed as far as possible and a full and varied curriculum gives the
children a wide and liberal education, vastly different from that of 50 years
ago. The County Authorities are not
satisfied with present arrangements and there can be little doubt that in due
course a new school will be erected, possibly where already begun, adjacent to
the spacious school recreation ground in Bungay Road.
Sports.
The
sporting life of the town goes back about 50 years, and during that time
football, cricket and other games have played their part. It is fitting that in
this festival year the efforts, which are being made, are for the purpose of
assisting the funds for the provision of adequate fields for the town, which
for many years past has been an obvious necessity.
Building
During
the last fifty years considerable alterations have taken place in Halesworth.
The Court House in London Road was built in 1901. The huge building in London
Road, until recently used as a Tent manufacturer's factory was built around
about that time. But what is remarkable is that Halesworth has extended to the
North, South and East. All the houses beyond the Railway Station in Bungay Road
on the left hand side to the cross roads and the right hand side past the
Hospital have been erected during the last fifty years, including those in the
Avenue and Mount Pleasant and Old Station Road, which was all arable land. Towards
Holton too, all the houses beyond the cemetery on the left-hand side, and most
of those on the right past Castle House, including the Bungalow, have been
built during the last fifty years. And now a further suburb is being erected on
the Bramfield Road to the South. Considerable alterations are also noted in the
Town itself. The houses on the right at the top of Wissett Road were built at
the beginning of the century, and 25 years later, a new school was erected
behind them, in some senses a pity, because the school with its well-kept
gardens is obscured. It deserves to be in a more prominent position. In the
Thoroughfare many alterations have taken place. A modern building is occupied
by the Midland Bank on what is known as the " Angel Corner." Formerly
this was the Post Office. Further along in the Thoro'fare on the left there is
a 17th century shop front where undoubtedly harness was made 100 years ago as
it is now. Then it was occupied by one John Bunyan (now by Bensly &
Gillson.) Opposite the Ancient House (of which notice has been taken) are some
magnificent buildings, where formerly were low shops, over one of which was a
huge Wellington Boot, occupied by "Bob" Farrington. Past these are
smart buildings, including the Electricity Offices, and just over the bridge on
the left a modern footwear establishment where 50 years ago, bits of leather
and shoemaker's nails were displayed in low windows. The front house and the
Boot factory which flourished at that time were destroyed by fire in 1900,
which but for Halesworth's intrepid firemen, with their hand-pumped engine,
would have destroyed the whole of the left side of Rectory Street. Another
disastrous conflagration had occurred in the town eight months previously, when
a crescent of shops stood at the place, which is now known as the Church
Approach or " The Arboretum." The whole lot went in a night, and it
was decided by the powers that were at the time to keep it an open space-a wise
decision, for it sets off Halesworth's historic Parish Church in a fitting
manner.
A new
Post Office has been erected of recent date in Wissett Road, and other
buildings of recent years are the Modern Dairy near the station, which, with
other businesses such as engineering, garages, building and trading houses,
helps to absorb some of the labour available, as did the now dormant industries
of the last decades. Brewing, boot making, carriage making, have all gone.
Great tales are told of those days. The carriage works employed about forty or
fifty men and boys; and they made good stuff of which they were proud. Their
work was supplied to royalty, and went as far as Johannesburg, and other places
of note. It is related that when a Royal Carriage was entrained for London, the
men detailed to see the precious cargo safely to the station, after completing
their task, would adjourn to the Railway Tavern, where, appropriate celebration
of the event was duly observed for the remainder of the day.
The
Boot factory was also the place where goods of excellent quality were turned
out, and no doubt those employed at the Brewery in the Market Place, and the
Mineral Water factory nearby, now a garage-would say the same about their
products.
The
market day is on Tuesdays. Now the busiest day in the Town is on alternate
Wednesdays, when the fortnightly Cattle Market is held. Here too, extensive
alterations and improvements have been effected during recent years.
The
Urban Council commemorated the fiftieth year of its existence in 1950. Its work
over the fifty years constitutes a good record. Water has been laid on in the
town during that time, and it has encouraged and sponsored building schemes. A
sewage scheme is gradually being extended to the houses-not perhaps as fast as
some would like-but things are in hand. -The town is now lighted by
electricity, after being well served by gas for a large number of years.
Many of the above milestones have their origins in developments
in the first decade of the century, and the impression is that Halesworth had
been in deep slumber between the Wars.
In fact the high time of economic expansion seems to have occurred in
the 1960s. A small promotion brochure
produced about this time by the Halesworth and District Business Association
actually pinned the process down to events between 1964-69 (Table 7.1).
Table 7.1 Growth of Halesworth (1964-69
|
1964 |
1969 |
% increase |
Population |
2340 |
3050 |
|
Rateable value |
£68,901 |
£111,607 |
|
Assets of Halesworth UDC |
£534,000 |
£1,115,000 |
|
New houses were the landmarks of increasing prosperity. The first phase of new housing had centred
on The Avenue and Mount Pleasant in the 1920s and 30s when a few council houses
had been erected and an estate of rented accommodation was developed by the
London based Workmen’s Housing Association.
The second phase of house building came after the War, and began with
fifty houses in the Station Road area.
This was the start of a development which eventually suburbanised all
the fields bounded by Wissett Road and Old Bungay Road, an area about the same
size as the centre of old Halesworth.
Mains sewage for the town was installed in the 1950s and there is an
interesting set of correspondence between the UDC and the Working Men’s
Association over the connection of its housing estate to the main drainage
system. The estate had been built in
1932, with the latest metal casements put in alongside medieval garden closets
with pails that were emptied by the Council’s night soil collection
service. With the advent of mains
sewage the night soil service was to end and eventually the UDC was forced to
buy the Housing Association’s properties and pay for their connection to the
Station Road drain in 1952. This was a
time of slum clearance and the Council quickly came to grips with Chediston
Street’s high density Victorian legacy of damp lanes, closes and overcrowded
yards running down to the river. One of
these schemes in 1961 involved the demolition of seven substandard cottages on
the south side of the street, which were replaced with a terrace of five roomy
bungalows set well back from the pavement.
This phase of building development also changed the landscape to the
south of the town with the creation of Churchill Road (1949), Durban Close
(1951), Bedingfield Crescent (1951) and Oak Green (1953). In 1957 the Council Estate at Bramfield Road
was initiated with five pairs of bungalows.
The third phase of house building occupied the 60s and 70s. The way in which these new developments
eradicate Halesworth’s built heritage and shattered its rurality is illustrated
by the small estate on the site of one of the town’s three post mills, on Mill
Rd off Wissett Rd.
The Mill Post development is significant in that it
converted a unique historic nook of Halesworth, where one of its post mills had
once operated, into a residential estate that could be anywhere (Fig 7.2). Its unique past is recorded in a faded
photograph, and an entry in 1845 Whites Directory of Cornelius Schrofield
Pedgrift as miller. He was a copyhold
tenant of the Rectory Manor, with manorial property at Mill Hill and
Broadway. Pedgrift was also described
as a surgeon, so he was likely to be the owner of the mill that was operated
either by a tenant or mill labourer.
Fig 7.2 The site of the
post mill off School Lane as it was at the turn of the 19th century
This remarkable bout of post-War house building expanded
Halesworth’s housing stock by between 3-400 units (Fig 7.3). The latest phases of the town’s
suburbanisation at the turn of the 20th century has created a maze
of roads on the site of the Town Manor, through which winds a kind of bypass
for traffic travelling towards Harleston to avoid the Chediston Street narrows.
These housing developments chart the growth of
Halesworth’s consumer culture, which began nationally when suburban landscapes
developed around towns large and small.
These estates established from the 1920s to the 1980s are now among the
most significant historic resources of the twentieth century. They represent the fulfillment of the dream
of home ownership and material well-being for a majority of Britains, and are
indicators of the rise of a new economy. In them, a distinctive settlement
pattern emerged, centred on the single-family house in its individual plot,
sited within the large-scale, self-contained subdivision of land with a
curvilinear street pattern. It was a landscape in which local government and
the free market attempted to blend the attributes of the city and the country
into a home environment sought by many.
It has been pointed out, ‘Never before has such a great segment of
society been able to partake of this kind of environment, nor will it again in
the foreseeable future’.
In terms of the supporting infrastructure for Halesworth’s
population expansion, the new economic stage was set by the construction of a
road bridge over the railway in 1959, which carried a new northern extension
off Wissett Rd. This was named Norwich
Road and carried the increased volume of road traffic swiftly on from The
Thoroughfare towards Bungay, bypassing the bottleneck at the station level
crossing. The crossing gates were then
permanently closed. The new traffic
flow opened up land on either side of Broadway for commercial development,
notably by Howard Rotavator Ltd and Andrews and Son’s Halesworth Engineering
works. The Divisional Police
Headquarters was established here in a new building. This was a devolution too far and a few years after it opened it
was downgraded to a sub-division in the Lowestoft Policing Area. Halesworth was at last allocated a Secondary
Modern School (450 pupils) in 1958. Building work had started before 1939 but
was halted by the War. When the present sports hall was built there were
problems with the old "E" shape foundations (the school was planned
to look like the present Bungay Middle School). The museum has an aerial
photograph taken in 1947 which shows what they were like. Children who passed
the 11+ went to Bungay Grammar School, which became Bungay High when Halesworth
Modern became a Middle School in the early 1970's.
Fig 7.3 Houses completed
annually under the Rural District Council 1947-74
From the UDC’s certificates of completion
The old malting empires were virtually extinct by this time, the
last to close being Parry’s Maltings in Quay Street (1966) and Watney Combe and
Reid at New Cut (1969). Changes in the
surrounding farming scene are indicated by the closure of the Egg Packing
Station in 1968. Small producers on
traditional mixed farms were going out of business in the face of ‘industrial’
egg production and Suffolk’s specialisation in large cereal farms. At this time, only one of the town’s four
main maltings remained operational in Station Yard, alongside a relatively new
commercial incomer, Morton Knights Ltd, specialists in the manufacture of sportswear. By the end of the 60s Halesworth’s
prosperity was attributed to the town’s new industrial firms, exemplifying
engineering, printing, clothing manufacture, farming, radio and TV component
assembly, food processing, and building.
There were various firms in the building and construction sector, six
garages and one small firm, who built racing motorcars, and of course town
centre traders. There were more than
100 shops and business premises with a traditional reputation for the sale of
good clothing and footwear and, in the food field for its butchers and local
bakery. The town’s largest business
enterprises were listed as:
·
HOWARD (FORGE & FOUNDRY)
LTD. A new factory established by the famous Howard Rotovators firm, employing
several hundred men and needing labour of all descriptions. Training available.
·
LE GRYS BROTHERS (TURKEYS) LTD,
HOLTON. A firm of turkey breeders and processors in the adjoining village of
Holton, established 25 years, with 150 employees and constantly needing labour.
Output: One million turkeys a year.
·
HALESWORTH ENGINEERING CO LTD.
General and precision engineers, prefabricates and welders seeking skilled
labour. Training and day release.
·
HALESWORTH PRESS LTD.
General printers, mainly of national magazines and directories.
·
F. ANDREWS & SONS
(ENGINEERS) LTD. Manufacturers of precision electric and wound components,
employing female labour.
·
MORTON KNIGHT LTD.
Manufacturers of sports clothing, mainly golf wear used by leading players.
Employs female labour.
·
EASTERN COUNTIES FARMERS LTD.
This farmer-controlled enterprise, one of the earliest in the country, which
has its HQ at Ipswich, has a branch at Halesworth, through which all its
services in the area are administered. Stocks of farm equipment and spares are
maintained here and service repairs carried out.
·
COMBEN & WAKELING LTD,
Kingsbury House, Kingsbury Circle, London, N W 9, a national building firm, has
carried out considerable building development in Halesworth since 1947, having
constructed a total of 500 houses in the council and private building sectors.
The growth of new
factory-scale businesses dates from the mid 1950s. This is reflected in the Registration Book of the UDC, which
gives the names of businesses that had to be inspected by the Council. When the register was opened in 1955 a total
of 35 businesses were listed. Over the next decade 19 additional firms were
added (Table 7.2). At the same time
businesses were closing and 20 of them had been deleted by 1970.
Table 7.2 New businesses registered in the UDC Register of Factories
Year |
New registrations |
1956 |
2 |
1958 |
2 |
1959 |
2 |
1961 |
2 |
1962 |
4 |
1964 |
1 |
1965 |
1 |
1966 |
5 |
1967 |
1 |
1969 |
1 |
1970 |
2 |
Facilities for arts and leisure were signalled by the District
Business Association as now being significant civic assets, particularly in
relation to tourism
Work —
some of it by international artists — is exhibited in the summer months at the
Art Gallery (Steeple End), converted from Dutch-gabled almshouses and run by a
local committee of art lovers. Art exhibitions featuring the work of Norfolk
and Suffolk artists are held throughout the year at the Craft Centre (Rectory
Street), which caters for all branches of the arts and associated interests
such as coins and old books. There are two antique shops. Halesworth is 15
miles from The Maltings, the famous Snape concert hall where leading Aldeburgh
Festival events take place in June. Concerts are held at Halesworth in July as
part of the Wangford Festival. Tourist landmarks are: Heveningham Hall and
Holton Mill which had been taken over by East Suffolk County Council and can be
seen from several vantage points. The
area is noted for rough shooting and wild life, including a bird sanctuary at
Minsmere. The link with the Norfolk Broads is the border town of Beccles on the
River Waveney where there are sailing and freshwater angling clubs. Sea anglers
have several beaches; there are sailing clubs at the seaside towns of Southwold
and Aldeburgh.
Farm holidays were also promoted, and the Association had
compiled a register of farms available.
However, the main aim of its brochure was to show the town’s potential
for future development and investment.
Although
it is anxious for progress, Halesworth seeks only measured development, which
will ensure adequate facilities for its existing residents and those who come
to live in it or stay for a holiday. Land is available for industrial and
housing development and the county council has given some priority to the
provision of a relief road, which will by-pass the present rather narrow
shopping centre and open up new land for development. …….. There are a number
of buildings not in use, including substantially built maltings capable of
conversion. Information about Halesworth's general potential, land available,
etc, will be readily supplied by the Clerk, Halesworth UDC.
It is true to say that a genuine warm welcome was offered by the
town for all who wanted to live and work in a small country community, where a
high standard of local service continued and where it was possible to live
happily away from the strains and stresses of city and commuter life. Finally,
there was a plug for the UDC, which ‘has made enormous strides in housing in
recent years, having pursued an active policy of encouraging home ownership by
arranging generous mortgages’.
Inevitably, the centre of employment was shifting towards the
periphery of the town where new technology and light industry became the order
of the day, an investment that was kick-started by generous government grants
to establish the Bramfield Road estate. All of these developments were
connected with the appearance of a working population of commuters, which
allowed the new firms to tap a county full of families with cars. Planners
responded to the need to accommodate road traffic with a bypass to
The Thoroughfare. This entailed
demolishing part of Brewery House (alias Hooker House), the eastern part of
which had been badly damaged during the War by blast from an accident to a bomb
store at Metfield Aerodrome five miles away.
Construction of this road opened up more opportunities for house
building along its southern section, with car parks to the north. Eventually, the Co-op Store moved to the site of the old livestock market, and
became the Rainbow Supermarket with its own petrol station and car park.
A significant turning point in the town’s development had
actually come at the time of the Queen’s Jubilee in 1978. The town guide for this year lists the car
park and the adjoining town park as the last major undertakings of the Urban
District Council before it disappeared with the reorganisation of local
government in 1974.
Fig. 7.3 Halesworth 1975
Rectangle includes area of 19th century town: solid
line follows parish boundary
From 1975, Waveney District Council administered the town with a
population of 3,700, from its headquarters in Lowestoft, with a Town Council of
12 elected members. The other major
break with religious history was the move towards the establishment of a team
ministry for Halesworth based on the merging of St Mary’s Church with seven
adjacent parishes. There was also a
growing ecumenical co-operation with other three denominations of the
town.
The general layout of the town’s infrastructure in 1975 is
mapped in Fig 7.3, which then still occupied its old Victorian bounds. In the 70s and 80s many market towns
suffered a process of ‘rape-by-bypass’ to achieve a smooth flow of traffic
through narrow streets. Halesworth was transformed during this period, first by
the construction of Saxons Way, and then by the Angel Link to join it to the
southern end of The Thoroughfare. Saxon
Way was driven through a network of old closes and gardens over a new river
crossing (Fig 7.5). The Angel Link
involved laying a wide carriageway along a lane that ran from Angel Corner to
George’s Old Maltings. In 2006, the consultant to Waveney District Council
reported on the adverse impact of the Angel Link development on the town’s
built heritage as follows:
The Angel Link follows the line of the
former Angel Yard and Angel Lane. It
required the demolition of the Corn Hall (originally a maltings and finally a
dairy) and the loss of a bowling green to the carriageway and car parks. Its construction has had a substantial
impact on the historic urban grain of the area, opening up the rear yards and
gardens at the southern end of The Thoroughfare with views of the sides of
buildings and leaving others isolated.
In particular this massive development
involved the demolition of cottages and commercial premises on Angel Corner
(Fig 7.6) thrusting a massive plain gable end into the view of people walking
up The Thoroughfare to the Market Place.
The major justification for the The Angel
Link was to take traffic from the west smoothly through the town. In this respect, it can be argued that this
objective has now been met more effectively by Roman Way, the ‘Chediston St
bypass’ constructed at the start of the millennium.
Fig 7.5 Construction of Saxon Way: river
crossing with Hooker House at the far right.
The management proposals strategy for Halesworth’s built heritage
puts forward specific opportunities for enhancement within the conservation
area, which covers most of the old town. Notably it says that the area,
particularly the perimeter streets ‘are looking tired, patched and worn’ and an
audit of their condition is recommended as the basis for a programme of
enhancement. It also points again to the places where the historic grain has
been diluted, such as the gaps in the building line of Chediston St. This requires a restatement of the old
building line. There are also
opportunities for repair and enhancement of the forecourts of the Methodist
Chapel and Rifle Hall in London Rd. A
major new approach to interpretation of the town’s history is suggested to coincide
with the redevelopment of the Ridgeons builder’s yard where the quay and river
could be made features of the scheme.
Fig 7.6 Angel Corner: shop and cottages,
and entrance to Angel Yard (circa 1950)
The end of Roe’s department store in the 1950s was a warning of
the impending extinction of a traditional retail economy that was integrated
with the local population of town and country.
Retail closure was a commonplace event throughout the land in the 1960s
as the medium-sized 'dinosaur' establishments, hatched and grown by local 19th
century entrepreneurs, fell to the new retail species of a post war economy and
society. The turn of the small shops to
be overcome came at the end of the century.
What was being lost to those shopping in small market towns is
condensed in a reminiscence of Margaret Chipperfield of Halesworth talking to
the local historian Ivan Sparkes about the end of Roe & Company:
“The
Drapery Department was very long so the goods could be displayed with effect. There was that wonderful smell which nearly
all new materials and linens possess. I bought some very good tweed there for
60p per yard in 1950. Up a spiralling staircase and the Ladies Cothes and the
Millinery Department was reached. The
present Restaurant and Health Food Shop were used for furniture and
carpets. There was a saving scheme at
Sunday School and one I believe at the Women's Guild, for goods from
"Roe's". Mother saved on
these, where she regarded 'clubs' with horror.
An important factor precipitating the decline of a shopping
culture that had evolved as an integral part of an indigenous society, was the
rapid increase in personal mobility based initially on trains, then buses,
followed by the private car. All these
forms of high-speed travel undermined the traditional functions of market towns
by severing local bonds with place. This was a drawn-out process that took
about two decades to produce a new retail culture. In Halesworth the change was punctuated by the loss of the cinema,
public houses and even the telephone exchange. Its decline as a centre for the
local farming community during the 80s and 90s may be charted through the
closure of the livestock market, the MAFF farming advisory service, the Egg
Marketing Board’s packing centre, Potters, the major farmer’s supplies company,
and the dairy. Its substantial postal
sorting office was closed in 1993. It
had been established in a prefabricated building in 1948, designed to last ten
years! The public counter moved into
Cooper’s store, part of a countywide hardware retail chain. Halesworth was not exceptional in the loss
or scaling down of its facilities, and by the 1990s many small market towns had
become "dysfunctional" as key organisations of rural society were
dismantled. Despite most of these
changes happening during the last quarter of the 20th century,
people’s memories are short. The
majority of local people who lived through the terminal decline of the Bon
Marche would be hard put to date its extinction.
Since then, Halesworth had become part of the national
statistics, which are stark reminders of the speed of change. Between 1997 and 2002 specialist stores like
butchers, bakers and fishmongers shut at the rate of 50 per week. Now, general stores are closing at the rate
of one per day. Twenty traditional, non-chain, pubs are closing each month.
Between 1992 and 2002, Britain lost one third of its bank-branch network -
leaving nearly 1000 communities across the UK with no access to a local bank.
In the place of real local shops has come a near-identical package of chain
stores replicating on the high street of larger towns, such as Lowestoft. As a
result, the individual character of many centres of even the larger towns is
evaporating. Retail spaces once filled with independent butchers, newsagents,
tobacconists, pubs, bookshops, greengrocers and family-owned general stores are
becoming occupied by supermarket retailers, fast-food chains, and global
fashion outlets. Many town centres that have undergone substantial regeneration
have even lost the distinctive facades of their high streets, as local building
materials have been swapped in favour of identical glass, steel, and concrete
storefronts that provide the ideal degree of sterility to house a string of
big, cloned, town retailers. It's a phenomenon that affects people whether they
are rich or poor, as Nick Foulkes pointed out, writing in the London Evening
Standard,
"The
homogenisation of our high streets is a crime against our culture. The smart
ones get the international clones - Ralph Lauren, DKNY, Starbucks and Gap;
while those lower down the socio-economic hierarchy end up with Nando's,
McDonald's, Blockbuster and Ladbrokes."
The assault on the character of town centres has been aided by
planning and regeneration decisions that have drawn shoppers away from the high
street and created a retail infrastructure hostile to small, independent
businesses. The most recent stage in
this ‘warfare’ was the determination of supermarkets to deregulate community pharmacies
in their own favour. Tesco even argued
that they should be allowed to have an in-store pharmacy because they
constituted, themselves, a community.
In the context of the above series of catastrophic national
changes, Halesworth has so far come off relatively lightly. Ruth Downing, a
regular Halesworth shopper since the 1950s expressed her pride in the town in a
letter to the East Anglian Daily Times in 2004.
The article in last Friday's EADT written
by Mrs Sally Hobson that Halesworth needs another supermarket is absolute
nonsense! It is certainly not dormant but a very busy thriving unspoiled
country town and caters for almost every
need. It has an adequate supermarket which often has special offers, three good
butchers, fish shop, two delicatessens, two greengrocers, small grocers, two
bakers, a wine shop and plenty of places to eat and drink.
It has four churches of different faiths, a
hospital and surgery, two dentists, two opticians, a chemist, a new library,
two schools, a new theatre, a stationers, a good bookshop and a
second-hand one. There are two carpet shops, furniture shops, a shoe shop,
a jewellers, two electrical shops, a gun shop, antique shop, china shop and two
charity shops. The town is also served
by a dry cleaners and a laundrette, a needlecraft shop, a toyshop, and a pet
shop, a beauty parlour, seven ladies and two men's hairdressers, and a travel
centre. There is a choice of estate agents and solicitors. There are clubs for
football, tennis, badminton bowls, hockey, skate board park etc. and a young
and old peoples' centre. For the public who enjoy walking there is
the largest Millennium green in the country (40 acres). There are four
garages and a petrol station at the existing supermarket. A market is held
every Wednesday and there is a farmer's market once a month. Two industrial
sites provide plenty of employment.
If one needs clothes there is a frequent
bus service to Norwich and the railway station for travelling to Lowestoft,
Ipswich and London, which is expected to, made hourly in the future. There is
to be an information centre for the history of the Hooker family who lived in
the town. Can I say more?
Halesworth is a nice old Suffolk country
town and already stretched for car parking and we do not want it spoiled by
even more traffic.
I have lived near Halesworth for the past
seventy-five years and find that now it is much more vibrant that it ever was
in the past.
We do NOT want or NEED another supermarket.
However, the battle of minds over land behind the Thoroughfare
earmarked for another supermarket goes on.
The national context of the decline in market towns is actually
an unstoppable post War global process initiated by increases in wealth,
mobility and consumerism. This change
is driven by the idea of an endlessly increasing economy fuelled by unlimited
natural resources. These resources were
showing signs of exhaustion by the end of the Millennium.
Ronald
Blythe’s beautiful portrait of a Suffolk village struggling to cope with an age
of mechanisation was published in 1969.
To a large extent this picture was already verging on the mythical, and
portrayed life a few years before the first trickle of rat-race refugees began
to finally submerge the old folk and their ways. When ‘Akenfield’ was revisited by Craig Taylor in 2005-6 he
discovered the people were speaking Estuary English and the local boys
preferred to stay in their bedrooms playing ‘Grand Theft Auto, anxious to avoid
jobs on the land that had etched themselves onto and deformed their ancestors.
Nevertheless, for those who want to leave the city for
the countryside, Blything Hundred has the distinction of being one of the few
places left in modern England to illustrate extreme rurality. Indeed, Halesworth itself, despite its
recent increase in new housing and its business parks, can be said to be half a
village with a hybrid society of commuters and the indigenous employed. In this respect, it has, nestling within its
present culture, a social tendency to use rurality in order to resist
colonisation. This is really a
small-scale expression of national identity, which in Wales during the interwar
years was expressed through the promotion of education on 'rural lore' and
rural issues generally. Rurality was
seen as a tool for national revival and as a means to resist
Anglicisation. In Scotland, too, the
resistance of groups such as ‘Settler Watch’ and ‘Scottish Watch’, to the
in-migration of English 'white settlers' to rural areas, can be interpreted in
part as a concern about potential loss of local identity. Resistance to change in small market towns
echoes much of this imagery of national identity.
Fig 7.7 The Thoroughfare 2005
To all intents and purposes Halesworth in the
first years of the 21st century appears to be the epitome of
Englishness (Fig 7.7). Yet those who
have the choice to come willingly to Halesworth are of course not directly tied
to ideas of national identity, but rather are on the quest for the ‘rural
idyll’. This process was quantified in a case study of migration in the late
1980s to six villages in the northwest and southwest of England (Table
7.4). The studies revealed the
'physical' and 'social' features of their (rural) destination emphasised by the
migrants in interviews. These are almost all features of the rural idyll. Similar views and associations have been
described elsewhere in Britain, and, if one were to scrape the surface of
Halesworth ever so slightly, they would surely emerge there today.
Table 7.4 Key 'physical' and 'social' features of the destination reached
by urban-to-rural migrants
Physical features
·
The area was more open and less crowded; one no longer felt
hemmed-in by houses. There was a more human scale to things.
·
It was a quieter and more tranquil area, with reduced traffic
noise and less hustle and bustle.
·
The area was cleaner, with fresh air and an absence of traffic
pollution and smog.
·
The aesthetic quality of the area was higher - views, green
fields, aspect, beauty. There was stimulating, spiritual scenery.
·
The surroundings were more natural, with an abundance of flora
and fauna.
·
The area allowed one to escape from the rat race and society in
general. This was underpinned by a degree of utopianism.
·
There was a slower pace of life in the area, with more time for
people. There was a feeling of being less pressurised, trapped and crowded, and
of being able to breathe.
·
The area had more community and identity, a sense of togetherness
and less impersonality. The general idea of small is beautiful came across
here.
·
It was an area of less crime, fewer social problems and less
vandalism. There was a feeling of being safer at night.
·
The area's environment was better for children 's upbringing.
·
There were far fewer non-white people in the area.
·
The area was characterised by social quietude and propriety, with
less nightlife and fewer 'sporty' types.
However, creative destruction hovers constantly over the
rural idyll, threatening to undermine and disrupt it. It is ironic that the
recent rapid expansion of Halesworth’s population is the result of the local
planner’s and the house-building industry's attempts to engineer the
urbananisation of the town by adding new estates in line with government
policy. The problem is that everyone
likes the idea of living in the countryside, but few wish to work there in a
traditional sense. Amidst the fields,
newcomers suburbanise their ancient parishes by suburbanising their
properties. With cash to burn, they do
up old barns, install taped horse fencing to please their children and place a
collection of old milk churns and troughed flowers by their Flymowed
gateways. Dotcom entrepreneurs,
communicating daily with the Far East, as accountants, lawyers, electronic
publishers and software authors, have taken the place of wheelwrights, saddlers
and blacksmiths. They speak a different
language, and are less likely to be committed to the local pub or church, than
to order their microwaveable evening meals from Tesco Direct.
Geographers in recent years have emphasised the extremely
dynamic nature of capitalism’s spaces.
For example, Halesworth’s economies have, over many hundreds of years,
been made and remade in a process of 'creative destruction'. In fact, its townscape today is rapidly and
constantly being remade. As a result, space under capitalism becomes stripped
of its meaning; it becomes an abstraction, readily emptiable and easily
reconfigured when the next opportunity for profit comes along. There is a place
for everything, but this place has little permanence because with the next
round of economic restructuring and technological change, people, and
businesses etc. may well be shifted elsewhere. So we find Halesworth’s gasworks
was replaced by a book publisher. This
sense of impermanence is the essence of the concept of 'footloose' capitalism. When this idea is
applied to the rural environment we can readily appreciate just how unstable
and tenuous the supposedly 'timeless' idyllic representation really is. This
commercial ferment potentially exposes Blything, not as a place of community,
kinship and belonging, lost in time, but as an abstract space for maximising
profit.
A short walk through the town reveals, as a series of
snapshots, the evidence of centuries of change in a built environment, which
may be thickened by the comings and goings of individuals and
institutions. It illustrates the
ephemeral nature of people and their buildings, but leaves ghostly
personalities who, for a fraction of historical time, committed part or all of
their lives to streets and buildings that still exist today. To see the ghostly outline of old ways of
living beneath the superficial covering of the contemporary is to become at
ease with the present. To create Halesworth
the authors have assembled evidence of the past by burrowing through time to
build stories around such moments of recognition. A riverside meadow below the remains of Chediston Street’s Victorian
‘Yards’, still exposes its ecological connections with primeval marshland,
which Mesolithic adventurers of the Blyth avoided as they followed a trail of
game through the valley’s wildwood.
Three key characteristics of social relations with
environment have a special relevance for those seeking to touch the heartbeat
of Halesworth:
·
first, there is a quest for order, whereby a
simplified, structured view of the world can be translated into an ordered
arrangement of roads and buildings;
·
second, there is an assertion of authority, whereby
buildings can be seen as signalling individuals in a struggle for economic
betterment, and, for organisations, the power relationships between conflicting
interest groups;
·
third, there is a view that the larger scale
reorganisation of the environment can signify a reconstruction of existing
socio-political relations.
In all these ways, it is clear that by combining
perspectives from architectural history, cultural geography, economic and
business history, the built environment itself structures wider social,
cultural and economic change, as well as being structured by it.
It is an age-old characteristic of humankind that
people have to attest their long-standing need to connect with their home
environment through its past. Museums filled with vernacular artifacts are
testimony to this powerful human need.
Early religions and civilisations were profoundly influenced by the
visual geographical particularities that sustained life. However, on a much smaller scale our
day-to-day lives continue to reflect the ways in which previous occupants
settled the spaces where we live, shop and work. Whether it is a bend in the road or the shade of a tree, people
of the past have collectively shaped our home environment by means of their
investment of time, money and resources.
But the environment also shapes us imaginatively when we walk through
it; when we project on to it our aspirations and fantasies of wealth, refuge,
well-being, awe, danger, consolation, and even concerns about the way it may
change in the future. Our local
environment then, can be perceived as being ‘physical’, ‘iconological’ and
‘ideological’, all at the same time. It can also be seen as a sequence of
representations of the processes out of which it has emerged. Therefore, the
most important meaning attaching to environment is a cultural one. Halesworth
in fact, consists of a collection of cultural artifacts, such as roads, shops
and houses. It is an interactive living
museum embodying human values, meanings and symbols, all reflecting a stream of
culture that has developed over two millennia within a few square miles of St
Mary’s parish church. This assembly of
sights and sounds may be considered objectively as history, but the inventory
of dates and descriptions is also a code to a subjective approach for
understanding the town as a set of cultural symbols. To achieve this broader synthesis, other kinds of artifacts, such
as legal documents and parish registers, have to be wrapped around the physical
world. This idea of the built
environment as an integrated and coded representation of culture, may also
include the attachment of ideas expressed in musical notation or in literary
form; on celluloid, the television screen or in virtual reality, as well as
paintings, photographs, maps and historical documents. What unites this inclusive view; what
extends the symbolic understanding of Halesworth to the form of all environments,
is the concept of environment or landscape as an arbitrary space selected because
of all its accumulated products of culture; past blended with present. There is, therefore, a subjective dynamic
and interactive system of museology at work within the environment of any
community, and it is important to realise that the cultural processes that
shape the environment are themselves in
turn also shaped by the environment. This emphasizes that townscapes are dynamic cultural assets and
their preservation can only take place in coexistence with the continuous
development of citizen lifestyles and with citizen participation. As economic
development proceeds, the important thing is that changes, no matter how small,
are recorded as they happen.
Changes to Halesworth’s society and economy cannot be
counteracted by resurrecting its old self-help culture that was built up by
individuals, such as Patrick Stead, and William Aldred who commanded local
resources to serve local people. Help
to galvanise the citizenry now has to come from central government and the
European Community. So it happened,
that, early in 1997, the ‘Halesworth Partnership’ (Waveney District Council,
Suffolk County Council, Halesworth Town Council, Halesworth Business Group and
representatives of other local groups), was formed to assess the town’s future
needs and produce a community derived ‘bottom up’ plan for its
‘regeneration’. This was not so much
galvanised by a desperate need to boost the local economy, but more to do with
creating a social plan to involve people, now known to bureaucrats as
‘stake-holders’, more closely in the processes of planning and investment for a
sustainable future.
Community assessment is a planning tool that emerged in the
1980s. It is a process of empowering
ordinary people to gather, analyse and report information about the needs of
the community and the capacities or strengths that are also currently available
locally to meet those needs. A community assessment begins by convening a group
of citizens, establishing a vision and prioritising the issues that require
change. This collaborative effort provides a foundation for a community
assessment that includes professionals who have expertise on issues, and others
who are likely to be affected by the changes being planned (such as children
and parents.) The vision provides a focus for the community assessment - a
clear picture of where people want to be in the future. The changes needed are prioritized in order
to select the information that has to be gathered in order to make plans.
The Halesworth initiative was a local follow up to securing
funds from the EU (Leader II, ERDF) and the Rural Development Commission, and
involved commissioning CAG Consultants to help produce the regeneration
strategy. The 'Vision for Halesworth' whole day conference, held on Sunday 16th
November 1997 in Halesworth, was the first stage in this process. The main aims
of the conference were:
·
to raise awareness locally about the ‘Regeneration Strategy for
Halesworth’;
·
to start to build a "common picture" of current trends,
concerns, needs and opportunities in the town;
·
to identify real projects which could be developed and
implemented to ensure that Halesworth becomes a vibrant community which meets
everyone's needs for a good quality of life;
·
to ensure that the strategy is sustainable;
·
to encourage "networking" and resource-sharing among
local groups and agencies;
·
to consider what the next steps should be in progressing the
Regeneration Strategy.
The conference, consisting of about 60 delegates, first reviewed
the past in relation to the recent "landmarks" in the history of both
Halesworth and the rest of the World.
This set the context for producing a "mind-map" of the current
trends affecting Halesworth. Ideas for
improvements to the town and its services were elicited, after which the
conference broke into small groups around topics that participants wanted to
discuss in more detail. A start was
made on the preparation of action plans for these topics. The Action Planning
Groups agreed to meet again after the conference to finalise their plans, which
were fed into a strategy to seek funding for the project proposals. The
strategy dealt with the following 15 issues, which had emerged as the most
important concerns of members of the conference (Table 7.5)
Table 7.5 Main issues for action that emerged from the Vision
for Halesworth conference
Focus of issue |
Votes* |
Youth |
54 |
Transport |
36 |
Meeting places and sports
facilities |
36 |
Environment |
29 |
Loss of local services |
24 |
Voluntary organisations and
self-help |
20 |
Business rates |
13 |
Communication |
13 |
Housing |
12 |
Shopping |
10 |
Job insecurity |
8 |
Health |
6 |
Tourism |
6 |
Funding |
5 |
The elderly |
5 |
*
Every delegate was given 5 sticky dots to place on those trends in the mindmap,
which he or she was most concerned about.
These issues were tackled by forming project groups, which
reflected closely the priorities agreed in the mindmap and a 'planning for real
exercise'. The groups focused on
business start up; sport; a community centre; young people; a family resource
centre; the natural environment; and communication.
Between 2000-4, the project gathered momentum under the title
'Connections'. Its total cost was £1.1m
and had the aim of developing local heritage and cultural associations with
improvements in the environment, sustainable transport and local
infrastructure/facilities. The
objective was to make Halesworth a more attractive and accessible place to
visit, and in which to live and work.
The view from Waveney District Council is that the notable
initiatives/activities of the Connections project were:-
·
Improvements to the town park including new junior and toddler
play equipment and skateboard park (youth)
·
Internet café (communications)
·
Themed events (business)
·
Building improvement grant schemes (meeting places)
·
Pedestrian and cycleway facilities (tourism)
·
Station/museum improvements (tourism)
·
Environmental improvements (environment)
Although tourism was low on the action list, a strong tourism group was formed after the meeting which resulted in the employment of a person to produce a ‘Town Trail’ booklet. Associated actions were:
The Partnership
was also able to employ an officer (project run by the Waveney District
Council) to advise commercial premises on visual improvements (and grants
available), which emphasised heritage values.
Despite these community efforts to promote an awareness of local
heritage, the Halesworth museum was never funded as part of this work, although
it played a key role in providing information and creating the Town Trail.
Other improvements were made, such as resurfacing the Station forecourt and the installation of play equipment and skateboard ramps. The employment of this officer continued into the Connections project. Also, a project officer for events introduced the ‘Produce Market’ and ‘Halesworth Business Connections’, and the ‘Town Diary’.
Currently
there is one project officer, funded by the ‘Four Towns Project’ who spends one
day in Halesworth funded by the Town Council.
This project involves an association of Halesworth with Bungay, Beccles
and Southwold.
The ‘Connections’ scheme provided support to local businesses
through organising and sponsoring local events and initially setting up a
business group, which now has over 50 members. The Business Group is very
active, and through lobbying BT has provided a broadband connection for
Halesworth, which has been invaluable to keep the Internet café service
operating. It is currently planning an exhibition in Halesworth's twin town Bouchain and
now has other Market Towns looking to join the group.
The town has also seen a major project take place in the form of
the conversion of the former New Cut maltings into a successful arts centre
with the help of EEDA, English Heritage and EC Objective 2 Funding. This centre draws its clientele from the
length and breadth of Suffolk.
Following on from the success of the Connections programme, the
Halesworth and Blyth Valley Partnership has continued to operate successfully
and has recently achieved charitable trust status. The Partnership took over IT
equipment, previously used by the WEA (Workers Educational Association)
Training Centre in the old Almshouses.
However, the Centre will close at the end of 2006 as the IT initiatives
have shifted to meet the needs of 17-25 year olds for job skills in learning/business
centres using premises and IT facilities of local schools. The original WEA input was a scheme to
benefit the entire community based on a philosophy of life long learning,
which, with the growth of home computers, is no longer seen as a funding priority.
The Council singled out the most outstanding project from the
Connections scheme as the proposed conversion of a former stables behind Roes
building into an education, training and visitor centre commemorating William
and Joseph Hooker’s links with the town.
Although Kew Gardens approved the project, grant money was not
forthcoming and the Beccles
and Bungay Journal of February 17th 2006 reported that the renovation
of these buildings had eventually emerged as a proposal to create up to eight
small business units with a modestly sized meeting room that would be available
to tenants, community organisations and outside businesses. This project has been scheduled for
completion in 2007.
The need to pay for regeneration of the town in this ad hoc way
had come about because the entrepreneurial culture of individualism, which had
long cultivated the roots of its business community had died. The 16th November 1997 was actually a
milestone and a signpost in the history of Halesworth, denoting a shift to a
culture of neighbourhood groups working out strategies of economic development
in answer to the question, "What does our community want?" In the supporting policy statement for its
constituents, Waveney District Council attached a high priority to a central
planning view that its communities need to commit themselves to regeneration
and economic development. By this, it meant promoting the economic regeneration
of the District, and the development of new sustainable local economies.
Communities and districts now generally conduct internal assessments as a result of depressed social and economic conditions. Local officials see the community's distressed situation and seek to cope and react to crisis issues raised by local citizens. Many times the prevailing view is that the community lacks vision and does not know where it is going with local officials feeling powerless to do anything about the situation.
Some typical questions facing local leaders at both levels are:
Successful
strategic planning, unknown to the Victorian townsfolk, depends on widespread
continuing community involvement, which is best handled by forming a resource
or support group to make bottom up critical decisions about the planning process.
Decisions about whom to involve, type of process to use, where to hold
meetings, and how often to hold meetings are important in community-assessment
and strategic-planning efforts. Inclusivity is the key word, and the resource
group should be diverse, including residents of all ages, elected and appointed
officials, and private industry. Anyone left out of the process is not likely
to support the conclusions or recommendations of the plan. Public and private
involvement is essential, especially if the plan involves spending public funds
or seeking grants from local industry.
Economic-assessment
studies usually focus on the three main areas in the community: ‘social and
demographic trends’, ‘economy’, and ‘public infrastructure’. The study also
needs to assess the current situations and conditions in the community, and
identify important strengths and concerns among local residents. These
strengths and concerns identify future conditions and outcomes that local
community leaders can consider. The studies can serve as planning documents to
enhance the community's economic situation.
Community
assessment differs from strategic planning in that community assessment
identifies major issues without prescribing solutions, and the strategic
planning process diagnoses and prescribes solutions. Issues identified using
community assessment, however, can form the basis for strategic planning by
highlighting the goals and directions for the community. Examples of this might
include employment and employee training, cultural arts and tourism,
infrastructure development (such as water, fire protection, police/sheriff
protection, entertainment, streets and roads, public transportation, health
care, and economic and retail development), community beautification programmes
and research into local history. The
‘community plan’ is the repository for these objectives.
Bottom-up
stakeholder operational assessments provide planning groups, local citizens,
development foundations, and local government officials with input and ideas
about community trends and needs. Since this also requires broad-based
participation from citizens, local leaders should tend to favour planning made
up of existing and emerging leaders from all segments of the community.
Planning by inclusion is essential to
bring Halesworth's future into a generally accepted global blueprint for green
economies, which should ensure that planners adhere to a global framework,
where:
·
sustainable development is a social concept and readily
interpretable as non-declining human welfare over time – this contrasts with a
development path that makes people better off today, but makes people tomorrow
have a lower "standard of living", is not "sustainable".
·
the conditions for achieving sustainable development include the
requirement that future generations should be compensated for damage done by
current generations - e.g. through global warming;
·
compensation is best secured by leaving the next generation a
stock of capital assets no less than the stock we have now (the "constant
capital" requirement). This enables the next generation to achieve the
same level of human welfare (at least) as the current generation. If they fail
to do this, the responsibility is theirs, since they have inherited the same
"productive potential" as was available to the previous generation;
·
the capital in question is both "man-made" (Km) and
"natural" (Kn). Natural capital refers to environmental assets;
·
the requirement to keep the total of capital (Km + Kn) constant
is consistent with "running down" natural capital. i.e. with
environmental degradation - so long as Km and Kn are readily substitutable for
each other. Thus, the "constant capital" rule is consistent with
removing the Amazon forest so long as the proceeds from this activity are
reinvested to build up some other form of capital;
This is a blueprint for an ecological society. The ‘constant capital rule’ requires that
environmental assets be valued in the same way as man-made assets, otherwise a
community cannot know if it is on a "sustainable development
path". For example, we cannot know
if overall capital is constant in the Amazonian forest unless we know the value
of the services and functions that we surrender when it is lost. To put it
another way: valuation is essential if we are to "trade off"
different forms of capital. This is the relevance of the process of valuation;
nor is there any escape from it. We "trade off" either explicitly, or
implicitly, since all decisions imply valuations. But careful inspection of the values of natural capital (i.e.
looking at what environmental assets do for us) will show that the
trade-off associated with Halesworth’s
19th century industrial development by individuals, was biased in
favour of eliminating or degrading those assets in favour of either
"consuming" the proceeds (i.e. not reinvesting at all), or investing
too readily in man-made assets.
The Victorians of Halesworth who delighted in mahogany and
rosewood furniture were not in a position to value the tree stock of the far
distant tropical forest. Put very
simply, if the "true" value of the environment were known, the belief
of green economists is that we would not degrade it as much. For some environmental assets, termed
"critical capital", there is no question of an acceptable
trade-off. Allowance has to be made
for the high values of natural capital, for the uncertainty surrounding the
functions and benefits of natural capital, and for the fact that, once eliminated,
the effects are irreversible. Then
there is a strong case for a precautionary approach in which the bias is
automatically towards conserving natural capital. It is in this sense that
environmental economics offers a rationale for even greater protection of the
environment than is conventionally thought.
Parks and local nature reserves are operational outcomes.
The creation of Halesworth’s Millennium Green is an example of
the new economic value placed upon what are called ‘green heritage
assets’. This was a community project
that came from the Vision conference. A
small group of people with appropriate skills and determination managed to
secure funds from the Millennium Commission to purchase a large tract of
riverine pasture land stretching from the New Cut about a mile into the Blyth
Valley. A management programme was put
in place involving fencing, winter flooding of the pasture and seasonal grazing
by cattle, aimed at mimicking a pre-industrial system of livestock fattening. The Millennium Green is part of the Blyth
Valley Environmentally Sensitive Area, and the project receives an annual area
payment from Government to maintain a low intensity grazing regime
characteristic of the period before chemical fertilizers. The scheme is staffed by volunteer labourers
who regularly participate in working parties to maintain the biological and
landscape features of the site in a favourable condition. The land, which is the largest Millennium
Green in the country, is open to the public, and linked to the surrounding
network of public rights of way. One of
these is a spur of the National Cycle Way, which is being developed to bring
cycle-tourists into Halesworth Town Centre.
The Millennium Green project indicates that the upshot of taking
up a sustainable economy is that the measures of economic progress based on
gross national product need to be changed, because GNP fails to measure the
true "standard of living". It largely ignores environmental assets
and treats them as if they have a zero or near-zero price. And if something is
under priced, too much of it will be consumed.
The first priority in sustainable development is to construct
environmental and economic indicators, like Halesworth’s Green, that show the
links between economy, wildlife and the well-being of people.
Some of this thinking actually permeates the broader community
strategy for the Halesworth partnership. For example, it is evident in the
partnerships international milestones of 'global warming', 'pollution', 'the
Rio Summit' and 'domination of the car'.
At a local level, "cost-benefit thinking" would greatly
enhance the chances of 'conservation' competing with "development" on
equal terms. But it requires long-term
professional commitment to make and operate a community plan that would improve
the quality of local decision-making, in line with the District Council's
sustainable development strategy.
Because we live in a time when communities, from the most highly
industrialized to the most primitive, are changing rapidly, it may not be
possible to find a common denominator for acting out sustainable
development. It was actually in the
1970s that neighbourhood environmentalism, as a simple answer, emerged in terms
of reducing consumption. Societies,
world wide, now aspire to middle-class patterns of use of goods and services,
though the cultural implications of membership in this class vary greatly from
one country to another. In this sense, the fifty or so inhabitants of
Halesworth out of its population of around four thousand, who contributed to
the Vision of Halesworth, for the most part represent consumers who were in
effect acquiescing to continued year on year economic development, whilst
softening its impact on the young, the elderly and the environment.
However, we cannot mandate ever-expanded production of goods for
consumption, hoping that sooner or later everyone will catch up. Each
middle-class person requires from 15 to 30 barrels of oil per year, whereas the
poor person makes do with one barrel at most, in the form of kerosene, bus
fuel, and fertiliser. Will there be enough for everyone to be middle
class? ‘Pessimistic’ geologists and
resource experts worry about running out of high-grade ores and oil and
gas. "Optimistic" economists
are prone to argue that our technological capacity for inventing substitute
materials and different paths of technology is unbounded. Whatever the distant
future, right now it seems that there is not enough for everyone in the world
to have a high level of consumption.
In the event that we do not choose to reduce consumption, the
burden of enlarging the rate of entry of the poor into the middle class would
fall to the scientists and technologists, who, it is hoped, will show us how to
produce more for less resources. If we cannot steadily maintain a high level of
use of our knowledge and ability to make our food and products more cheaply and
with less energy, then we force the entire world to face reduced
consumption. Most of the increasing
world population will be kept poor and their access to the affluence that most
now want will be blocked.
The other important influence on Halesworth's future development
is Britain’s post-industrial economy.
If anyone seriously doubted that we are living in a post-industrial
world, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics should
disabuse them. There are still a lot of people working in manufacturing, but in
terms of the value of their output to the national wealth, it's less than half
that of those in financial services. By
2003, manufacturing's contribution to the economy had declined to just 14.2
percent, and it will have fallen further since then. Our wealth appears to be
built increasingly on our ability to move capital around, and live off
commissions. At first sight, this seems a highly unpromising basis for
continuing national prosperity, especially as the goods we buy nearly all come
from overseas. It is as if the world is making a fine living from ‘taking in
each other's washing’, a proposal which defies common sense.
Fortunately, the analogy is a poor one. The world is getting
more global, which means that more companies and countries are specialising in
what they are good at, and buying the rest from wherever in the world it is
cheapest. In truth, Britain was only a world leader in manufacturing for a few
decades in the mid-nineteenth century, but now, technology and communications
allow quite sophisticated goods to be produced in parts of the world where
labour costs are low. Economies of scale then allow the market leaders to
innovate and cut prices. Manufacturing, which once generated as much as 60
percent of the nation's wealth, when Britain was briefly the workshop of the
world at the time of the 1851 Great Exhibition, is now less important than the
wholesale and retail trades, which now account for 15 percent of the
economy. Agriculture’s share is around
2 percent. Britain's beleaguered manufacturing sector, which is haemorrhaging
7,000 jobs a month, saw its contribution to the economy fall from 21.1 percent
to 14.2 percent over the period 1995-2003.
Factories are suffering because their wage and raw material costs are
rising fast, but the price they charge has been kept steady because of stiff
competition from cheap Asian imports.
Nine out of the ten slowest growing industries are in the manufacturing
sector. On the heavy industry side,
coal extraction fell by 79% between 1992 and 2003 and the UK is now a net
importer of natural gas.
This trend has been hugely beneficial for the UK's financial
services industry, which now generates almost a third of our annual national
wealth. This is a global industry par excellence and the world has come to
London to participate in it. The fabulously-rewarded individuals at the top of
the financial tree demand to live somewhere that is cosmopolitan, in a time
zone that faces both east and west, where foreigners get a fair deal in
commercial law, and where the government gives good tax breaks. On these
measures, London is far ahead of other capital cities and is still getting more
of a growing market. The Square Mile is
now the beating heart of the country and accounts for almost a third of the
economy - twice the contribution from the manufacturing sector. In 2003 Office for National Statistics
reported that banks, insurers, management consultants and other financial
services had contributed 30.2 percent of the nation's wealth, or £310.9billion.
In 1995, the share was 24 percent. The
United Kingdom is the third largest fund manager in the world, just behind the
United States and Japan, with £2.96 billion under management.
We are also good at some new, but rapidly growing activities.
Computer services have been, unsurprisingly, the fastest-growing sector of the
last decade, which contributed £2.24billion to the economy in 2003 - a 354
percent rise on 1992. Insurance and pension funds rose by 220 percent, while
construction was up by 103 percent.
The output from market research and management consultancy firms grew
from £4.7billion a year to £11.3billion. The statistics were compiled at the
height of the house price boom, so it is not surprising that the UK's single
largest industry in 2003 was renting property. Landlords made £77.6 billion
that year, or 7.9 percent of the economy.
The creative sector now accounts for 9.2 percent of the economy. The above increases do not account for
inflation, which has averaged 2 percent a year in the period. It is significant for its future that
Halesworth is partaking of this new range of economic activity at both the
factory and small retail entrepreneur ends.
Without doubt the post-industrial economy more than makes up for
the slump in home-produced shoes and jumpers over the same period. In other
words, as long as the country is generating the money to buy them, it hardly
matters where they are made. Internet
businesses, which have an international market, have sprung up in the
surrounding villages.
Every morning, people leave Halesworth in cars to go to their
workplace and are passed by others whose work destination is the place they
have just left. In this dynamic
transport shuttle everyone is somehow connected with, and supporting, a
transport system based on private cars. Science
now indicates that this massive carbon economy has dislodged the
biosphere from one of its stable states that has supported human evolution for
the past two million years. Climatic change has started to unfold and the world
is not a unified community with powers to produce a global technological fix. Many are beginning to believe that in this
scenario, sustainable development, with its adherence to annual year on year
increases in spending power, is pointing in the wrong direction. Rather, what
is needed is a sustainable economic retreat. This will require global strategies
to adjust the relationship between production systems and natural resources to
produce rates of waste emission that the biosphere can assimilate. Ironically, the first response to this is a
proposal to manage the dismantling of the coastal defences protecting reclaimed
salt marshes. These were the very
defences that ruined Patrick Stead’s export trade.
Table 7.6 People and households from 2001 census
|
Westhall |
Chediston |
Halesworth |
Area (Ha) |
939 |
1011 |
447 |
Males |
197 |
96 |
2163 |
Females |
184 |
99 |
2474 |
Total population |
381 |
195 |
4637 |
Households |
162 |
85 |
2137 |
Persons/ha |
0.41 |
0.19 |
10.4 |
Persons/household |
2.4 |
2.3 |
2.2 |
Table 7.7 Age structure of populations in the 2005 census
Age range |
Westhall* |
% |
Chediston* |
% |
Halesworth* |
% |
0-4 |
19 |
5.0 |
7 |
3.6 |
207 |
4.4 |
5-15 |
40 |
10.5 |
29 |
14.9 |
542 |
11.7 |
16-24 |
37 |
10.0 |
7 |
3.6 |
39 |
0.84 |
25-44 |
78 |
20.5 |
43 |
22.1 |
995 |
21.5 |
45-64 |
124 |
32.5 |
63 |
32.3 |
1132 |
24.4 |
65-74 |
36 |
9.4 |
29 |
14.9 |
630 |
13.6 |
75 and over |
47 |
12.3 |
17 |
24.1 |
738 |
15.9 |
* numbers of people in each age category
A glimpse of how people are now organised for production is
contained in the 2001 National Census.
The main body of information is not yet available, but summaries have
been released that provide disturbing glimpses of how people live at the start
of the new millennium, and they provide opportunities for comparisons to be
made between Halesworth and two of its nearest neighbouring rural communities,
Westhall and Chediston.
The basic situation is set out in Table 7.8. An index of rurality is the density of
persons per hectare. Chediston has the
smallest index, which is nearly thirty times lower than for Halesworth. The other significant feature is the number
of persons per household. Although the
values for all three parishes are close to each other, Westhall has the highest
number of people per house. This
difference, although slight, is evidence for a younger population in Westhall,
which is borne out by comparing the age distributions (Table 7.9). Regarding age distribution, the key figures
to compare are the percentages of persons in the ‘16-24’ and ‘75 and over’
categories, which clearly show that Westhall has the’ youngest’ population, and
Chediston has the ‘oldest’ population; Halesworth being intermediate. Chediston also stands out in having the
highest percentage of second homes and the lowest number of houses with full
amenities.
Table 7.8 Accommodation and tenure from 2001 census
|
Westhall |
Chediston |
Halesworth |
All dwellings |
172 |
102 |
2237 |
Dwellings with residents |
162 |
85 |
2137 |
Vacant dwellings |
3 |
5 |
66 |
Second home |
11 |
12 |
36 |
Detached |
94 |
73 |
717 |
Other |
57 |
27 |
1324 |
Caravan or temporary structure |
25 |
0 |
198 |
Rooms per household |
6.3 |
6.8 |
5.23 |
Occupancy rating -1 or
less |
10 |
4 |
64 |
Full amenities |
143 |
74 |
1982 |
Lowest floor above ground |
12 |
0 |
115 |
Owner occupied |
128 |
69 |
1575 |
Housing assoc./social landlord |
18 |
6 |
311 |
Private landlord/agency |
16 |
10 |
251 |
Table 7.9 Work and
qualifications from the 2005 census
All employed people 16-74 |
Westhall |
Chediston |
Halesworth |
Extractive/manufacturing |
64 |
36 |
568 |
Service |
115 |
53 |
1300 |
Travel public |
5 |
3 |
70 |
Travel private |
126 |
62 |
1196 |
Other travel/at home |
48 |
24 |
602 |
Av distance to work |
24.50 |
16.43 |
14.41 |
|
|
|
|
All people 16-74 |
|
|
|
Qual/None or Lowest |
144 |
81 |
1997 |
Qual/Level 2 |
57 |
25 |
556 |
Qual/Highest |
74 |
36 |
597 |
|
|
|
|
Work/Man./Prof |
81 |
26 |
528 |
Work/Intermediate |
13 |
8 |
197 |
Work/Small/own account |
38 |
26 |
272 |
Work/Low superv/tech |
23 |
10 |
246 |
Work/Semi/Routine |
43 |
28 |
886 |
Never worked |
3 |
3 |
51 |
Not classified |
76 |
41 |
970 |
|
|
|
|
With
respect to employment, all three communities have more people employed in
service provision than in manufacturing and the extractive industries (Table
7.8). The ratio of service to
manufacturing jobs is highest in Halesworth, but Westhall is not far behind,
with ratios of 2.29 and 1.80 respectively.
Westhall also has the highest proportion of people working as managers
or in the professions, whereas Halesworth has the lowest. Another important
related difference between these two communities is that the workers of
Westhall travel further to work than those who live in Halesworth. A commute of fifty miles or more per day
seems to be commonplace for the folk of Westhall.
These preliminary summaries of the 2001
census indicate that with increased prosperity and mobility has come a social
differentiation between communities.
Westhall appears to have been chosen as a dwelling place by more highly
qualified younger people, who prefer it to either Halesworth or Chediston. Both Westhall and Chediston have no retail
amenities and their residents probably rely on Halesworth only for food. For other requirements Lowestoft is only
half an hour away by car or train, and Norwich or Ipswich can be reached by bus
or car in about an hour. This is the
retail background in which new 21st century social organisations are
developing. The fragmented retail experience mirrors the social culture of
obsessive consumption in which it is embedded (Fig 7.8).
Fig 7.8 Halesworth small-town model of communitarianism
In contrast, Halesworth in 1851 was a small balanced community, which represented the
oldest kind of human institution, found absolutely everywhere throughout the
world in all kinds of societies. Since the late Palaeolithic more than 100
billion human beings have lived on earth and the majority have spent their
entire life as members of very small groups, rarely of more than a few hundred
persons. Their production systems were
each composed of few people. This
picture is the starting point for ideas that there is a basic human need for
small communities, which is encoded in our genes. It is in our behavioural makeup that we still orientate towards a
group; the small group of the village and the tribe. Rural communities in the 2001 census are still small, yet Halesworth and its
surrounding villages now lack any sense of communal focus or scale of production. Their fragmented residential, commercial and
cultural centres emphasise transportation by car, so that the inhabitants also
lack any sense of pedestrian scale.
Village and town
are no longer serving as magnets for both people and ideas. Paradoxically, folk
now seem to like isolation. Domestic life has become privatised and atomised,
with family members each having their own TV, and following an individual
interest. New
housing infills are socially sterile. Everything is new clean and neat. Neighbours
are usually only glimpsed as they walk to the car. Each house is a small
fortress equipped with a barking dog or alarm system. The only visible activity
is macho man cutting his lawns. There
are obviously great differences between Halesworth old and new. Leaving aside the
crushing poverty dramatically illuminated by Michael Fordham, we can legitimately ask if
its pre-industrial community was really a haven of creativity and neighbourly
harmony, which could serve as a planning model for today’s social ills. Have we really lost a unique combination of
unity with social, visual and ecological variety? Is there an historical small-town target that modern planners
should use for social and ecological regeneration? Planners, since their profession emerged in the late 19th
century, have always thought so.
Halesworth’s 19th
century society was based on ideas of mutal aid, political and economic
decentralisation, human-scaled production and communitarian ideas. These ideas
of social ecology as a recipe for human life were first articulated at the end
of the 19th century for an improved cooperative economy by the
Russian geographer Peter Kropotkin. The
Scottish planner, Patrick Geddes and his pupil Lewis Mumford forcibly developed
them in Britain. Americans have
followed this path since the 1990s to restore the integrity of their basic institutions and turn
back disturbing trends toward crime, social disorder, and family breakdown. The
past decade has been an era of important social reforms: in the schools, in the
criminal justice system, in family policy. In states and localities across the
U.S.A, citizens have fought for greater emphasis on character, individual
responsibility, and virtues and values in the public square. Partly as a
result, on a host of "leading social indicators”, such as rates of violent
crime, rates of youth crime, levels of teenage pregnancy, and even student test
scores, the nation is showing incremental but significant improvements.
Communitarian ideas and policy approaches have been playing a major role in this growing North American movement of cultural and institutional regeneration. Communitarian thinkers are in the forefront of the ‘Character Education Movement’, which is fostering a return to the teaching of good personal conduct and individual responsibility in thousands of schools around the country. Likewise, communitarians have been playing a role in the new community-based approaches to criminal justice, which are showing solid success in restoring neighbourhood order and achieving real reductions in violent crime. In the area of family policy, communitarians have worked for policies to strengthen families and discourage divorce. They have led in devising fresh, incentive-based policies designed to discourage a casual approach to marriage and to promote "children-first" thinking and family stability, while at the same time preserving the rights of women and men. The need for action has now reached the large politically influential community of the Evangelical Church, where a group of leaders, convinced of the science behind climate change, is trying to persuade its local membership to reduce their domestic carbon emissions. Communitarianism has become a part of one of the most innovative movements working to renew and revitalize American society.
‘Yesterday’ in Halesworth is a piece of
the history of this process, and everyone who lived through the past
twenty-four hours holds some of the public evidence that could be put towards
learning about the past to better understand the present and shape the future. The history of Halesworth is in the making;
it is not a dead thing to be pulled out and praised or deplored; it is the
community that is a custodian of the past, by the recording of the present. To
make history part of the community’s social toolkit there has to be a
reorientation of history towards ecology.
Social ecology is nothing more than an environmentally orientated study
of a community, which explores the relations between ecological infrastructure,
politics, community organisations, the economy and culture. In this context, an Internet version of this
document is available for everyone to update.
Thereby, we hope that the practical legacy of ‘Halesworth' will be a continuously updated cultural
history; a living history to promote practical solutions for future
interactions between community and environment.
In
the context of local history, the modern Local Agenda 21, which originated in a
global imperative to save Earth's natural resources, is really a platform for
townsfolk planning their future development, to create themselves a cultural
clearing appropriate to combat the placelessness of the 21st century. In this
context, history can offer rich building blocks. History turns us towards
folklore, to costume, to dialect, to local proverbs and customs; to the
architecture and building materials of houses; to roofs, domestic interiors,
furniture, cooking habits- to all the things within a locality that go to make
up a way of life; to the various arts of living, of adapting, of balancing
needs, and resources, of enjoyment which may not be the same as those in the
next village. Looking to the past, we also see that to use these building
blocks we have to be motivated by altruism to non-human species, and develop
some concept of stewardship for wildlife and landscape. Comparisons of present
with past also show things that have been lost, and new economic values that
have to be adopted if they are to be replaced.
‘Community plans’ are now a mandatory part of Local Authority
development strategies. Government
guidance says that they should take on board these three historical
perspectives, starting with grass-roots involvement of families. Whilst
management begins with data collection, analysis and planning, there are usually
some things that can be done at once. Not everything can or should be foreseen.
It is often best to start by doing, because the test of community
development programmes is what people do. Social change flows from individual
actions. By changing what they do, people move societies in new directions and
themselves change.
As well as
celebrating its past, a community should also look to its history for lessons
about the future; ‘Halesworth’ with its global perspective is a start.
Rurality, despite its shortcomings with regards the social services that are
readily available in towns, is highly regarded. However, most countryfolk are adrift in their own part of the
great sea of rurality. Rurality and
communitarianism actually go together.
The development of the countryside involves deciding what features
should be protected enhanced or introduced: listing the factors limiting action
with regards these features; deciding what has to be done to remove the most
important limiting factors (this is the action, or management plan). The final
stage is to decide what has to be measured, year on year, in order to check
that the action plan is effective. This
is the monitoring programme to provide feedback so the plan can be adapted to
reality.
This recipe
for a sustainable future assumes that people will respond and change. However, the last two centuries since the
opening of the age of plenty appears to have an inbuilt momentum that will
probably be too difficult to deflect, except as a response to crisis. Escape from the life of the Bird families of
Chediston Street’s Yards has resulted in bigger homes and smaller
families. Children without fathers have
become the norm. Halesworth folk now
have endless conveniences; yet never seem to have time. With the help of ‘Galaxy Travel’ in
the Market Place, at a moment’s notice they can travel anywhere in the world,
yet most people do not bother to cross the road to meet their neighbours for a
chat about what it is like to be alive.
With the help of the ‘Rainbow’ supermarket, people have more food than
they can possibly eat; yet this makes them miserable, worrying about being
overweight and dying ‘prematurely’ from cancer. Premature death to the Birds, meant the death of James, the
breadwinner, before the age of 40, and the burial of his daughter Ann, age
ten. This comparison of family
well-being encapsulates the West’s big problem. With increased command of the environment, people have become
more self-absorbed and more selfish.
Compared with Elizabeth and Hannah Bird, we now have less resilience to
urban living. We expect more; we
constantly compare ourselves to a ‘norm’ devised by professional communicators
who control the mass media that sets the standards from the style of our
kitchens to the shape of our bodies. We
have a vast choice with which to satisfy our wants, and we are now discovering
these options bring no real freedom at all.
In a review
of David Attenborough’s television programme, ‘Are We Changing Planet Earth?’
transmitted on Wednesday 24th May 2006, the Daily Telegraph’s TV critic Stephen
Pile wrote:
“There was something really momentous about
the sight of Sir David Attenborough stating the obvious…. he stared into the
camera and said that after due consideration, weighing up all the pros and
cons, he had finally reached the Olympian conclusion that global warming is
entirely the fault of skin-wrapped, stuff-collecting, pain-in-the-butt
humanity.
For years he has sat on the fence,
preferring to concentrate on the wonders of our all-chirupping, all-fornicating
globe, but a whopping great computer at Exeter, which produced a catastrophic
future had finally made up its mind.
It’s all down to schmucks like you and me.
Right at the end he said the most alarming
thing of all. The ice caps are melting,
the once colourful corals of the Barrier Reef are accusingly white, and such is
the desertification of inland China that sand storms are an every day
occurrence in Beijing, but “what happens next is up to us”.
Us?
This is the worst possible scenario. We’re stuffed. Is there really no one else?
In other
words, every time we flick a switch we are making a contribution, however
small, to the bleaching of far distant coral islands, the colours of which were
discovered only a few decades ago. At
the same time we are tipping the balance of materials and energy away from the
economic development of human communities of the Third World. These are the fundamental reasons why human
settlements are now, for better or worse, ecological societies, each developing
with its own global footprint.
Murray
Bookchin, who has long been a major figure in connecting the process of
urbanisation with human evolution, reminds us that the battleground on which
the ecological future of the planet will be decided is clearly a social
one. Social ecology of ‘place’ is
therefore a growing educational theme that provides the platform for people to
‘think globally and act locally’. It is
an important interface with applied ecology, which is really much, much, more
sociological than the application of science to preserve wildlife and
wilderness, and unravel the biophysics of planetary systems that maintain life
on Earth. Earth’s ecological problems
cannot be solved without resolutely managing social factors, such as attitudes
towards waste, economic growth and even the school syllabus. The issue of industrialism as a wasteful
process is central to economic growth.
The idea that things should last, the philosophy of the pioneer machine builders, James Smyth of
Peasenhall and Thomas Easterson of Halesworth,
does not fit the economic model anymore. Ergonomically designed to be as unobstrusive and as ubiquitous as
possible, the gadgets of today tend to chug along until they crash and
burn. Cheap electronics in computers or
tractors are not built to be repaired.
There is something shocking in the idea that everything is disposable
and that people, like the Ford Tractor Society, do not exist to care for old
gadgets anymore. The point is that they
cannot care. The technological fix is
virtually impossible. Computer driven
machines cannot be resurrected.
Social
ecology is a continuum of people and non-human nature, and ‘social ecology’
defines an educational scaffold for building a future culture in which communal
interest is elevated above personal interest.
Every person in a community plays a part in its ecological change and
its impacts elsewhere. This happens
mainly through the day to day sourcing of household goods through the retail
trade. By being involved in these
household tasks, individual behaviours and attitudes towards others are part of
the unfolding of social evolution. In
the long view of Halesworth’s history, the Victorian travails of Sarah Bird,
struggling with life in Chediston Street, are as important as the life of
Benjamin D’Urban, also born in Halesworth, who as the first Governor of the
Cape of Good Hope, was a civil servant enforcing the exploitation of a large
part of Africa for the benefit of British consumers.
Taking the
long perspective, we see that people like D’Urban aided and abetted the
phenomenon and the uptake of an idea of an ever-expanding market system. He was part of the elaboration of a
hierarchy of class into a system for the selective and inequitable distribution
of planetary resources. We now see that
this was wrong, and that the Birds of the community he left behind represented
victims of the system.
Sustainable
development is about being concerned with the complementarity of mutual aid to
correct colonial mistakes, and the essential contribution we have to make is to
reduce our urge to ‘collect stuff’ from
a rapidly declining global resource. To make this point, we have chosen
Halesworth as the exemplar of an ecological community, but really, we could
have chosen any small market town in the United Kingdom to carry an appeal for
moral regeneration and socio-economic reconstruction along ecological
lines. The next few decades of
Halesworth’s social history will inevitably illuminate a turning point of human
evolution.
This is just one facet of Halesworth’s rich social heritage that has been revealed in the publications produced by local people during the last twenty-five years. This year, the district council published a wide-reaching appraisal of the town’s conservation area. It was the outstanding knowledge base, covering the community’s built and green environments that prompted us to take the town as an educational example of an ecological society. Books, reports and documents like this one, are put on the shelf and may not be revisited for many years. It strikes us that the next logical step is to find ways of creating an interactive social history database to elicit more information and capture ideas that bubble up from within the community. Giving people this kind of ownership of their history is a role for IT in the community.
Generally
the basic principles for a web-based community conservation system for both
green and built assets are:-
1 There needs to be some kind of forum for grass
roots inputs of individuals who can painlessly upload their text and pictures.
2 A download facility is required for people to
obtain the latest versions of documents and pictures.
3 The system needs a local volunteer to manage the
updating of information and its dissemination through procedures acceptable to
the community and its local authority.
4 Technically, the web system needs to be free,
uniform, stable and kept up to date with the latest advances in IT.
5 There needs to be a local community database for
holding information about buildings and their social history, linked to a
‘live’ management plan for the entire operation, which records the objectives
and the practical means by which they are to be reached and checked against
performance indicators.
Too much
effort has been wasted in the past by adopting idiosyncratic IT systems that do
not survive beyond the enthusiasm of a local inventor. To coincide with
the publication of our contribution to Halesworth’s history we have
incorporated the 'Halesworth Hyperbook', on three popular free commercial
servers to give people an idea of what kinds of systems are currently available
and how they look and operate. We want
to allow people to share their experiences and opinions about locations, and to
do this by sharing both on the web and in situ.
Sharing on the web means attaching textual or multimedia
annotations to textural narratives and maps of a place, and allowing others to
see or amend that content. The name ‘mediascape’ has been coined for this kind
of multimedia presentation.
Examples of successful text-based collections (and indeed
communities) of user-generated content abound on the web, Wikipedia and Flickr
to name two popular examples.
Sharing spaces is dramatically augmented by attaching digital
multimedia to maps. These ‘mediascapes’ are a powerful new way to connect the
notional and physical worlds. The
notion of a path through a space is the key narrative device. The user is able
to annotate points on the path with multimedia - text, photos, audio, video -
and blog-style commentary. At the heart is a simple model of ‘create, publish
and share’ that allows user-generated content to be communicated widely.
For the
text-based experiment we have chosen ‘Bravenet’ and ‘Wikispaces’ because they
are good examples of successful free community networks serving individuals and
communities across the world. In
Bravenet people can add comments to a forum, download documents and upload
pictures. In Wikispaces, the whole text of ‘Halesworth’ is available for
editing and extending.
The mapping
model is ‘Sharing Spaces’, where we have created a Halesworth community map
(Halesworth Town SCAN) to demonstrate how it is possible to map annotated
features of the town and its surroundings on the web, with trails made between
them. The model for Halesworth Town
SCAN is Parham Village SCAN, which was produced as a book by the villagers of
Parham as the centre piece to their Millennium celebrations.
Halesworth
Hyperbook www.halesworth.bravehost.com.
Halesworth
Wiki is http://halesworth.wikispaces.com/
Halesworth
Town SCAN is http://www.communitywalk.com/map/29515
You can
communicate with the authors at anglianangles@aol.com
Allan,
M. (1967) The Hookers of Kew, Michael Joseph
Beales,
H. L. (1967) The Industrial Revolution, Augustus M Kelley
Bernstein,
W. J.(2004) The Birth of Plenty, McGraw-Hill, London
Blyth,
R. (1969) Akenfield, Allen Lane
Bookchin
M (1964) Ecology
and Revolutionary Thought, in ‘Ecology of Freedom’, Cheshire Books
Bottomley, A. F. Ed. (1883) The
Southwold Diary of James Maggs, 1818-1848, Suffolk Record Society.
Bottomley, A. F. Ed. (1884) The
Southwold Diary of James Maggs, 1848-1876, Suffolk Record Society.
Cipolla,
C.M. (1993) Before the industrial revolution, Methuen
Clegg,
R. & Clegg, S (1999) Southwold, Phillimore
Downing,
R. & Bellamy, D. (2005) Seeds in Lines: the Smyths and Kemps of
Peasenhall, Hypermedia Education
Downing,
R. & Bellamy, D. (2006) The Sheriffe Family of Uggeshall, Southwold and
Henstead, Hypermedia Education
Dymond,
D. & Martin, E. (1999) An Historical Atlas of Suffolk, Suffolk
County Council
Evans,
N (1984 ) The occupational structure
of Halesworth in the later 17th century, Suffolk Rev. N.S
Evans,
N (1985) The East Anglian Linen
Industry, Gower
Evans,
N ed. (1991) Goods and chattels of Halesworth people, Halesworth WEA,
Suffolk Record Office (Lowestoft) 942.64 HAL
Fordham,
M (2002) Malting and Brewing 1200-1900, Halesworth & District Museum
Fordham,
M (2004) The Hemp Industry in the Halesworth Area 1790-1850, Halesworth
and District Museum.
Edwards,
P. (2006) Halesworth Conservation Area: Character Appraisal and Management
Proposals/Strategy, Waveney District Council.
Foucault,
M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge, Routledge
Gooch,
M & Gooch, S (1999); The People of a Suffolk Town, Michael and
Sheila Gooch
Higgins,
D. (1987) The Beachmen, Terrance Dalton
Jenkins,
F. (1948) Story of Southwold, F.
Jenkins
Jobson,
A. (1948) This Suffolk, Heath Cranton
Lawrence,
Rachel (1986); An Early Nineteenth Century Malting Business, PSIA Vol 36
(2)
Lawrence,
Rachel (1990); Southwold River, Moxon
Lawton,
R. ed. (1978) The Census and Social Structure, Frank Cass
Lloyd,
R. (2002) The Satterlees and
Playters in England and N. America, Sotterley Charitable Trust.
Maltster,
R. (1984) Malting in Suffolk ,
Suffolk Industrial Archeol. Soc.
Mathias,
P. (1959) The brewing industry in
England 1700-1830, Cambridge University Press
Moran,
J. (1978) Clays of Bungay, Richard Clay & Co
More,
C. (1989) The industrial age, Longman
Wrightson,
K (2000) Earthly necessities, Yale University Press.
Munn, G. (2006) Southwold: An Earthly
Paradise, Antique Collectors Club.
Newby, J.W. (1936) A history of Independency, Halesworth
Newby,
J.W. (1964) Patrick
Stead Hospital, Halesworth
Newby, D.
(1998) The century I saw, Micropress Printers Halesworth
Scarfe,
N. 1972) The Suffolk Landscape,
Hodder & Staughton
Sparkes,
I G Halesworth through the ages, I.G. Sparkes
Taylor,
C. (2006) Return to Akenfield, Granta
Whitehead,
R. A. (1991) The Beloved Coast, Terence Dalton Ltd
Trevelyan,
G.M. (1973) English Social History, Book Club Associates
Wake, R. (1842) Soutwold and Its
Vicinity, Dalton.
Warner,
P. (1987) Greens Commons and Clayland Colonisation, Leicester University
Press
Warner,
P. (1996) Seven Wonders of Westhall, Black Bear Press
Wilson,
J F (1995) British business history
1720-1994, Manchester University Press
Winstanley,
M. J. (1983) The Shopkeeper’s World 1830-1914, Manchester University
Press
We are grateful to the following people who have contributed to the project either through suggestions, discussions, reminiscences or access to private historical materials. Thanks are also due to the Staff of the Local Record Offices at Lowestoft and Ipswich for their help in accessing Halesworth’s archives.
Peter
Aldous
Alexander
Carr
Michael
Fordham
Janet
Huckle
Derek
Newby
John
Palmer
Howard
Took
Peggy
Woolnough
Roger
Woolnough