Evidences of Industrial Growth on Some Fifteenth-Century Manors
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3553150 |
|---|---|
| Authors | E M Carus-Wilson (corresponding author), E M Carus‐wilson (London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1959 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 190 |
| Publication date | 1959-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2599235 |
| OpenAlex | W4250795220 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 35 |
IT is a commonplace that at the close of the Middle Ages the English woollen industry, which by then held a position quite as important as the once famous industries of Flanders and Italy, possessed a rural character which sharply differentiated it from them. Indeed, despite a marked dispersion of cloth manufacture even in Flanders and Italy towards the end of the Middle Ages, the contrast between the predominantly rural character of the English industry and the urban character of that across the Channel could not fail to attract the attention of the observant traveller. 'In England', says the Frenchman in the Heralds' Debate, 'your clothiers dwel in great fermes abrode in the countrey, havyng howses with commodities lyke unto gentylmen, where aswel they make cloth and kepe husbandry, and also grasse and fede shepe and catell'.1 Industry, traditionally associated more especially with urban societies, with craft and with merchant gilds, now grew outside the walls of the chartered boroughs, where once it had flourished in these islands of immunity set in a feudal sea, outside even the little market towns, and within the framework of the manor.2 How, then, was the pattern of village life altered by the coming of industry? How did industrialists and artisans fit into the manorial order? Where were these 'great fermes abrode in the countrey'? And when did the growth occur? As yet we have all too few studies bearing on these problems. It may therefore be worth while to examine certain evidences of industrial growth in a region of England whose development at this time is well known to have been outstanding, and wholly rural in character, namely that of the Cotswolds, more particularly the Stroud Valley, and, not far off, the village of Castle Combe. By the late fifteenth century 'Stroudwaters' and 'Castlecombes' had become household words both in England and on the Continent as trade names for particular kinds of fine woollen cloth, much in demand among foreign buyers on the London market. Thus in 1487 a Hanseatic agent could discuss the purchase at Blackwell Hall of cloths 'well dyed and costly such as Bristols, Stroudwaters, Castlecombes and such like', contrasting them with various kinds of less high quality cloths on show there.3 Leaving Bristol aside for the moment, of the two places singled out here for their production of fine coloured cloth in the late fifteenth century, one-Castle Combe-had in the fourteenth century been a secluded village with some 55 tenants on the slow-moving By Brook in north-west Wiltshire; the other, Stroudwater, had, as its name implies, been not a village at all but a mere stretch of water flowing through
Ancient history · Economics · Fifteenth · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History
Medieval Property Investors, ca. 1300–1500
The functions and fortunes of English small towns at the close of the middle ages
Archaeology and the smaller medieval town
The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550
La mode et les marchés des draps de laine
The changing geographical distribution of wealth in England
The textile industry and the foreign cloth trade in late medieval Sicily (1300–1500)
Small and Medium-Sized Towns in Medieval England
The Growth of the Roof-tile Industry in Later Medieval Wessex
The Challenge of Revolution
Coinage and Currency
The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
Asia, Africa and the Trade of Medieval Europe
Agriculture and Rural Life in the Later Roman Empire
The Revolutionary Process
Mining and Metallurgy in Medieval Civilisation
Straying at the edges
Weaving in Late Fourteenth-Century Yorkshire
Manufacture in pre-industrial England
Change and continuities in rural society from the later middle ages to the sixteenth century
A Diversified Economy
Growth and recession in the fifteenth-century economy
Mills, cranes, and the great divergence
Beyond Urban Hinterlands. Political Ecology, Urban Metabolism and Extended Urbanization in Medieval England
Craft Guilds and Christianity in Late-Medieval England
Wool and cloth production in late medieval and earlyTudorEngland
| Unique citing works | 26 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,58 |
| Citation span | 1966 - 2025 (60) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 26 |