West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology, Seminar 6: Welch1

Early Post-medieval Staffordshire

Christopher M. Welch

Introduction

The brief for seminar 5 asked that contributors assess the known archaeological resource in terms of its regional, national and international significance, on the basis of current agendas and debates. For the long period covered by the seminar, there are many agendas and debates, but one is of paramount importance. Few would argue that in 1500, at the beginning of the period under consideration, England was a country where capitalism prevailed; nor would they argue that, at the other end of the period, the England of George II was feudal. So the transition evidently occurred in this period, and archaeology may have a contribution to make in identifying when, where and how it occurred. This paper therefore seeks to assess the potential of the archaeological record of one county, Staffordshire, and to determine where it might contribute to this debate.[1]

The capitalist system of production is one characterised by private property, by production for a market rather than for subsistence, and the existence of a class of wage labourers who have only their labour to sell and a class of capitalists who own the means of production by which capital is reproduced. The transition to a capitalist system does not occur overnight, and there were areas, either in trade and commerce, or in industrial production, which favoured the reproduction of capital more than others. It is this 'former topology of capitalism' which needs to be defined, and explained.[2]

The County

Staffordshire has been described as being at the time of Domesday 'primitive, poor and divided among few tenants-in-chief'.[3] It was landlocked, had a barely navigable river only at its eastern margin and no large towns. It was heavily forested. Above all, the soils are generally poor, with areas of heavy clays and hilly country on sandstones, and so the dominant agricultural regime was and is one of livestock raising. In a system based on subsistence farming, this does not allow for as great a density of population as one based on arable cultivation.

Nevertheless, the medieval period was one of expansion and internal colonisation, as Chris Dyer has recently shown with respect to the towns.[4] The big Cistercian abbeys traded in wool, and there were coal mines and ironworks in the Churnet Valley and on Cannock Chase by the thirteenth century. [5]

Agriculture

Despite the prevalence of livestock raising, there is evidence in many parts of the county for former arable cultivation. Although no detailed study has been made, there are large areas of surviving ridge-and-furrow, which might suggest that where the common fields were enclosed there took place an immediate switch to the grazing to which the land was more suited. This suggests the existence of a market, and production above the level of subsistence, but whether capitalists and wage labourers existed we cannot say. It is not really understood when common field enclosure took place in the county: the vast majority of parliamentary enclosure acts relate to waste over which there were common rights, not open fields subject to intercommoning. Throwley, in the White Peak, provides evidence for the process. At the time of the Black Death there existed a village here, but by the start of our period this seems to have become deserted. In 1449, the landowners had 1,080 of their sheep impounded, and Bob Meeson has shown how the wealth from such large scale stock raising was invested in the embellishment of the Old Hall here, throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[6] This is hardly a pattern confined to Staffordshire, but there are questions that remain about its extent and timing here.

Enclosure, both legal and physical, is a process intimately associated with the rise of capitalism. It is not of itself an indication that capitalist relations of production have been established, but the removal of the complex web of common rights over land can be seen as a precondition of its commodification. As noted above, in Staffordshire there are few enclosure acts that relate to common lands, but there are many relating to the huge amounts of waste surviving, like the 9,000 acres of Needwood Forest enclosed in the early nineteenth century. But enclosure by the relatively expensive parliamentary method must represent the end of a process. Wordie calculated that around half of England was enclosed by 1550, but that a further 24% might have been enclosed in the seventeenth century.[7] In Staffordshire large areas of waste remained in the eighteenth century, and it seems reasonable to suppose that much enclosure of waste took place much earlier, in response to a growing demand for wool and meat. The timing of this is unknown, but Wordie's identification of the seventeenth century as the key period might be relevant here. Physical enclosure of this period is not easily identified on the ground, but a useful approach might be to locate areas where documentary evidence shows it to have taken place, and to determine whether it has any defining characteristics in terms of field size or shape in those areas. It would be interesting to compare, for example, the form of the 196 acres at Highwood, near Uttoxeter, enclosed in the 1630s with the remainder enclosed in the 1770s.[8]

An example of the application of the new rationalism to the landscape in the same period can be seen at Horton Hay, in the north of the county. The word hay in this context indicates an enclosed area over which a landowner exercised sole rights. The Hay existed by 1273 and was apparently divided into dairy farms in the later 17th century, and in 1792 there were nine farms.[9] At its northern end the Hay has been subdivided by a series of long boundaries which run across it in parallel lines. The boundaries are either around 10 chains (220yards, 203.7m) apart, or half that. Presumably this is a result of the seventeenth century surveyor’s use of the 66-foot Gunter’s chain, developed in the 1620s. The advantage would lie in the fact that the acreage of a 220-yard (i.e. one furlong) wide strip is easily determined: every 22 yards (i.e. one chain) along the strip measures out an acre. Measured up and parcelled out, the land here is made ready for the market in leases that is thought to have characterised early agricultural capitalism.

In general, the process of enclosure throughout this period needs to be more thoroughly understood. In Phillips's detailed analysis of William Yates Map of Staffordshire of 1775, a total of 15.6% of the county is either waste, Needwood Forest, woodland or parks.[10] In 1686, Plot thought that a third of the county was woodland or waste.[11] If his estimate is anywhere near correct, then between his writing and Yates's survey on the eve of the major phase of parliamentary enclosure, more waste and woodland was reclaimed than in the whole period of enclosure by act. And this is only ninety-odd years at the end of the period of interest: how much was enclosed in the previous two centuries?

Some answers to this question might be found through the current Historic Landscape Characterisation project in the county.

The Towns

The towns provided a market, and their development must be linked to the rise of capitalism. Looking at just one Staffordshire town, the cathedral city of Lichfield, it seems that the period was not necessarily one of prosperity. Evidence of this lies in the fact that its urban friary survives both as upstanding buildings and as open space, although the latter was threatened with development in the 1930s. The speed with which urban friary sites were redeveloped must be an indicator of the prosperity of towns in the mid-sixteenth century. Lichfield may be a special case as a cathedral city that lost much of its property and power after the Reformation, but it would be interesting to know how the friary sites at Stafford, Tamworth or Newcastle fared.[12] The effect was not confined to friaries; the site of the Benedictine abbey at Burton-on-Trent remained partly undeveloped until the nineteenth century.[13]

The pattern of post-medieval decline is seen elsewhere in Lichfield. The north side of Sandford Street is shown as an empty space when it was mapped by Speed in 1610, and excavations by Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit have recently confirmed the generally low level of activity here at that time. But the same excavations have revealed medieval activity in abundance, including kilns and the stone latrine pit to what was evidently an important structure, perhaps an inn. Lichfield may not have really recovered until the age of Samuel Johnson.[14]

The Civil War, and the economic and political turbulence of the mid-seventeenth century, also affected Lichfield. There were three sieges of the cathedral close, which left it all but wrecked, and this was followed by the extensive looting often experienced in wartime conditions unless steps are taken to prevent it. In an evaluation on the side of Minster Pool opposite the Close, large amounts of rubble were found which had been dumped into the Pool in the mid-seventeenth century which may have been the result of the tidying up of the wreckage of the war years.[15] In some towns, clearance of buildings was deliberate, as at Stafford, where houses were supposed to have been cleared for the distance of a musket shot from the town walls. Stafford's population fell from 1700 before the war to 1400 afterwards. After the Restoration, several people were presented at the manor court for building cottages on the waste in the cleared area at Stafford.[16] As with the friary sites, the speed with which these areas were redeveloped might be detectable archaeologically, as might the nature of that development, in both the upstanding archaeology and the buried. None of the evidence relating to redevelopment after either the Reformation or the Civil War provides direct evidence for the development of capitalism, but they do indicate relative prosperity in the towns.

The towns themselves were centres of production. Ralph Wolseley, bewailing his fate in the last years of the fifteenth century, claimed that he had invested £50 in a 'beerhouse' in the town of Rugeley from which he had expected to earn £13 a year. This might seem a high rate of return, but it should be remembered that plant in the fifteenth century would be of timber and would quickly wear out, requiring reinvestment regularly. This does seem to indicate a genuine case of capitalistic enterprise, and the identification and excavation of an urban production site like this, or like the dyehouse which he also claimed was destroyed by the locals in one of their periodic demonstrations of antipathy towards him, would be invaluable, specifically to learn what the extent of structures and equipment actually was.[17]

It may also be that the smaller towns like Rugeley did not follow the pattern of their larger neighbours. Uttoxeter was evidently thriving in the 1680s, when Plot describes its function as the main market through which the output of the excellent dairy pastures of the Dove valley passed. He makes some interesting observations on the butter and cheese trade here; that London dealers set up an office in the town, that the trade on market day was worth £500, and that the butter was sold in special pots and sampled to detect the diddling at which the locals were thought adept. The pots came from Burslem, an interesting example of one specialisation leading to another, and which might be detectable archaeologically.[18] In the 1570s, Rugeley had several inns, a 'Tannehouse' and two forges, and the local economy must have functioned in some way as a supplier of food and goods to the workers in the new industry, described below, which had been established on Cannock Chase ten years earlier.[19]

Industry

The blast furnace 'indirect' process of ironmaking was introduced to Staffordshire on Cannock Chase in, or before, 1561. This was its first use in England outside the Weald. Because the Cannock Chase industry, based at this period on charcoal fuel, was not supplanted by a coke-fuelled industry, it has left extensive remains of its furnaces, forges and the associated ponds. Lesser remains exist elsewhere, in particular in the Churnet Valley.

While the better preserved components of the industry clearly merit statutory protection, archaeological examination of the ironmaking sites may not answer many questions. All criteria for the identification of capitalism can be easily met; the accounts exist showing where the iron was sold and the great heaps of slag alone demonstrate production on a scale way beyond anything like simple commodity production. The whole Cannock Chase complex of two furnaces and three forges made over two hundred tons of iron a year. The costs of plant and raw material, and the profits made are recorded in minute detail. The capitalist class existed in the person of Sir William Paget, 1st Baron Paget of Beaudesert. We also know the names of the working class, and how much they earned from their labour. Humphrey Moreton, for example, was paid 2d for each tree felled, or more if it was hard to fell. We know also that the industry manifested all the characteristics associated with capitalism; it depended on the felling of what appeared to be ancient woodland and it rapidly destroyed it, felling around 5700 trees in a good year. The attempt to enclose the woods led to conflicts with the locals who had common rights on the Chase; an interesting demonstration of why legal enclosure was often a precondition of capitalist enterprise. The woodbanks of coppices can be traced for miles over the Chase, and recent survey work has revealed how much survives, but it is not clear to what extent Paget was continuing an earlier tradition of enclosure. In woodland areas like this, more detailed survey, coupled with documentary research, might disentangle the maze of earthworks.[20]

Although we have the details of the labourers we do not know exactly where they lived. This is important, and will be returned to below.

The coal industry manifests the same characteristics as the iron industry. Again on Cannock Chase, extensive remains of early mining have been surveyed and recorded, and there are such remains all over the Staffordshire coalfield, on Wetley Moor and in the Churnet Valley.[21] It is clear from the remains that there is a transition from simple shallow pits dug along the outcrop to deeper mines, with soughs, pumps and interconnecting shafts. These needed capital, and the accounts exist to show how much. In 1574, for example, a sough cost £63.[22] It may be simplistic to believe that the transition from the shallow pits to the deeper pits indicates the arrival of capital in the industry, and investigation of the features themselves would be needed to obtain actual dates for the development of the technology here. As with the iron industry, there is good documentary evidence for the miners on the Chase who sold their labour at the rate of 6d a day in the late sixteenth century. But once again, we do not know where they lived.

One aspect of the coal industry in the county which has received scant attention is its market. In the sixteenth century neither the glass nor the blast furnace industry used coal, but there must have been a demand somewhere. The presence of coal in medieval contexts is commented upon by excavators in Lichfield. This might seem strange when Cannock Chase is only a few miles away, but the coalfield is equally close. The domestic burning of coal requires specific arrangements of grate and flue, and it would be worth identifying, and dating, any such adaptations in urban or rural dwellings.

Interest in this period has tended to focus on the big fuel-using activities like iron- and glass- making, but an example of another industry where ample archaeological evidence exists is that of rabbit farming. Rabbits were big business in the sixteenth century, and capital was sunk into warrens, nets, guns and rabbits, but the returns were high. One seventeenth century entrepreneur calculated that he could expect a return of £8 an acre, more than any other kind of livestock.[23] Cannock Chase had many warreners' lodges, and it appears that sometimes the Pagets ran the business directly and at other times they leased land out. One site has been identified on the ground, that of a lodge which had been abandoned by the 1820s but certainly existed in the 1750s, and was burnt to the ground by the locals in 1710 and then rebuilt.[24] Interestingly, a magnetometer survey here did reveal a large anomaly on a likely looking house platform, which might suggest the site of the burnt lodge.

Staffordshire is of course for ever associated with the pottery industry, and much of what has been said above applies to that.

The glass industry in Staffordshire was wood-fuelled until 1615, after which it migrated to the coalfields of South Staffordshire and elsewhere. What survives in the modern administrative county is confined to three areas, around Rugeley and around Abbots Bromley where the industry is known to have existed from the end of the thirteenth century, and near Eccleshall, where French glassmakers migrated in the late sixteenth century. For the purposes of this paper, much of the glassmaking in Rugeley and at Abbots Bromley belongs to a late medieval tradition and concentrated on production of window glass, presumably for large scale and primarily religious projects. This tradition, for reasons that are not clear but which might be related to the Reformation, dwindles in the mid-sixteenth century. The French arrived in Eccleshall in the late sixteenth century and in the Abbots Bromley area by 1583. Fieldwalking evidence from Bagot's Park near Abbots Bromley shows that they may have made both vessel and window glass at the same furnace, and this must demonstrate the existence of a true market to which they were capable of responding. Fieldwalking has also yielded quantities of pottery, providing evidence for consumption as well as production, an important point which will be considered further.