Hammerman's Hill the land, people and industry of the Titterstone Clee Hill area of Shropshire from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries

Abstract

This thesis attempts to trace the major changes, during a period of about three hundred years, in the Titterstone Glee Hill area of south Shropshire
Its main objective is to see to what extent developments over a long period of time provided conditions which prepared the way-for the great increase in industrial activity that occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The underlying geology, the general geography and an outline of the earlier history of the area have been examined to provide a background to the changes that occurred in agriculture, settlements, population, and in industry, where the emergence and expansion of the iron and coal industries have received close attention.
The thesis, which reveals that the area was very poor, studies the possible causes and the impacts of developments which include changes in landholding patterns and in land management, the polarization of society, the attitudes of manor lords and of industrial entrepreneurs, increases and other movements in population, and alterations in settlements.
During this period industrial activity passed through three distinct stages. The first, which began before the middle of the sixteenth century, was encouraged by the growth in local demand for raw iron, particularly between 1580 and about 1630, but during the second the progress of the iron industry was restricted by the slower growth of the local market and by limited success in acquiring a share of the West Midland market. The third stage differed greatly from the earlier stages and was far more active for the area adopted a new role as the major supplier of ironstone and, later, of coal to the ironworks at Bringewood and Charlcott. As a result the district became involved closely with the main movements and the fortunes of the Midland and national iron markets although it played merely a subsidiary or supplementary part in industrial innovations and changes. However, the increase in coal production was encouraged further by the growth of a wider local market as roads were improved and by 1783, when the area's close connection with the major iron markets was severed, the coal industry was able to replace the large-scale mining of ironstone and to support the great increases in population that had taken place.