Trade and Industry
Wills and inventories provided details about 17th and 18th century agriculture, including livestock, crops, and farm implements, while farm surveys and the tithe map gave more recent information. Property deeds provided the names of owners and occupiers of inns.
'... the story was pieced together from diverse sources ...'
More than any other part of the research, investigating the industries meant real detective work. For example, there were linen and cotton factories in Freckleton from the late 18th to the late 20th centuries, but I found no business papers relating to any of these.
Ultimately the story was pieced together from diverse sources including miscellaneous documents in the Record Office, references in existing publications, a letter written in 1810 (now in a private postal history collection) and, most exciting of all, the deeds of a cottage that once formed part of the cotton factory. These contained a summary of all purchase and sale transactions involving the factory from 1858 to its demolition in the 1980s.
Similar detective work sorted out the story of the port, with its coal trade and shipbuilding. Sources included an original plan of the 1802 coal wharf in the ownership of British Waterways and an account book (in private ownership) of the sailings of a local vessel to various ports in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland over a 24-year period.
At the Lancashire Record Office were records of vessels built from 1782. The outcome of all this careful research and detective work was most satisfying, though inevitably I would have liked to have discovered more. It showed what is attainable by steady application and persistent enquiry.
Published: 2005-03-03
