INDUSTRIES 



INTRODUCTION 



THE present expansion of the indus- 

 tries of Northamptonshire is of 

 quite modern date, though as early 

 as the time of the Roman occu- 

 pation quarries were opened in the 

 limestone of Barnack and Stanion, the potter's 

 art flourished on the Huntingdon border, even 

 the surface iron was probably smelted for purely 

 local needs. The early Middle Ages saw little 

 development except in the larger output from 

 the Barnack quarries. So rich was the county 

 in stone that almost every manor at one time 

 possessed a quarry of its own or could draw on 

 one at easy distance, while the fine freestone 

 near the northern waterways enjoyed a more 

 than local repute. 



The leather trade next challenged, and won 

 for itself a pre-eminent place amongst the in- 

 dustries of the county, and the manufacture of 

 boots and shoes, one of its specialized branches, 

 may now be regarded as the staple trade of the 

 shire. Cattle from the rich water-meadows of 

 the Nene valley furnished abundant hides, as 

 the bordering forests oak-bark and fuel, to the 

 tanners and leather-dressers. The position also 

 of Northampton itself in the tideway of trade 

 encouraged the development of the town as a 

 manufacturing and distributing centre for pro- 

 ducts everywhere needed, and thus great store 

 of leather passed down the Nene to the Ouse 

 to stock the booths of Stourbridge Fair. It is 

 probable too that the special repute enjoyed by 

 the county-town as a rendezvous of horsedealers 

 may have induced the settlement of harness- 

 makers and the like. In the early years of the 

 last century the higher wages which successful 

 labour combination produced in London may 

 have led to more capital being invested at North- 

 ampton, while quite lately the effect of American 

 competition has been no unmixed evil if it has 

 led to keener attention to the demands of the 

 day and a more intelligent attempt to meet 

 them. 



The local lace-making, which can hardly be 

 considered apart from the similar industry in Bed- 

 fordshire and Buckinghamshire, owed to foreign 

 influence after the Revocation of the Edict of 

 Nantes a delicacy of pattern and a fineness of 

 fabric until that time unknown. Later, the 

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imitation of the coarse Maltese laces dragged the 

 industry to ruin, and no profitable competition 

 was possible with machine-made lace on its own 

 terrain. But our own generation is happily 

 witnessing a revival of the older and fairer work, 

 which it may be hoped will find a place of its 

 own. 



The last century has also seen the rediscovery 

 and working of the local iron ore, for which the 

 neighbouring limestone is a ready and suitable 

 flux. As late as the thirteenth century one or 

 two smelters' furnaces may have been alight in 

 the forest region, but from that time there seems 

 to have been no working of Northamptonshire 

 ironstone till the fifth decade of the nineteenth 

 century. 



The development and extension of trade is 

 largely conditioned by means of communication ; 

 bad roads and dangerous waterways strangle the 

 most promising industry. The mediaeval trade 

 of Northamptonshire was fortunate in possessing 

 two excellent navigable rivers, the Welland and 

 the Nene, and their present state is no indica- 

 tion of their condition when the great house of 

 Peterborough found the tolls at Gunwade a 

 valuable possession, and both rivers saw long pro- 

 cessions of boats and barges piled with stone, 

 timber, and leather from the county, while sea- 

 coal and numberless other products were im- 

 ported through Wisbech and Lynn. So entirely 

 has the network of railways monopolized the 

 carrying trade of the county at the present time 

 that some effort of the constructive imagination 

 is required to gain a right estimate of the place for- 

 merly taken by the rivers of the shire. The roads 

 of the county, except the old Roman ways, were 

 in bad weather unsuited for heavy traffic, and 

 the stone of Barnack and the neighbouring 

 quarries would, without ready water-carriage, 

 have been used far less widely than it was. 



We have ample evidence of the constant 

 traffic on the Nene at an early period, but during 

 the later Middle Ages there seems to have been 

 little improvement in its condition even if, as 

 appears very likely, it had not actually deteriorated. 

 As early as the reign of James I the river was 

 not generally navigable beyond AUerton water- 

 mill to the south of Peterborough; and Sir 

 William Fleetwood, who at that time made a 



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