LOCAL INDUSTRIES AND HOME CRAFTS 309 



gave considerable emplo5Tiient. Bedfordshire had its osier baskets, 

 its reed matting, its straw plaiting ; its spinning of hemp had died 

 out in 1803, but men as well as women still made pillow lace. Straw- 

 plaiting extended along the borders of Buckinghamshire, Hertford- 

 shire, and Cambridgeshire. The best, that is, the weakest straw, 

 commanded high prices, and sold for from 2d. to 4d. the pound. In 

 Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, woollen and worsted yarn 

 was also spun for Norwich and the northern markets. Lincolnshire 

 wove fabrics for women's dresses ; Epworth made sack-cloth ; 

 coarse linen or hempen cloth was woven in many parts of the 

 county. Suffolk had its spinning and combing of wool ; and in the 

 district round Beccles, where hemp was largely cultivated, quantities 

 of hempen cloth were manufactured. Essex was famous for its 

 baizes. But the trade was for the time ruined by the war. In the 

 neighbourhood of Colchester, where during peace 20,000 persons had 

 found employment, only 8,000 were now employed. At Halstead, 

 Dedham, Booking, and the surrounding villages, the industry had so 

 decayed that numbers of hands were out of work, and the rates rose 

 to over 20s. in the pound. 



Hampshire was not a manufacturing county. But it had a 

 variety of industries ranging from manufactories of cloth, shalloons 

 and coarse woollens, to bed-ticking and earthenware pottery. Kent 

 was the county of hops ; yet Canterbury and the villages round 

 wove silk ; Dover and Maidstone made paper ; Crayford bleached 

 linens and printed calicoes ; Whitstable had its copperas works, 

 Sandwich its salt-works, Faversham and Deptford their powder 

 mills. Along the banks of the Wandle in Surrey were paper, oil, 

 snuff and flour mills, mills for grinding logwood, as well as leather, 

 parchment, calico, and printing works. The Mole turned iron mills 

 at Cobham and flatting mills at Ember Court. The Wey collected 

 on its banks many paper mills. In the Weald there still lingered 

 iron- workers and charcoal burners. Godalming and the neighbour- 

 hood had its patent fleecy hosiery, its works for wool-combing, for 

 blankets, tilts, and collar-cloths. Sussex formerly sent every year 

 quantities of iron by land-carriage to London ; but the trade was 

 dying fast. It still remained one of the chief centres of the charcoal 

 industry and of powder making. In Berkshire the woollen manu- 

 factures were dwindUng. They were deserting Newbury, leaving 

 behind a " numerous poor." But in the town and neighbourhood, 

 kerseys, cottons, calicoes, linen and damask were still made, and the 



