INDUSTRIES 



INTRODUCTION 



I 



industrial development of the 

 county of Durham, except in re- 

 spect of mining, is of late date. 

 The constant inroads of the Scots, 

 the isolation from the rest of 

 England which resulted from its position as 

 a county palatine, the ruthlessness of Newcastle 

 in suppressing any possible rival, all tended to 

 retard its progress. But from an historical point 

 of view the mass of details available concerning 

 the early salt and iron trades amply compensates 

 for the tardiness of the county in reaching a full 

 industrial development. All the towns of more 

 than a few thousand inhabitants lie to the east of 

 a line drawn from Gateshead through Durham 

 to Darlington ; the west of the county though 

 containing many mining villages is sparsely 

 populated. In spite of this limited area it has 

 succeeded in crowding into its industrial life illus- 

 trations of many of the most interesting phases 

 of economic development. This is the more 

 remarkable as the county is by no means rich 

 in gild records, the source of so much of our 

 knowledge of early trade. Little has been pre- 

 served concerning the gilds of the city of Dur- 

 ham ; Gateshead alone of Durham towns can 

 supply adequate materials for a picture of gild life. 

 For so many centuries episcopal influence was 

 the controlling factor in determining the lines 

 along which Durham should develop that there 

 is a certain dramatic fitness in the earliest in- 

 formation of the industrial activity of the county 

 being the fact recorded by Bede that the art 

 of glass-making was taught to the English by the 

 foreigners brought from Gaul by Benedict Biscop 

 to glaze the windows of the great abbey he was 

 building at Wearmouth. When, after an inter- 

 mission of more than a thousand years, glass- 

 making was once more begun on the Wear, and 

 Sunderland became for a time one of the best- 

 known centres of the industry, the site of the 

 nineteenth-century glass-works was not far from 

 the spot where the seventh-century glass-blowers 

 plied their trade, and among the employees in 

 the modern works numbers of French workmen 

 too were included. Unfortunately there is no 

 corresponding early account of the salt industry, 

 though in all maritime counties the salt-maker 

 was from the earliest times an important member 



of even the smallest village community, and the 

 great monastic establishments of Wearmouth 

 and Jarrow, admirably placed for producing this 

 necessity of life, doubtless made salt by evapora- 

 tion for their own use. But what the salt trade, 

 as compared with the glass trade, loses in antiquity 

 it gains in continuity. In the possession of MSS. 

 giving an uninterrupted account of an industry 

 from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, 

 Durham has a heritage of the utmost historical 

 importance. Each link in the chain of events 

 which connects the granting of a salt-pan at 

 Hart for the rental of a pair of white gloves in 

 1290 to the export of salt from the Cerebos 

 Works at Great ham in 1907 can be supplied 

 from authentic records. A fourteenth-century 

 trades directory seems an anachronism, but a 

 MS. is extant which shows that William Pult, 

 William Assom, William de Thorp, Gilbert 

 Boys, William Schephyrd, John Golding, Thomas 

 de Schorneton, Gilbert son of John, William 

 son of Roger, Thomas Mart, John Staneson, 

 Richard Pult, Gilbert Wodrof, William de 

 Seton, and Thomas de Ferry at their twenty- 

 four salt-pans were engaged in 1396 in making 

 salt at Cowpcn, practically in the same way in 

 which salt is now being made at Greatham only 

 a mile distant, the one difference being that the 

 fourteenth-century salt-makers used sea water, 

 and the modern salt-maker bores 1,000 ft. into 

 the earth for his brine. 



Nor is it only as a study in continuity that 

 the Durham salt trade repays investigation. The 

 misdirected energy of the Stuarts in attempting 

 to interfere with the economic freedom of the 

 people was an important factor in bringing about 

 their downfall. The impression among all 

 classes that the Stuart industrial innovations were 

 beneficial to the king but prejudicial to the com- 

 munity was universal and possibly justifiable. It 

 is as a source of information of the Stuart methods 

 of- producing the maximum of irritation with the 

 minimum of financial profit, that the history of 

 the company of the salt-makers of North and 

 South Shields stands unrivalled. 



In the eighteenth century the centre of in- 

 terest moves from the salt to the iron trade. 

 The settlements at Winlaton and Swalwcll 

 which owed their initiation to the enlightened 



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