INDUSTRIES 



David Evans & Co. in 1873, but is no longer 

 worked.'^ In 1838 this factory engaged 500 

 (lands, and a contemporary writer *" states that 

 steam and water power were employed, the 

 weekly wages bill being as follows : superin- 

 tendent, ^i ; men, izj'. to 15^. ; women, 5^. 6d. ; 

 children, 3J-. From the same source we know 

 that the maximum number of hours daily for 

 infant labour was fixed at ten, and twelve for 

 adults. In the same town ^ and at Ware *^ 

 there appears to have been a fairly considerable 

 manufacture of canvas. At Tring there were 

 four manufacturers employing 100 people. In 

 this industry hand-looms were used, and the 

 rate of wages appears to have been somewhat 

 higher, the men receiving i6s. per week. The 

 Tring people claimed to have commenced this 

 trade prior to any other town in England. At 

 Watford there were three silk-mills in 1838,** 

 and in 1849 three mills for throwing silk,** one 

 of these being presumably the Rookery Silk 

 Mill, which was closed before 1881,*' and at 



St. Albans a silk-mill occupying the site of the 

 abbey mill employed 300 young persons,** 

 which still continues, while there was also a 

 mill for spinning cotton wicks ; possibly (he 

 same mentioned in 1795.*' According to a 

 writer in 1838 this factory was formerly devoted 

 to lapidary work.*^ There are also at the 

 present time the St. Edmundsbury Weaving 

 Works at Letchworth, and mention may also 

 be made of the Nicholson Rainproof Coat 

 Company at St. Albans. 



At the Ickleford Industries of Applied Arts 

 of Mr. Walter Witter a successful attempt has 

 been made to revive artistic craftsmanship in 

 a country village. At the present time about 

 ninety persons, all from the neighbourhood, 

 are regularly employed.*' The work is by no 

 means confined to textiles, but special attention 

 is given to the reproduction and restoration of 

 old needlework, and the enterprise has won 

 not only in Great Britain, but on the Continent 

 and in America, an excellent repute. 



THE STRAW PLAIT, HAT AND BONNET INDUSTRY 



The county of Hertford probably owed its 

 former high repute for the industry of straw- 

 plaiting to soil peculiarly favourable to the 

 growth of the varieties of wheat-straw known 

 as Nursery and Red Lammas, both of which 

 were in great, and, indeed, in almost exclusive, 

 demand amongst straw-plaiters.^ Tradition 

 assigns the introduction of the industry into 

 this and the adjacent counties to the patronage 

 bestowed by Mary Queen of Scots on a colony 

 of Lorraine immigrants whom she established 

 in the first instance in Scotland, and who were 

 afterwards brought to England by her son, 

 James I. Mr. Thomas G. Austin, of Luton, 

 an expert historian of the handicraft, gives the 

 following account of its beginnings : — 



The fair and ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots, when 

 travelling in her mother's country, Lorraine, found 

 numbers of women and children employed, some in 

 plaiting straws and others in working the straw plait 

 into hats. Noticing that these poor people seemed 

 better off than their non-plaiting fellow country folk, 

 she took some of them with her, settled them in Scot- 

 land in or about the year 1552 under her immediate 



^^ r.C.H. Herts, ii, 281. 



*" Osborne, op. cit. 1 24. 



*i Ibid. 



*2 G. A. Cooke, J Topog. Descr. of the County of 

 Herts. 44. 



*' Osborne, op. cit. 106. 



** Lewis, Topog. Diet. 



« V.C.H. Herts, ii, 453. 



1 V.C.H. Herts, ii, 135. Straw suitable for plait- 

 ing was never grown, says Arthur Young, on stony or 

 heavy land. ' Weak straw grown under hedges and 

 near trees was best ' (Gen. View ofAgric. of Herts. 224). 



protection, in order that the handicraft might be 

 learnt by her own subjects. Before, however, her 

 laudable projects could bear fruit, cruel destiny over- 

 took her. The Lorrainers, however, were not 

 deserted, for her son, James VI of Scotland and I of 

 England, brought them to England, finding a suitable 

 shelter for them under the Napier family, who were 

 personal friends of the Anglo-Scottish king, and at 

 that time (1600) owners of Luton .Hoo.^ 



Straw plaiting, however, must have been an 

 industry of the English countryside, wherever 

 suitable material was available, in Elizabethan 

 times, if not earlier. Shakespeare writes of 

 maidens wearing ' platted hives of straw,' ' of 

 the ' sheav'd hat,' * and the ' rye-straw hat ' ^ ; 

 whilst in 1530 letters of denization were granted 

 to one Martin Johnson, a native of Guelders, 

 who is described as ' a strawen hat maker,' or 

 ' splyter hatmaker.' * By Stuart times the 

 industry was firmly established in Hertfordshire, 

 the fame of St. Albans, still a thriving seat of 

 the trade, being, at that epoch, chiefly derived 

 from * straw, tankards and pots.' ' Pepys, 

 while staying at Hatfield in 1667, relates that 



*8 Lewis, Topog. Diet. 



*'' Walker, Gen. View ofJgric. of Herts. 73. 



*^ Osborne, op. cit. no. 



*' From inform, kindly furnished by Mr. Walter 

 Witter. 



' Austin, The Straw Trade, 15. 



' Shakespeare, A Lover's Complaint (1597). 



* Ibid. 



" The Tempest, Act iv, Sc. i, 136. 



^ Page, Denizations and Naturalizations (Huguenot 

 Soc), 136. 



' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. ii, 274. 



251 



