A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



the ladies of the house-party ' had the pleasure 

 of putting on some straw hats, which are much 

 worn in this country, and did become them 

 mightily, but especially my wife.'* The i8th 

 century was the golden age of the straw plait 

 industry. ' Several thousand plaiters,' states 

 Oldmixon, in his Critical History of England, 

 ' found profitable employment ' in this century 

 in the counties of Bedford and Hertford. 

 According to the testimony of Arthur Young ^ 

 and other travellers in the district where the 

 industry flourished, the earnings of straw plait 

 workers were very great and its effect upon the 

 rates very beneficial. By the farmers, however, 

 this cottage handicraft was viewed with any- 

 thing but favour, in spite of the good account 

 to which, in consequence of the demand for 

 straw, they were able to turn this part of their 

 wheat. They considered, says Young, ' that it 

 did mischief, making the poor saucy, rendering 

 the women averse to husbandry, and causing a 

 dearth of indoor servants and field labourers.' ^^ 

 This state of things was not to be wondered 

 at. Women found the ' straw work,' as it was 

 called, no less profitable than it was pleasant. 

 At St. Albans women could earn 5^. a day at the 

 close of the i8th century and the opening of 

 the 19th. A guinea a week could be earned by 

 mere children. This, indeed, was the weekly 

 wage of a girl of thirteen at Gorhambury.*^ 



Women at Redbourn earned a guinea a week ; 

 at Berkhampstead a good hand could earn from 

 14^-. to i8.f. a week. Mrs. Munns, of Market 

 Street, was a great buyer of ' twist,' which she 

 bought at 4^. the score, or 30 yards, from the 

 poor of the neighbourhood, making it up into 

 bonnets.*^ The work was almost exclusively 

 in the hands of the female population — women, 

 girls, and children, the men taking but a small 

 part in the work, their share being chiefly 

 confined to buying the straw from the farmers 

 and bringing it home to the women." One 

 shilling a head was paid for binding wheat straw 

 into bundles for market." In 1813 John 

 Arnold, employed by Mr. Benjamin Kitchener, 

 of King's Walden, who sold for plaiting such of 

 his straw as was suitable for the purpose, was 



* Pepys, Diary, vii, 64. Pepys also speaks of a 

 certain actress ' like a country maid, with a straw hat 

 on' (ibid.). It was not until the i8th century that, 

 we are told, the milkmaid, or chip hat, was rescued 

 for a time from old women and servant girls to adorn 

 the heads of the first fashion. Ben Jonson writes to 

 Lady Mary Wroth : 



' He that saw you wear the wheaten hat 

 Would call you more than Ceres, if not that.' 



» Young, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 32. 



10 Ibid. 222. 



" Ibid. 223. 



13 Ibid. 



" Tansley, Soc Arts. Trans, (i860). 



1* Walker, Gen. View of Agric. of Herts. 83. 



charged with drawing straw for themselves 

 with two others. The custom was for the 

 buyer to draw straw from the sheaf, paying 5^. 

 for a bundle weighing about 60 Ib.^' At a 

 later date Lydia Badricks was charged with 

 making away with 2 score and a half of the 

 value of 2J-. 6i." The actual art of plaiting was 

 taught in plaiting schools, of which there was at 

 least one in every village where the industry was 

 established. The school was presided over by 

 an elderly dame, who charged the modest fee 

 of zi. or 3^. a week for imparting her know- 

 ledge to the smaU scholars, who, after about 

 five weeks' training, could earn, it was said, 

 from 8j. to 14.;. a week." The plait, after having 

 been made up into lengths of 20 yards, known 

 as scores, each yard forming one link or coil of 

 plait, was offered for sale in the plait markets 

 which were held in the open streets or market- 

 places of the chief towns of the county. Strict 

 municipal regulations governed the conduct of 

 these markets. In the plait market of Tring, 

 once famous for the industry, sale of plait was 

 restricted, in the reign of Charles II, to the 

 morning hours, the afternoon being reserved 

 for the sale of corn." At Hemel Hempstead, 

 where the plait market was held in Collet's 

 Yard, afterwards the site of the ' King's 

 Arms,' none might buy or sell plait before 



7 a.m. from Michaelmas to Lady Day, or before 



8 a.m. during the rest of the year. No plait was 

 to be offered for sale on the general market day." 

 The opening of the market was announced to 

 buyers by the ringing of a bell. The purchased 

 plait was not only disposed of locally. Essex 

 village plaiters made use of Hertfordshire cut 

 straw, which they bought in Hitchin market.** 



Prior to the invention of the straw splitter, 

 which gave a great impetus to the trade, the 

 straws were laboriously cut with a knife. The 

 informant of a contributor to the Penny 

 Cyclofadia (1842) told the writer that his 

 father, Mr. Thomas Simmons, residing about 

 1785 at Chalfont St. Peter (Bucks.), was 

 amusing himself one evening by cutting pieces of 

 wood, when he made an article upon which he put 

 a straw, and found that it divided it into several 

 pieces. A female who was present asked him to give 

 it to her, observing that if he could not make money 

 of it she could. . . . He was subsequently apprenticed 

 to a blacksmith, and, on visiting his friends, he found 

 them engaged in splitting straws with a penknife. 

 Perceiving that the operation might be much better 

 performed by an apparatus similar to that which he 



1' Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), ii, 237. 



" Ibid. 410. 



1' Austin, op. cit. 1 7. 



18 F.C.H. Herts, ii, 281. 



^'^ Borough Archives, BaiRuiick Rec. I 74-I056, 

 pp. i6g, 194, 329. 



20 I. Chalkley Gould, Straw Plaiting; a Lost Essex 

 Industry, 5. 



252 



