A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 



pit alone as many as 300 persons were employed 

 either in digging or in sorting. 



As an industry depending upon the character 

 of the soil should be mentioned the Flitwick 

 Chalybeate Water Works. Flitwick Moor is 

 a part of a long-since drained bog, but still 

 retains many water-channels and springs. The 

 earth is a peat strongly impregnated with iron. 

 Between thirty and forty years ago, the late 

 Mr. Stevens, who owned a part of the moor, 

 discovered the chalybeate character of some of 

 the springs, and devoted himself to the develop- 

 ment of a trade in this water. The water differs 

 from other chalybeates in possessing a decidedly 

 agreeable flavour, in the presence of a vegetable 

 acid and other peat products, and in not readily 

 depositing its iron as a precipitate. After the 

 death of Mr. Stevens the land and proprietary 

 rights were bought by a London firm of aerated- 

 water manufacturers who now place the water on 

 the market for medicinal purposes. 



As an industry dependent upon the local pro- 

 duction of the materials made use of, we ought 

 to mention the pickle manufacture carried on by 

 the Messrs. Jeeves, at Sandy. This is the only 



pickle manufacture in the county. The onions 

 and other articles are all grown by the Messrs, 

 Jeeves on farms in the market-garden district 

 described in the section upon Agriculture in 

 Bedfordshire. 



The extensive river system of the Ouse, which 

 has many windings and receives important 

 tributaries within the area of the county, is very 

 largely utilized as water-power for mills. Many 

 of these mills occupy sites of mills mentioned in 

 Domesday, though mills are mentioned in 

 Domesday as occupying sites where the stream 

 has diminished to little more than a small current 

 along a ditch and where there are consequently 

 no mills. Many of the existing water-mills are 

 large, but in almost all cases the water-power is 

 supplemented, perhaps in certain seasons practic- 

 ally superseded, by steam-power. In very few 

 cases is the water utilized for other than flour- 

 mills. Windmills, which were once numerous 

 in the county, are rapidly going out of use, only 

 a few now remaining. Old ones in advanced 

 stages of decay or in use for other purposes 

 form here and there picturesque objects in the 

 landscape. 



THE STRAW PLAIT, HAT AND BONNET 



INDUSTRY 



The plaiting of rushes, straw, and grass is 

 doubtless one of the most primitive of all arts, 

 and the use of plaited material in the making of 

 head-gear would very early commend itself to 

 mankind. But as at first, and for a very long 

 time, all plaited head-gear would most probably 

 be home-made, the history of its manufacture 

 cannot be traced back beyond the time when it 

 began to form an important article of trade. It 

 is customary to refer the original source of our 

 British straw-plait industry to the south of 

 Europe ; but it would probably be a mistake to 

 infer from that that plaited straw or grasses had 

 not long before been used in England for hats and 

 bonnets. An article by Mr. Robert Slater, in 

 the 1834 edition of McCulloch's Dictionary of 

 Commerce, says that 



it is within the remembrance of some of the old 

 inhabitants of the straw districts, i.e. Bedfordshire 

 and contiguous counties, now alive, that the wives 

 and daughters of the farmers used to plait straw for 

 maicing their own bonnets, before straw-plaiting 

 became established as a manufacture. 



This may mean merely that when the art was 

 first introduced from abroad it spread from 

 house to house as a purely private industry ; 

 but it may also, and more probably, mean 

 that the custom of making hats and bonnets of 

 straw, for their own use, had existed among 

 farmers' wives from time immemorial. That straw 

 hats were known in England long before the 



date usually given for the introduction of the 

 art of plaiting from the south of Europe is cer- 

 tain. In 1530 letters of denization were granted 

 to Martin Johnson, who came from Guelders and 

 is described as a ' strawen hatmaker,' otherwise 

 ' splyter hatmaker,' ^ and an entry, under date 

 1 540, in an ' Old City Account Book ' (quoted 

 in The New English Dictionary) mentions ' iij 

 straw hats.' Shakespeare in * A Lover's Complaint,' 

 1597, says that the ' fickle maid ' had 



Upon her head a platted hive of straw. 



Which fortified her visage from the sun, 



Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw 



The carcass of a beauty spent and done. 



Time had not scythed all that youth begun .... 



And a little lower down he returns to the hat : — 



Her hair nor loose, nor tied in formal plat, 

 Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride ; 

 For some, untuck'd, descended her sheav'd hat, 

 Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside. 



Again in The Tempest, iv, i, Shakespeare makes 

 Iris address the reapers thus : — 



You sun-burnt sicklemen, of August weary, 

 Come hither from the furrow, and be merry ; 

 Make holiday : your rye-straw hats put on. 

 And these fresh nymphs encounter every one 

 In country footing. 



^ Page, Denizations and Naturafizations (Huguenot 

 Soc), 136. 



118 



