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Wolverhampton started life as an agricultural settlement, boosted by
becoming an ecclesiastical centre, and then becoming a market town
providing not only a market but, almost certainly, a range of other
services as well. It may be that it was this agricultural connection that
first led to the metal bashing and engineering industries appearing here,
for not only would Wulfrunians find a living in selling clothes, shoes and
other necessities to those who came in to market but they would also be
able to sell agricultural implements. Certainly they did not start this
kind of work because coal and iron and limestone were found within the
borough boundaries. They were not. But they were close enough at hand for
enterprising people to be able to exploit them.
Although locks of some sort had been used throughout history, changing
social conditions and aspirations, increasing wealth and capital
accumulation, a change from community to individual capitalism, would have
combined with improved metal winning and working, to make locks a
promising market. It is quite likely that lock making here would have
started as a local trade, possibly even in conjunction with farming, for
it was not at all uncommon for farmers to augment their income with a
specialist trade and even town dwellers were often both farmers and
artisans.
So at some imprecise time lock making appeared in Wolverhampton,
Willenhall and their environs. The raw materials were near at hand. The
skills were acquired goodness knows how but were soon handed down from
parent to child and from master to apprentice. The market would originally
have been local but it seems that, despite the town's having bad
communications, the market expanded. Locks were small enough to be
transportable by pack horse and waggon. As roads improved and
canals were built, the potential market became wider. But there is nothing
to say why Wolverhampton became a lock making centre when it had the same
starting point as many other places. It must be related to some kind of
local entrepreneurial spirit – and who can say what would explain that?
In the earliest lock making times the makers would have been one family
outfits. In the course of time, as the market expanded, firms could grow
larger and some became very large. But even to the end of the lock making
days, there were still one family outfits hard at work.
According to J C Tildesley, Locks and Lockmaking, the
"introduction of the lock trade into South Staffordshire took place
as early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but it did not flourish very
extensively until the end of the 17th century." His
authority for this account of earlier times is not cited but he gets on
firmer ground with the Hearth Tax of 1660 when, it appears, most of the 84
hearths in Wolverhampton and 95 in Willenhall "were used by the
locksmiths of those times". That might be worth checking a bit
more closely. But Dr. Plot, writing in 1686 also comments that the
"greatest excellence of the blacksmith’s profession in this county
lies in their making of locks for doors, wherein the artisans of
Wolverhampton seem to be preferred to all others …".
This suggests that by the end of the 17th lock making was
well established and was certainly more than a local trade; and that
Willenhall and Wolverhampton both had lock making industries. At that time
to the structure of the trade was, according to Tildesley, beginning to
change. Originally the locks made by the individual manufacturers
"were purchased by chapmen who travelled from place to place with
packhorses. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, however, the
merchants began to establish store rooms in Wolverhampton and Birmingham,
wither the locks and other hardware productions were conveyed by the
smiths, in wallets". (He wrote in 1866 and was able to add that
this system, was "not even yet quite obsolete" and that the
"oldest ware-room in Wolverhampton is that of Messrs. Tarratt, Sons
and Co,. in the Townwell Fold, which has been established considerably
more than a century").
According to Mander (p.143), the Sketchley and Adams trade directory of
1770 shows that the "predominating industry was still that of
lockmaking; no less than 118 names are listed under this head.
Bucklemaking follows, a very close second, with 116". He also deduces
that "lockmaking … had become very specialised. 24 different types
of lock are mentioned – from the ordinary gate lock to the secret bag
lock and the tea chest lock. Often a single person represents an entire
branch of the trade; John Ryley, for example, is the only man to be
described as a letter and baglock maker. George Fox, of Berry Street,
appears as a bitted and swallow bow lock maker, and Thurston Groom, of
Stafford Street, as the only outside box lock maker. The great majority,
however, appear to have been engaged in the manufacture of cabinet locks;
there are three times as many names under this head as under any other,
and, in addition, we find eight cabinet key makers listed".
Of course the brief entries in the directory may cover the fact that
the makers named could and did make other types of lock, the named one
being their preference or speciality. In any case our local lock makers
were renowned for their ingenuity as well as their skills and several
patents were taken out by local men even before the large manufacturers
moved in.
George Price (1856) noted that in 1770 that the numbers of lock making
concerns was:
Wolverhampton 134
Bilston 8
Willenhall 148
By 1855 he records that Willenhall’s slight ascendancy had become a
predominance:
Wolverhampton 110
Bilston 002
Willenhall 340
These raw numbers are not as revealing as they might be – the value
of the trade in each area might have been more informative – but they do
seem to indicate that, during the period covered, Willenhall established
the ascendancy it ever after maintained.
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