Urbanisation


 * //Every world-economy is a sort of jigsaw puzzle, juxtaposition of zones interconnected, but at different levels. On the ground, at least three different areas or categories can be distinguished: a narrow core, a fairly developed middle zone, and a vast periphery. The qualities and characteristics of the type of society, economy, technology, culture and political order necessarily alter as one moves from one zone to another. This is an explanation of very wide application….//
 * F. Braudel (1979)

A potted history of European economic development would have it that as the peasants cleared the land; as people became more numerous, they harnessed the power of wheel and windmill; communications were established between regions once completely foreign to each other; barriers came down. Countless towns sprang up or revived wherever there was a crossroads of trade, and the creation of these urban islands were undoubtedly the crucial factor that launched the competitive capitalist European economy. Between 1250 and 1350 Europe was suddenly covered with towns, which were the major pieces of an expanding international economic jigsaw. Rural production and exchange was dominant and rurality was the norm for Halesworth’s vast periphery of Hundred and County, within which its new urban economies were developing. The tradesfolk consolidated their urban future within Blything Hundred by virtue of its roads to the river crossing, its market, its workshops and the money that accumulated through buying and selling goods from town and country within half a mile radius from the parish church. Its market place ensured its food supply, as peasants came regularly to town with their produce. Its market stalls offered an outlet for the growing family surpluses of the surrounding lordly domains and for the huge amounts of produce emanating from the ‘lordship-zone’, which came from the payment of manorial dues in kind.

After about 1150, Europe moved beyond direct agricul­tural consumption of peasant rurality and family self-sufficiency, to the stage of indirect agricultural consumption created by the exchange of surplus rural production in urban markets. At the same time, towns attracted all the skilled crafts, creating for themselves a focused monopoly, through guilds and apprenticeships, of the manufacture and marketing of industrial products (Fig 1). Only later would this kind of pre-industry move back into the countryside. In short, economic life, especially after the thirteenth century, began to take precedence over the earlier agrarian functions of the towns. Towns became retail islands in a sea of rurality. Their influence spread over a very wide area as the crucial move was made from a domestic to a market economy. In other words, the towns were beginning to tower above their rural surroundings and to look beyond their immediate horizons. This was a great economic leap forward, the first in the series that created European society and launched it on its successful capitalist career. There is only one event even remotely comparable to this: the creation by the first European settlers in America of the many transit-towns, linked to each other by road and by the requirements of commerce, communication, and defence. The guild system was the socioeconomic high point of medieval urban commercialism. The Guild Hall was a central point of business and local politics. Its importance was expressed in silver plate and pomp and circumstance, particularly in a town like Halesworth, where there was no mayoralty. The trade guilds had an enormous amount of power, membership being required for social, economic, or political advancement. Some of the most important guilds had legal enforcement rights, and could forbid traders or artisans to operate within their jurisdiction on penalty of confiscation of their wares and tools. Several, such as the ‘Fishmongers’ and ‘Glovers’, could, on their own authority, search private homes to seize inferior goods. Farmers were not permitted to form a guild for fear of price fixing. Fig 1 The economic course of urbanisation The guilds heralded the approach of capitalism in industry as distinct from commerce. The movement of people to the towns and the natural increase of population made the older established craftsman look to his rights and view with jealousy the increasing number of entrants into the crafts. In their hey-day the guilds had been largely classless bodies. A youth served his apprenticeship, perhaps remained for a year or two as a journey­man, and then set up shop for himself as a master craftsman. Even before 1400, this routine had ceased to work smoothly. There were complaints that the guilds were raising entry fees and in various ways restricting admission to the craft. Frequent disputes between masters and journeymen over such matters as hours and wages showed the existence of a clash of interest. The journeymen reacted to the new conditions by forming guilds of their own. These yeomen or journeymen guilds foreshadowed the modern trade union. At first, the older guilds tried to suppress them, and were aided in this by the municipal authorities and the State itself. Indeed an Act passed in 1548 resembles in many ways the famous pre-trade union Combination Law of 1799. It recites that journeyman guilds:
 * [[image:fig3.1.jpg align="left"]]
 * For those who wish to commune with this idea of the Halesworth closed-guild fraternity, the ‘woolshop’ and the ‘paper-shop’ next door occupy part of the main structure of the town’s old Guild Hall in the Thoroughfare. When its main wooden frame was erected, probably in the second half of the 15th century, its very size would have dominated the town’s main street. The building has been much altered since then. There are fragmentary records of the activities of three guilds that used the building: the 'Guild of St John the Baptist', the 'Guild of St Loye and the ‘Guild of St Anthony'. The former was the guild of tailors, and St Loye or St Eloi is the patron saint of blacksmiths. St Anthony represents the grocery fraternary. Each guild, had a location in the parish church, the prominence of its altar being related to the guild’s wealth. The Guild of Blacksmiths seemed to be Halesworth’s richest fraternity, which appears to have occupied the South Chapel, now the Lady Chapel dedicated to St Loye. This raises the question of whether Halesworth’s Blacksmith’s Guild was serving a wider company of smiths with their premises in the surrounding villages. Another aspect of guild history is that by the Tudor period the system was debased by the Crown, and had become largely ceremonial and a source of Crown revenues. It was common for honorary memberships, called the ‘Freedom of the Company’, to be awarded to town notables, and it may be that the chapel in St Mary’s Church represented the hub of local worthies who formed ‘a late medieval church party’ to counterbalance the power of the town’s three manorial lordships.
 * //"have made confederacies and promises and have sworn mutual oaths, not only that they should not meddle one with another's work and perform and finish that another hath begun, but also to constitute and appoint how much work they should do in a day and what hours and times they shall work, contrary to the laws and statutes of the realm."//

Sometimes the masters compromised by assigning certain functions to the journeymen guilds, which, made them in effect subordinate parts of the craft guild itself. The significance of the yeomen guilds is that they mark the beginnings of the capitalist system in industry. Under the craft guild system the market was generally a local one, and division of labour between crafts was based on the production of finished commodities. A single craft stood between the raw material and the consumer. The weaver obtained his yarn from the housewife, the traditional spinner or spinster, and made cloth, which he sold, to the consumer. This simple state of affairs could not be permanent.

The guild system, which was closely intertwined with the Church, was dismantled at the Reformation, but the master/learner relationship continued, and is recorded in the lists of Halesworth’s. A list of masters with apprentices dating from the turn of the 18th century is presented in Table 1.

Table 1 List of Halesworth masters with apprenticship indentures 1793-1840 (SRO:124/G5/1) It is not known whether this is a comprehensive list, but it probably represents a random sample of trades that were active in Halesworth at the time. If so, then there was a dominance of shoemakers (a quarter of the total) and tailors taking apprentices (a fifth of the total). This is not surprising when it is remembered that the purchase of shoes and clothes were a major reason why countryfolk came to town.
 * Archer, Harley tailor 1800 || Cullingford, James whitesmith 1826 || Sawing, John shoemaker 1833 ||
 * Archer, Harley tailor 1820 || Easterson, Thomas whitesmith 1822 || Sawing, John shoemaker 1839 ||
 * Berry, Joseph shoemaker 1815 || Estaugh, Wm cordwainer 1798 || Sawing, John shoemaker 1837 ||
 * Botham, Benj. tailor 1837 || Jeffreson, Charles glover 1822 || Smith, George blacksmith 1840 ||
 * Bush, Henry tailor 1793 || Johnson, Sarah dressmaker 1836 || Smith, Nelson wheelwright 1836 ||
 * Calver, John glover 1814 || Kindred, George tailor 1839 || Sones, Zachariah baker 1832 ||
 * Card, William bricklayer 1801 || Mayhew, James farmer 1832 || Spall, David bootmaker 1836 ||
 * Carles, Wm. shoemaker 1833 || Newson, Sam. shoemaker 1818 || Taylor, Wm carpenter 1819 ||
 * Carr, Isaac cordwainer 1826 || Read, Jacob basketmaker 1812 || Took, Robt. baker 1837 ||
 * Carr, Isaac shoemaker 1821 || Robinson, William tailor 1826 || Wilson, George shoemaker 1841 ||
 * Chapman, John shoemaker 1817 || Robinson, William taylor 1813 || Woodyard, Charles bricklayer 1838 ||
 * Collett, Henry tailor 1809 || Rose, Edmund carpenter 1820 || Wright, Benj. tailor 1800 ||
 * Croft, Daniel shoemaker 1818 || Rose, James blacksmith 1840 || Wright, John tailor 1832 ||
 * Cross, Sam shoemaker 1823 || Rounce, Thom. plumber 1840 ||  ||
 * Cross, William currier 1812 || Sawing, John cordwainer 1832 ||  ||

There were two forces at work creating a more complicated economic system. First, there was the widening market. So long as trade was confined to the town it was easy for the craftsman to keep in touch with his customers. A wider market made this difficult, if not impossible. The final consumer of his goods might be in another town or another country. The craftsman could not hope to keep in touch with him or to carry through the whole transaction himself. By himself he would be unable to finance the complete transaction from the buying of the raw material to the selling of finished goods, because this would involve laying out money over a lengthy period of time. In other words, the time had come when there was room for someone with capital and knowledge of the market to act as intermediary between producer and consumer.

Another circumstance operated to the same end. Division of labour tended to disintegrate the processes of production. The making of a single commodity came to be split up into several processes, each being occupied by a single craft. Thus we find distinct crafts of bleachers, weavers, dyers and drapers in Halesworth’s hempen cloth industry. The production of cloth thus became the work of a group of separate crafts, many of which never came into direct contact with the consumer or each other. This involved successive sales of partly finished goods to the next person in the process chain. This stage of industrial development furnished the basis for the capitalistic control of Halesworth’s industry. On the one hand, the subdivision of processes made the craftsmen more expert at their jobs, but it also created the necessity for some sort of co-ordination between the crafts. It was at this point that the capitalist merchant-employers, like James Aldred, came on the scene. He combined the functions of merchant and employer. He purchased the raw material, gave it out to the craftsmen, and then sold the finished article. The craftsmen were in fact his employees.

Situated at the edge of the industrial age, Halesworth was a world of its own, protected by its privileges, an aggressive world and an active force for unequal exchange. A key question is, can the prominent role of a town be accounted for by its having been able to expand and develop in an already-structured rural world, rather than in a vacuum like the towns of the New World (and possibly the Greek city-states)? In other words, did it have resources available to work on, at the expense of which it could grow? Regarding small English market towns like Halesworth, their very sieve-like social structure is evidence that they were ‘filtered out of the countryside’. The Halesworth parish boundary was porous in all directions to the town’s consumers and its producers who served their needs. The topographic boundary was hardly noticeable. This social dynamic is first brought to life in a 16th century description of the town. There were at least two farmsteads close to the church, with access from Pound St and the Market Place directly onto their fields. The backs of the houses on Chediston St and the Thoroughfare looked over closes that had been reclaimed by drainage from riverine fen. Indeed it may be said that the ‘townsfolk’ were ‘countryfolk’ who had a taste for property development and trade.

Through their interactions with land and property they are examples of the embryonic consumer society, which has since driven world development. The universal trait of people to want to better themselves has led to most cultures in the developed world taking the Halesworth route from sustainable self-sufficiency to rampant consumerism. On the way, the consumer movement produces local features in the landscape that, as well as being landmarks of craft and art, may also be considered as symbols of the win-at-all-cost ethic, a form of behaviour that in the long run proves unsustainable. People become rich because they are already fairly rich. However, entrepreneurs grow old, technology reveals its inefficiencies, and wealth is passed to children who spend, rather than invest.

In this respect, local consumerism may be summarised in relation to four stages in the growth of personal economic independence:
 * being able to survive;
 * being comfortable;
 * being able to make an impression;
 * being well-known for 'being well-known'.

Halesworth’s basic rural penumbra has continued well into the 21st century and the ‘walls’ of dense housing estates that now block out the countryside to the north and south of the town only came with the last decades of the 20th century expansion of its population, which was driven by central government, rather than the investment of individuals. Yet, it is still possible to walk east from the church and within less than five minutes be contained within the rural scenery of wet riverside pasture, embedded in a dominant wetland ecology, that has changed little in three centuries. The following section is an exploration of the rural/urban interface as far as it reflects the boundary between producers and consumers, starting with the 1841 Tithe Apportionment of Chediston, a village that is representative of the rural/urban interactions of countryfolk and townsfolk at this time.