Industries Related to Farming – 17th & 18th Century

Malting and brewing  

Much of the barley grown in Lowestoft would have been used to make malt, the light soils in the parish producing the thin-skinned, mealy type of grain best suited for the malting process. Altogether, there were at least three or four separate malt-houses in different parts of town, which were in operation at one time or another during the Early Modern period and a similar number attached to the town’s breweries. There were five main brewing premises over the same time-span (at least three of which were operational at the same time), a number of inns and ale-houses produced their own beer on site, and some of the merchants also had small household breweries in their yards. The fuel used to produce the heat required for both malting and brewing must have been either wood or coal, both of which were readily available from outside sources and well-established supply routes. 

If the previous paragraph appears to suggest rather a large production capacity for a town of 1,500 to 1,800 inhabitants, it should be remembered that the consumption of beer by people in the Pre-industrial Era was large by the standards of today. It has been estimated that, during the 17th century, 50% of the national income was spent on food and drink and that 33% of that proportion went solely on beer – which represents about 16% of the overall amount. The large per capita consumption of ale and beer must have been partly due to the amount of salt which was used to preserve and season all kinds of food and would have produced constant thirst. Additionally, water supplies were usually tainted, so it was safer to drink alcoholic beverages where the water had been boiled as part of the brewing process and where the action of fermentation also probably helped to kill certain bacteria. With Lowestoft acting as market-centre for the Lothingland and Mutford Half-hundreds, it is likely that a proportion of the malt processed in town (and perhaps some of the beer) was transported to neighbouring parishes. And apart from local consumption on land, the other main stimulus to the production of malt and the brewing of beer was the victualling of fishing and trading vessels.

Large quantities of drink were consumed on board, as may be seen in a petition of 1670 whereby leading townsmen asked Parliament to exempt them from the 2s. 6d. duty payable on each barrel of strong beer brewed for use on fishing craft – thus helping to make the industry more profitable during a period of economic difficulty. It was claimed that, at the time, the town had twenty-five vessels regularly engaged in cod and herring voyages, with an annual consumption of nine tuns per boat (252 gallons to the tun). This works out at a total of 56,700 gallons. Thus, the maritime factor can be seen to have been important in the matter of creating a demand for beer – and it probably became even more so after the town was granted port status in 1679. Not only did the local trading fleet increase in size, but a greater number of vessels from other places also began to call on a more regular basis than before – and some of the masters would have taken the opportunity to re-provision their craft. That there was money to be made from brewing is unarguable and those men involved in the industry were always among the wealthier local inhabitants.

Milling

Between 1550 and 1750, Lowestoft had a total of five windmills for grinding corn into flour and meal, not all of which were working at the same time. Ownership of the earliest one recorded was vested in the Churchwardens (it formed part of an endowment intended to provide funds for the maintenance of the parish church) and it stood on a piece of high ground about half a mile west-south-west of the town, in what is now the Halcyon Crescent/Hill Road area. It had served the earlier community on this site and its successors continued to do so after the move to the cliff was completed. When the latest one blew down during a gale, in 1608, there was no attempt to replace it. After its disappearance, four other mills were built at various times – closer to the relocated township – though the exact date of construction of only one of them is known. 

The earliest was the one which stood on the southern part of Goose Green, near to the common watering-place, which acted as a replacement for the one destroyed. It stood close to the present-day junction of Thurston Road and St. Peter’s Street, on a site now occupied by the Plaisir House sheltered accommodation unit. A manorial court baron minute of 10 December 1645 shows that the site had been in use for a considerable length of time before Robert Tooly (grocer) redeveloped the plot and built a mill of his own there. Thirty-three years or so later, a man called William Francis erected yet another mill on the site and it remained in the family’s possession until his grandson, Thomas, sold it in 1715 to Francis Stamford of Pakefield.

In addition to this particular building, there was also a mill on the North Common to the north-west of the lighthouse, about 300 yards from the edge of the cliff, and another somewhere on the manorial waste at the southern end of the parish (next to the boundary with Kirkley. Both of these appear in the early years of the surviving Tithe Accounts (Norfolk Record Office, PD 589/80) and each of them paid an annual sum of 10s to the vicar, plus herbage (lesser tithes) on any crops grown in the yards. The southern mill is not mentioned after 1713, and may therefore have ceased to operate, and there are no references of any kind to the mill on Goose Green. In 1713, Robert Chandler (baker) built a mill to the south of Church Way (now St. Margaret’s Road) within about 250 yards of the parish church, on which he, too, paid tithe.  This means that, from the end of the 17th century to the middle of the 18th, Lowestoft was served at any one time by two or three working windmills.

As well as the grinding of wheat, barley and rye into various grades of flour and meal, production of oatmeal also took place. Some of this would have been processed in the windmills, but during the first half of the 17th century there was also a specialist manufacturer in the parish. The burial registration of Thomas Smyter (yeoman) in September 1657 refers to him as “an oatmeal man” and, among the bequests he made to his wife, was “the oat meal mill as it now standeth with the appurtenances thereunto belonging”. His son, Thomas, who lived in Great Yarmouth, was given the chance to purchase this piece of equipment, if he so desired, for the sum of £6. Both this valuation and the distance from Lowestoft of the place where Thomas Smyter Jnr. lived would seem to suggest that the appliance was neither large nor a permanent fixture. It may well have been a small machine powered by horse – variants of which could be found on farms all over England well into the 20th century. The grinding of oats for human consumption was not typical, as the grain was mainly used at the time as provender for horses. Thomas Smyter kept an inn named The Pye [Magpie], which stood on the site of what is now 143 High Street and which had a barn in its yard. He also farmed in the parish and was a man of some substance.

Cheese-making      

To refer to cheese-making as an industry is something of a misnomer, as the activity was probably conducted on a relatively small scale in the parish. There was a certain amount of dairy farming carried on and the presence of a lactage tithe (levied on milk, butter and cheese) at one point suggests that the money due was considered worth having as part of the minister’s income – even though collecting it was not easy. It is not possible to assess the scale of dairying in Lowestoft, but the native Suffolk cow (later to develop into the Red Poll breed) was noted for high milk-yield and the county generally was famous for the quality of its butter. In fact, it was the success of the latter which was responsible for the bad reputation which Suffolk cheese acquired (it was known in the county as bang or thump). As more and more butter was exported to London during the 17th and 18th centuries, the milk was skimmed ever more intensively, until in the end the cheese was being made from milk with very little fat content at all. 

All that could be said for it was that it kept well, which is no doubt why large quantities were purchased during the 18th century by Army and Navy victuallers and by the masters of London’s workhouses! Robert Blomefield, the renowned Suffolk poet (1766-1823), gave it special attention in the opening Spring section of his most famous work, The Farmer’s Boy, where he had this to say:

            “Hence Suffolk dairy-wives run mad for cream,

And leave their milk with nothing but its name;

Its name derision and reproach pursue,

And strangers tell of “three times skimm’d sky-blue”.

To cheese converted, what can be its boast?

What but the common virtues of a post!

If drought o’ertake it faster than a knife, 

Most fair it bids for stubborn length of life,

And like the oaken shelf whereon ‘tis laid,

Mocks the weak efforts of the bending blade;

Or in the hog-trough rests in perfect spite,

Too big to swallow, and too hard to bite.”

No comment can be made regarding the quality of cheese made in Lowestoft, but its manufacture is ascertainable in three probate documents. The will of Bartholomew Howard (yeoman), in May 1608, records the bequest to his wife of three cheese vats, a cheese press and two cheese shelves. This man owned at least five cows and a heifer and he was probably producing butter as well as cheese because his will also refers to three milk bowls and a churn. Just over one hundred years after he died, the inventories of Robert Lilley (farmer) and Thomas Gardner (husbandman) both reveal cheese-making enterprises of sorts. Lilley (April 1711) had a dairy in his house at Smithmarsh, which accommodated various milk bottles and containers, while the chamber above held a quantity of cheese worth £2 10s 0d. Among various items listed in the backhouse was a cheese tub. Gardner (December 1720) had three cheese vats standing in his buttery and a cheese press was located in the backhouse.

Such evidence is slender, but both the inventories cited are two out of only five such documents to have survived for farmers of one kind or another throughout the whole period of study (1560-1730). Thus, there may well have been more cheese-making in the parish than appearances suggest. Whether it was a commercial undertaking, in the sense of there being a surplus of the product for sale elsewhere, must remain in doubt. Lowestoft was not a specialist dairying parish of the Suffolk wood-pasture region and its cheese-making was probably aimed at satisfying local demand alone.

Leather production

There were two tanneries in Lowestoft during the first half of the 17th century, which had probably been operational for some time before that, and they stood next to each other, below the cliff, at the north end of town. Both sites are now occupied, respectively, by the houses situated at the bottom of Lighthouse Score and by the Sparrow’s Nest bowling-green and garden. The more northerly of the two ceased to operate at some point after mid-century owing to the deaths of its owners, Edward Browne Snr. and his son, Edward, and to the consequent sale of the property. The oldest son of Edward Jnr. (another Edward) carried on the family trade a little further to the north, in a premises abutting onto Cart Score, but he died in 1669 at the age of twenty-five and the business did not continue long after his demise. The site is now part of the Sparrow’s Nest gardens. The reason for three tanneries being located below the northern cliff is to be found in the local geology. Tanneries needed a plentiful supply of water, and there was a spring-line near the base of the cliff (still ascertainable today) where the overlying glacial sands and gravels met the underlying, impervious clay. The most southerly of the tanneries, which abutted onto a common score leading up to the High Street (later known as Lighthouse Score), remained in operation throughout the whole of the 17th century and was still functioning during the 1720s when John Tanner compiled his list of copyhold properties in town.

In addition to favourable geological conditions, a plentiful supply of hides must have been available both from within the parish itself and from further afield, to make the tanning process viable. The Half-hundreds of Mutford and Lothingland were good cattle country, especially in those parishes which had extensive areas of grazing marsh alongside the rivers Waveney and Hundred and also beside the freshwater broad at Carlton Colville and Oulton. Thus, Lowestoft not only had its own animal population to call upon, but that of the surrounding area. As local market town, it must have drawn in a considerable gathering of people every Wednesday – prominent among whom, if the annual Leet Court records are to be believed, were butchers from a number of communities in north-east Suffolk. They usually feature in the documentation because of various kinds of trading irregularity. But their activities probably produced an extra source of raw material, because beasts slaughtered at market for food produced hides, as did milk-cows once they were past their ability to breed.

Finally, the last requirement for a successful leather industry was a plentiful supply of 

oak or ash bark from which to make the tanning agent. Lowestoft did not have a great deal of woodland itself, but there was a plentiful supply from places in the rest of both local half-hundreds, as well as from the neighbouring Blything and Wangford jurisdictions. It is very likely that the sources of billet wood for the fish-curing operation in Lowestoft were also the ones which provided the bark needed for the tanning process. No evidence exists to show exactly how much leather was manufactured in the town, but the number of people involved in leather trades generally appears to suggest that it was not inconsiderable. 

Altogether, there are sixteen tanners, six curriers (treaters of leather, after tanning), nine tawers (producers of fine, white leather – often made of skins other than cattle hides), four cobblers, thirty-seven cordwainers, two corvisers, twenty shoemakers, eleven glovers and four knackers (one of whom was also referred to as a collar-maker) recorded in the occupational data. In broad terms, and allowing for differing shades of meaning attaching to words at different times, cobbler, corviser, cordwainer and shoemaker may be taken as broadly synonymous with each other. This means that the first half of both the 17th and 18th centuries seem to have had a greater number of people involved in the production and repair of footwear than either the second half of the 16th or 17th – though whether this represents an economic state of affairs or vagaries in the sources cannot be conclusively decided. During the last two decades of the second half of the seventeenth century, the parish registers are less consistently detailed with regard to occupational data than they are for the rest of the time. Similarly, the number of curriers, tanners and tawers actually producing leather was also at its maximum during the first half of the 17th century – something which may represent another facet of the community falling back onto the land during the period of maritime difficulty previously referred to elsewhere.  

With regard to production of leather and leather goods generally, it is likely that Lowestoft made both the raw material and the finished items not only for its own inhabitants, but for those of neighbouring communities. Among the manorial officers elected each year at the Leet Court were two searchers and sealers of leather (both of whom were usually people connected with the trade), whose duty it was to ensure that the commodity manufactured in the town had been cured in the proper way and met the required standards for its various uses. This quality-control was regarded as being of some importance and one of the trading irregularities, which was frowned upon when detected on the local market, was the sale of boots or shoes made from horse-skins rather than from the hides of cattle.

Linen production

With an average area of only one-and-a-half acres under cultivation for hemp (Cannibas sativa)  – as revealed in the Tithe Accounts – the quantity of fibre produced annually in the parish during the first half of the 18th century was small: no more than about sixty stones in weight (seven-and-a-half hundredweights), if late 18th century estimates of the crop’s yield are valid. Contemporary observer and writer Arthur Young stating that, on average, hemp yielded thirty-six to thirty-eights stones of fibre per acre, with an overall range of twenty-five to sixty stones. Lowestoft’s light soils would have produced the finer type of fibre suitable for linen-making rather than the coarser variety used for twine and canvas. Unfortunately, there are no figures available to show how much raw material was needed to make one yard of linen cloth, so there is no way of converting Lowestoft’s annual quantity of hemp grown into yards’ length of the finished product. Of the nine weavers who were recorded in the parish registers during the second half of the 16th century, none is referred to as being concerned with linen – and the presence of at least one dyer in town at this time would seem to suggest a connection with woollen textiles. Similarly, the burial of a shearman early on during the 17th century is indicative again of activity connected with wool rather than linen.

Having said that, the number of references in wills and probate inventories (especially the latter) connected with hemp or linen, or with the equipment used to produce fibre and spun thread, certainly suggest that production of cloth was a feature of the local economy – though it is not possible to assess the scale. Between 1560 and 1730, there are forty documents in the surviving probate material which contain references to raw hemp, to linen yarn and to finished cloth, as well as to pashells, heckles, tow-combs and spinning-wheels. Six of the people referred to were widows, the rest men, and the occupation groups concerned included merchants, craftsmen, seafarers, husbandmen and labourers – a feature which would, once again, seem to reflect the mixed nature of people’s interests. And, when it came to the matter of the raw material needed to make linen (hemp fibre), Lowestoft had its hinterland to draw upon for supplies, as well as the upper and middle reaches of the Waveney Valley, where hemp production was an important activity. 

The presence of a brake-house in town (the building in which rotted hemp stems were crushed between rollers as part of the process to produce fibre) would seem to suggest an operation of reasonable scale. The building stood to the north of Rant Score, in a yard to the rear of what is now No. 67, High Street. John Tanner refers to it in his list of town copyhold properties and it belonged to the Durrant family, husbandmen, brewers and lesser merchants. Of the twenty weavers who feature either in the parish registers or probate documents between 1600 and 1670, four were definitely producing linen cloth and two of them are mentioned in a monograph on the East Anglian linen industry: Nesta Evans, The East Anglian Linen Industry(1985), p. 87. When Thomas Betts made his will in May 1616, he left his wife two dwelling-houses and £5 to each of his four sons. Forty-five years later, in August 1661, John Smith bequeathed a house to each of his two sons and another to his daughter. Further evidence of his substance is suggested by the fact that, at the time the will was made, the older son John (aged thirty-two) was already well established as a grocer and the younger one Samuel (aged thirty) as a yeoman. These two examples serve to show that money could be made from linen-weaving and place a man in the more affluent levels of local society.

Historically, linen-weaving in Lowestoft can be traced as far back as the early 15th century, when loesti is to be found mentioned in Venetian trade records relating to that Italian city’s warehouses in London. This tough, hard-wearing cloth was then trans-shipped from Venice to Middle Eastern countries and has been noted in commodity lists for goods sent to Damascus (1413) and Alexandria (1424), and also in judicial material relating to importation into Beirut (1417). Among the references to it in the Venetian State Papers is a notable one of 1456, when Lowesto cloth is referred as being among the commodities handled at the city-state’s London premises.

Conclusion

As a final word, it is probably appropriate to comment on the close relationship between agriculture and industry, which was so much a feature of the Lowestoft economy during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods. Land has been referred to as “the single greatest flywheel of the economy” – by Peter Mathias, The First Industrial Nation, 2nd edition (1983), p. 29, and even though Lowestoft looked primarily to the sea for the larger part of its wealth, the soil nevertheless remained of considerable importance in its economy. Production of food and drink, manufacture of textiles and leather goods, and creation of tools and equipment of various kinds relied upon links with agriculture both in the immediate area and in the hinterland. There was no separation between industry and farming in the Pre-industrial Era because the former relied largely on the latter for raw materials. This has been widely observed over the whole of England and Lowestoft was no different in this respect from thousands of other communities – but it had the additional advantage of being able to draw upon both fishing and maritime trade as further sources of prosperity. 

CREDIT: David Butcher