Some Helmdon Textile Workers

contributed by Dr Andrew Ratledge

As a one time resident of Helmdon, well for the first 27 years of my life 1942-1970, I take a keen interest in your website and should congratulate you and your team on its excellence. If there are any old residents of Helmdon that can remember post 1970 when I left the village and immigrated to Australia, they will know me as Beau Ratledge, I was the village idiot there for many years, well some thought I was! I shall continue to visit your web page, and no doubt, enjoy its contents.

I am a historian at the University of Adelaide in SA and spend much time researching the past. Although my specialty is economic and food history, I ran across a PhD thesis from Leicester University on the textile industry in Northamptonshire during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. The author was Wendy Raybould, Open for Business: Textile Manufacture in Northamptonshire c1685-1800, PhD Thesis University of Leicester, (2005). This is on the web and can be found using this title, there is much of interest in it for those seeking knowledge of the Northamptonshire past. It may be that some of your scholars have already found this publication, but I thought I would send this to you in case they have not. The list below is of textile workers working out of Helmdon 1683-1781, they were weavers, wool combers and a cloth worker.

Dr Andrew J. Ratledge PhD.

Abbreviations

wc – wool comber

wv – weaver

clothwk – clothworker