Chapter One
Community of the Vale:
Landscape and Settlement

Definitions of the term "community" can vary according to whether one conceives of a regional landscape or a regional society, "a topographical area on a map . . . or a human organism with a conscious life of its own, a conscious identity or a sense of belonging together."^[1] In the case of the Vale of Nailsworth, both definitions applied coterminously; its topography promoted a pattern of settlement and a type of economy that gave this once remote district a distinctive communal identity. A boundary settlement and protoindustrial village,^[2] located in a wood-pasture region, the Vale provided fertile ground for the growth of Dissent, becoming in the eighteenth to early nineteenth century a prototype of a Dissenting community.^[3]

The Vale, consisting of Nailsworth village and its dispersed hamlets, was situated four miles south of the town of Stroud in the Cotswold region of Gloucestershire. Stroud served as the hub of a region of fifteen rural-industrial parishes well known for the manufacturing of woolen cloth and an association with Nonconformity. By 1830 Nailsworth had become the Stroud region's most important locus of manufacturing and contained some of the largest Nonconformist congregations in the county. With the growth of industry and communications, however, Nailsworth lost its isolated character, as its Congregationalist and Baptist sects transformed themselves into broad-based denominations:^[4] in this combined fashion, the community of the Vale completed its transition to modernity.

The present chapter establishes some of the sociological and topographical features of this transition. It begins with a description of the boundaries and settlement pattern of the Vale community in the eighteenth to early nineteenth century and includes a geographic distribution of occupations. This distribution, although drawn from a census taken in 1841, sets forth a social structure that already possessed a deep history; a more developmental treatment of social structure follows, which focuses closely on its transitional quality. This more dynamic analysis establishes the extent of erosion of a hierarchical social system from the late eighteenth century and the beginning of the formation of modern social classes, whose antecedents lay nevertheless in earlier eras.

The chapter returns next to a discussion of topography, by demonstrating how the configuration and ecology of the landscape helped shape Nailsworth's settlement pattern. The landscape initially promoted a degree of isolation and a protoindustrial economy; its hills, rock formations, streams, and forests gave form to the Vale's topography and underlay its character as an industrial village and Dissenting community. This discussion is carried forward by showing how Nailsworth became integrated geographically into the life of its hinterland; road, turnpike, canal, and railway construction proved critical to the growth of a regional society, yet the slowness of their development also illustrates the incompleteness of their modernizing effects.

Boundaries and Settlement Pattern

A discussion of communal boundaries in rural England begins inevitably with the parish, the primary unit of ecclesiastical administration, which set the parameters of social organization at least from the early modern period. Following the Webbs, the parish can be defined in simplest terms as "a 'shrift-shire', the sphere of reciprocal duties between a duly commissioned priest and the inhabitants in his charge."^[5] Parishes, consequently, centered on their churches, although the territory they encompassed often varied considerably, as did the size of their respective populations.

Smaller parishes usually possessed nucleated settlements and for this reason were better served by their incumbents. Their churches were located accessibly at the center of the parish, which made

gaining a foothold difficult for Dissenters.^[6] In larger parishes, settlement patterns tended to be irregular; chapelries might, therefore, be created in their more remote districts in order to give the inhabitants some contact with established religion.^[7] Chapelries did not, however, enjoy the same status as churches; they were not supported from their own tithes, nor always consecrated,^[8] a condition that made them less appealing alternatives to Dissenters' chapels. Still, Anglican authorities did not always create chapelries in outlying parochial districts, leaving them wide open to competition from Dissenters. These same districts, moreover, sometimes spawned boundary settlements.

A boundary settlement developed at the borders of two or more parishes, with its various neighborhoods emerging under competing parochial jurisdictions. The Vale occupied just such a position prior to its creation as a civil parish in 1892. The boundaries of Horsley, Avening, and Minchinhampton crossed Nailsworth village, its surrounding hamlets likewise distributing themselves among these three parishes. Shortwood and Newmarket were in Horsley; Forest Green, Inchbrook, and Winsoredge were in Avening; and Watledge, including Scar Hill, was in Minchinhampton.^[9] Village and hamlets together constituted the community of the Vale, although it was possible to distinguish even smaller valleys lying between them^[10] (see map 1).

Nailsworth's peculiar treatment in land tax returns and extant manor records, as well as its contradictory classification in the early censuses,^[11] reflected the confusion regarding its proper boundaries. The land tax returns describe Nailsworth as a tithing of Avening; as an outlying district on that parish's western border, the assessor allocated it a separate listing of owners and occupiers, indicating a semiautonomous status.^[12] Nailsworth's connection with Avening arose from the annexation of the manor of Nails-worth to the manors of Avening and Minchinhampton in the sixteenth century. The manor of Nailsworth had existed as early as the reign of Henry II and extended from Aston Farm to Winsoredge.^[13] The records of Horsley manor also refer to a tithing of Nailsworth, which ought to have included only that portion of the village already under the jurisdiction of Horsley parish.^[14] Nevertheless, the boundary of this tithing extended into Averting proper, as far as Winsoredge, in what was clearly disputed terri-

Map 1.
Boundary map of Nailsworth, with inset: Nailsworth in Longtree Hundred. Scale: six inches = one mile. Source: 
Boundary Survey Map, 1892. Inset: The Victoria County History of Gloucestershire, Vol. XI.

tory: Nathaniel Wilkins, a broadweaver of Horsley, had been granted a ninety-nine year lease in 1692 on "all that one close of pasture ground lying . . . near to a place called Winsorhedge [sic ] within the parish of Horsley [!] aforesaid."^[15]

Such peculiarities were in part the result of the gradual expansion of the Vale's original settlement, which depended on the development of its economy. The growth of the cloth trade and population increase tended to form its dispersed hamlets into a more unified entity, although they never entirely lost their individual autonomy. Naturally, the original settlement antedated the arrival of Dissenters and was considerably influenced by the landscape.

The most fundamental distinction regarding the English rural landscape is that between the Champion regions, or predominantly arable societies, and the forest or wood-pasture regions that emphasized stock rearing.^[16] These economic activities were not mutually exclusive, the distinction between them depending on degrees of specialization. The Cotswold region of Gloucestershire was a wood-pasture society in which sheep rearing was important, although the proportion of land under tillage was higher there than in the Vales of Berkeley and Gloucester, which concentrated on dairying, fruit growing, and market gardening.^[17] Champion regions were associated with nucleated settlements, small parishes, and a low incidence of Dissent. The poorer soils of wood-pasture areas, in contrast, encouraged the growth of industrial by-employments, while hilly terrain created irregular settlements in which Dissent more easily proliferated. How well Nailsworth conformed to the criteria of a wood-pasture society can be seen from its economic geography (see fig. 1).^[18]

The etymology of Nailsworth evokes a very early association with the wool trade. The Anglo-Saxon "Nael" is a derivative of the teutonic "nagel," which is a measure of seven pounds in

Fig. 1.
Champion and wood-pasture settlements.

weight for wool; the stem, "worth," is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "weorth," meaning market or enclosure.^[19] "Nailsworth," therefore, means "wool market," although this very likely reflected a later characterization. The earliest reference to Nails-worth appears as early as 716 in a charter of King Ethelbald in which "Negelsleag Minor" is mentioned.^[20] The stem "leag" refers to a pasture or wood and seems to indicate that part of a forest was cleared and the land used as sheep pasturage. Thus the region was initially associated with the wool trade chiefly as a supplier of raw material. With the settlement of the village as a market center, "leag" must have been altered to "weorth." This change undoubtedly coincided with the establishment of fulling mills in the area, as the transition was made to a more active engagement in production. Fulling mills were present at Nailsworth during the reign of Henry II,^[21] and by the end of the thirteenth century the Vale and the rest of the Stroud region had emerged as important centers for the manufacture of woolen cloth.^[22]

Early rural manufacturing, from the medieval period, was based on cottage industry. Clothiers from Nailsworth village distributed raw wool to the spinners and the spun threads to the weavers; they collected the woven pieces, had them finished, and then marketed

the final product. Marketing took place initially at Nailsworth village; later at county fairs held at Stroud, the nearest market town; and, as time progressed further, with agents of the London cloth factors.^[23]

Unburdened by urban guild restrictions, clothiers had at first engaged cottagers on the basis of secondary, industrial by-employment,^[24] a development associated with settlements on wastes, commons, and woodlands. Weavers, clothworkers, laborers, and artisans established settlements by building cottages on wasteland, or in a forest clearing, and fencing off a patch of ground to be tilled as a garden or a small farm. John Chambers of Nailsworth, cordwainer, was formally accused in Horsley's manor court of erecting "a cottage and encroaching eight lug of the waste on Rockness Hill." Samuel Manning, weaver, encroached ten yards of waste and built a cottage at Wash Pond; and Abraham Kitteral, with twenty others, was charged with "tak[ing] away the turf on the waste lands."^[25] More prosperous artisans and laborers occupied lands either in the common arable fields, where these survived from medieval times, or in enclosed patches that they either leased or purchased outright. John Pavey, a clothworker from Avening, bequeathed to his wife Mary "a tyning of arable"; to five grandchildren he bequeathed in trust "all messuages, lands and woods which I bought and purchased of my son-in-law, John Penley"; and to his eldest grandson he bequeathed two acres of wood and woodland ground "which I lately bought and purchased to myself . . . situate at Winsoredge."^[26]

This practice of dual occupations persisted into the 1850s: "The existence of manufactures in the midst of an agricultural district," one observer commented in 1854, "made the inhabitants not as entirely dependent on either calling."^[27] He undoubtedly exaggerated. In the medieval period, spinning and weaving may have been undertaken as activities ancillary to agriculture. By 1841 the reverse was true; a division of labor, created first by protoindustrialization and later intensified by the factory system, made woolworkers dependent on manufacturing, however much they engaged in argicultural by-employment.

The industrial character of the region, as it had matured from the seventeenth century, can be illustrated from the 1841 census. Tables 1 to 3 give the occupational distributions for Nailsworth

and its neighboring villages; table 4 and figure z interpret them by comparing three zones. Zone I (in fig. 3) represents Nailsworth village and its dispersed hamlets. Zone II is an inner periphery consisting of those districts that border the Vale: Theescombe, in Minchinhampton and Barton End and Rockness in Horsley. Zone III, an outer periphery of sample villages at a distance from the Vale, included Horsley and Avening villages as well as Box, Burleigh, and Littleworth villages in Minchinhampton.

Examining the Vale first, it can be seen that the number of wool-workers, as a proportion of the total workforce, was much higher in Nailsworth's surrounding hamlets than in the village itself. At Nailsworth they accounted for only 9.5 percent of the workforce, while in the surrounding hamlets they accounted for 56.0 percent. Nevertheless, woolworkers constituted the largest occupational group resident at the village. This anomaly may be explained by the fact that Nailsworth had acquired a quasi-urban, cosmopoli-

Fig. 2.
Selected occupations in Nailsworth and surrounding villages, ca. 1841.

tan status, containing a very high proportion of artisans and retailers and even miscellaneous occupations such as "police officers." As early as 1806 an advertisement for the sale of merchant property described Nailsworth as "a very populous and flourishing village." Another advertisement, for the sale of a millinery shop, had described Nailsworth proper as "genteel and populous," and a third, for the letting of a baker's shop, referred to the property's location as "the preferable part of Nailsworth."^[28] Clearly, the village had acquired the social distinctions characteristic of a small town.

Toward the outer periphery in the directions of Horsley and Avening villages, the proportion of resident woolworkers fell significantly, while that of agricultural laborers rose. The reverse was true of the Minchinhampton villages; their clothworking popula-

tions proportionately equaled those of the Vale's hamlets, and they contained even fewer agricultural laborers.

The inner periphery consisted of dispersed hamlets situated between more heavily concentrated areas. Theescombe division, in Minchinhampton, lay between Amberley and Nailsworth village just north of the Vale. Rockness district, in Horsley, bordered Avening parish to the east and was virtually part of the Vale's settlement. Barton End district, located to the south of Nails-worth, extended to the outskirts of Horsley village. Table 4 presents the differences between the three zones in their respective proportions of woolworkers and agricultural workers. Figure 2 offers a more schematic summary of the occupational differences between the Vale, Horsley and Avening villages and Box village, which lay at the outskirts of the town of Minchinhampton. Horsley and Avening parishes, exclusive of the Vale community, were clearly more agricultural, and Minchinhampton emerges as almost completely industrialized.^[29]

Apart from the clothworking population, the industrial villages included a variety of artisans, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, and masons, as well as retailers ranging from bakers to publicans and vintners. Middle-class occupations included farmers, clothiers, pinmakers, maltsters, and brewers. The landed gentry, naturally, were situated at the top of the social hierarchy.

"Gentlemen" were not included as an occupational category in the 1841 census but were listed as such in an 1811 manuscript

census for Horsley parish.^[30] Horsley's resident gentlemen numbered twelve in 1811, representing 2.5 percent of all householders with occupations. They included one "gentlewoman," a Sarah Harvey, the recent widow of John Harvey of Drawley Estate,^[31] and the head of a household of five females. The eclipse of the title "gentleman" reflected the dilution of its meaning under the pressure of upward social mobility. At the other end of the social spectrum, woolworkers came to represent a more homogeneous class as a result of the emergence of the factory system.^[32]

A Transitional Social Structure

Extant wills permit the study of social mobility within the context of class formation. Laborers, clothworkers, artisans, and weavers wrote proportionately fewer wills than did members of the gentry or middle classes. However, the testators among them probably belonged to the elite of their occupations, although the personal estates of several valued less than £20. Still, a sufficient number of wills survive for us to appreciate how definitions of status, changes in the distribution of wealth, and opportunities for upward social mobility were interrelated. Individual cases, combined with statistical analysis, illustrate the fluidity of a transitional social structure.

The presence of a number of large-scale manufacturers among the gentry suggests upward social mobility among the middle class. William Playne, "Esquire," one of the most prominent clothiers of the Stroud region, bequeathed to his heirs in 1850 "all that my Manor of Avening and all freehold messuages and tenements, mills [and] lands. . . ."^[33] Edmund Clutterbuck of Avening, likewise styling himself "Esquire," had also descended from a line of gentlemen-clothiers, and for this reason the estate duty officer added the designation "clothier" to the abstract of his probate.^[34]

Lords of manors were called "Esquire" regardless of their social origins or occupations. However, it was also possible for ordinary members of the middle class to become substantial landowners without acquiring this title. In 1814, Edward Barnfield's personal estate was valued under £10,000; his principal bequest referred to "all messuages, dwelling houses, lands and premises at Watledge . . . lately purchased . . ." that did not include his 100-acre estate

at Nailsworth.^[35] Peter Playne, although perhaps wealthier than his brother William, designated himself a clothier in his will. He may not have owned manors, but he bequeathed a farm at Frampton Mansell in Sapperton, Gloucester, and the tithe survey of lands, undertaken in 1839, recorded him owning and occupying an estate of over 100 acres in Minchinhampton alone.^[36]

Indeed, seven of ten clothiers' wills proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury made direct references to lands owned or in the testator's possession. The ratio was not as high for those clothiers' wills proved locally in the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Gloucester, as one might have expected:^[37] five out of eighteen, or 27.8 percent, made direct references to land owned or in possession, excluding those wills that referred only to cottages or other buildings. In general, the purchase of land and even manors by manufacturers had become commonplace throughout Gloucester since the beginning of the eighteenth century.^[38] In an earlier period, a family that had created its fortune in trade might abandon this occupation once a landed estate had been acquired. By the early nineteenth century, however, the prejudice against remaining in trade had waned.^[39]

Perhaps the most vivid evidence documenting this change of attitude comes from advertisements placed in the Gloucester Journal by some of the exclusive boarding schools in the area. The St. Chloe School instructed "a limited number of gentlemen" in the classics and French and English Grammer, but also in "merchant's accounts . . . surveying and mapping of land timber," as well as in "geography, navigation and astronomy." The Minchinhampton Park School was equally candid in evaluating the uses of its curriculum when it described itself as a "classical and commercial academy for young gentlemen."^[40] Younger sons of the aristocracy and gentry customarily sought fortunes by marrying heiresses from wealthy merchant families or by acquiring a profession in the law, armed forces, or overseas trade and banking.^[41] Commercial subjects, however, were not always thought appropriate to a gentleman's education; their inclusion in school curricula in the early nineteenth century symbolized the extent to which previous social distinctions had eroded.^[42]

Wills of the lesser "gentry" and of the lower middle classes provide further evidence of mobility. Samuel Jenkins was "formerly of

Leonard Stanley, baker, late of Stroud, yeoman, but now of Nails-worth in Horsley, gentleman."^[43] His personal estate was valued under £2,000 and was probably the decisive reason for his acquisition of a "title." The principal witness to his will, nonetheless, was a wheelwright, and his executors were two Baptist deacons of humble station: his brother, Charles, a baker, and Isaac Hillier, who at this early date was a pig butcher.

The career of Isaac Hillier perfectly illustrates a pattern of substantial upward social mobility. Having started as a pig butcher, he later became a bacon-curing manufacturer of considerable wealth, with a personal estate valued for probate at £15,000.^[44] His marriage to Maria Playne, the daughter of Elizabeth and Thomas Playne, undoubtedly facilitated his advancement; her father was the illegitimate brother of William Playne, the gentleman-clothier and leading Anglican of the locality.^[45] Nevertheless, Hillier had worked diligently to develop a large-scale enterprise for the many years he remained in business. The sober habits of a Baptist deacon, who served his church in this capacity for more than two decades,^[46] undoubtedly contributed to his worldly success.

Others were more willing to join the Church of England, upon achieving a measure of respectability. In 1788 Nathaniel Dyer had been a carpenter with Nonconformist connections.^[47] In 1794, as an "architect" and prominent Anglican, he designed and built the Anglican chapel at Nailsworth. By his death in 1833, he had acquired "manors, messuages, farmlands, and tithes" and was titled "Esquire"; the court at Canterbury valued his personal estate just under £12,000.^[48] Although his social advancement appears more meteoric than Hillier's, Dyer never discarded his previous attachments. He named John Clark, a Horsley carpenter and nephew, a beneficiary and made bequests to others with even humbler occupations. He awarded £20 annuities for life to Deborah Barn-ford, wife of ——— Wigmore of Minchinhampton, shoemaker; Ann Parslow, wife of Isaac Parslow of Horsley, laborer; and Eunice Evans, his niece and the wife of Thomas Evans of Tresham, Gloucester, wheelwright. Most very likely were close relatives or objects of Dyer's newly acquired paternalism.

Richard Bartlett of Minchinhampton, "gentleman," provides yet another although more curious example. The executor proved

Bartlett's will at Canterbury, with the court valuing his personal estate under £600.^[49] This estate included a London inn called the "Fortune of War," an odd piece of property from which a gentleman might draw an income, although Bartlett seems to have occupied it until his retirement to Minchinhampton. His brother Edward, also from Minchinhampton, acted as his trustee and was a baker by occupation.

These are the more obvious examples of upward social mobility that can be cited. However, other wills often contained anomalies that qualify the actual status of the testator.^[50] A general point that can be made is that wealth rather than mere occupation or title became increasingly important as a mark of status over the eighteenth to early nineteenth century. Men called themselves "gentlemen" if they succeeded in acquiring even a modest fortune, despite the humbleness of their origins; if they acquired landed estates, they called themselves "Esquires" as well. Some of the more spectacular examples of mobility, moreover, came from among Nonconformists whose sobriety and individualism, fostered by the Calvinist churches of the Vale, brought them worldly success and respectability.

Similar tendencies prevailed among those at the lowest rung of the social scale. Daniel Cook of Shortwood, haymaker, an occupation equivalent to a laborer, held at his death a personal estate worth £1,500; like Isaac Hillier, he served as a deacon of the Shortwood Baptist Church.^[51] The source of Cook's bequests, moreover, epitomized a capitalist spirit, paid as they were from the interest and dividends accruing from capital placed in trust and invested in public funds. Cornelius Bowne of Nailsworth, a Congregationalist laborer, offered a similarly striking example of entrepreneurship; his activities were especially significant because of the network of associates they revealed. Bowne directed his trustees, both deacons of the Forest Green church, to divide his £100 estate:

Amongst such persons as shall . . . hold and be entitled to a share in certain monies now in the public funds which is to fall to these at my death (and for the consideration whereof each and every one of them (sixty in all) [!] now pay me a penny a week under certain articles of agreement duly executed) share and share alike.^[52]

Bowne evidently served as broker to other laborers, sixty in all, whose sense of mutuality had a decidedly capitalistic bent.

Nor was this an isolated case of popular individualism. Clothworkers, laborers, weavers, and artisans made bequests routinely from the profits of investments in cottages and other buildings. Robert Mason, clothworker, owned seven cottages and a shop with a broadloom, all leased to tenants, and that the Consistory Court valued at £200. Thomas Baker, clothworker, bought two houses on mortgage, besides his own residence, leased them to tenants, and bequeathed their rents and profits to his beneficiaries.^[53]

Bankruptcy records reveal similar examples of entrepreneurship. Both elder and younger, Thomas Neales were bankrupt clothiers indebted to two shearmen, each of whom had lent them sizable sums at interest. George Oldland held two promissory notes; the first, dated August 9, 1819, amounted to £50 with interest, and the second, dated September 28, 1825, amounted to £30 with interest. Joseph Vines held a promissory note, dated December 18, 1823, for £150 at 5 percent interest, which he had signed in 1822, four years prior to the debtors' default. The bankruptcy examiner emphasized that these notes were given "for money lent and advanced," which leaves no doubt regarding the creditors' intentions.^[54] Indeed, the two shearmen must have accumulated considerable capital to invest; they had not only made sizable loans but also left them outstanding for several years.

The entrepreneurial spirit of the lower classes did not generally produce the upward social mobility experienced by Nathaniel Dyer or even Isaac Hillier. Usually, it encouraged horizontal social mobility through which artisans, retailers, weavers, and laborers associated with each other on a more equal footing. In a typical example, Thomas Bird, shopkeeper and small clothier, appointed John Webb, clothworker (whom he described as a "friend"), one of the executors of his estate.^[55] Bird clearly found his social milieu among his employees or among those whom he served as customers in his shop, and with whom he very likely collaborated in small ventures. They may even have attended chapel together.^[56]

These patterns of social mobility, however, must be set against a framework of continuity. Although the traditional hierarchy had

severely eroded in substance, its form appeared to remain intact. In customary society, differences in wealth reflected rather than created rank ascription, although in the long term they reinforced social distinctions. "[S]tatus honor . . . normally stands in sharp opposition to the pretensions of mere property," Max Weber once wrote. "[Yet if] property as such is not always recognized as a status qualification . . . in the long run it is, and with extraordinary regularity."^[57] Although wealth may have served as the hidden foundation of honor, the governing class of the eighteenth century still treated "gentleness" as a virtue bred by birth and upbringing and ranked the lower classes according to the criterion of occupation or function.^[58] In such a society, one might have expected differences in wealth to have followed the gradations of rank. The growth of capitalism from the sixteenth century helped erode this hierarchical system, however, and as industrialism advanced from the late eighteenth century, new standards of defining status developed alongside the old as the personal wealth of individuals increased.^[59]

The inability of the old order fully to assimilate the change revealed itself statistically. The social pyramid can be examined through analysis of wealth distribution across occupations, or status designations such as "gentleman," using valuations of personal wealth recorded in probate records.^[60] Differences in mean personal wealth, when analyzed alongside their respective coefficients of variation, expressed degrees of continuity and social mobility, either horizontal or vertical (see tables 5 and 6).

Table 5 contains a breakdown of mean personal wealth by social groups appearing in rank order.^[61] The solid lines indicate the points at which the differences proved to be significant according to statistical t -tests presented in table 6. As in customary society, the mean wealth of each group generally reflected rank ascription. However, the fact that the differences proved not to be significant in every case suggests that important changes had occurred.

Gentlemen and the middle classes clearly constituted a homogeneous category, as did the yeomanry, retailers, and artisans immediately below them. Weavers, laborers, and clothworkers did the same. This structure clearly affirms the upward social mobility of the middle classes (already revealed by the qualitative

evidence from wills) and of small retailers and artisans, who approached the yeomanry on a more equal footing. The weavers were an exception; their position had noticeably deteriorated since the eighteenth century, when they ranked fully as artisans. Nevertheless, many more weavers wrote wills than did either cloth-workers or laborers, as table 7 illustrates. As a group they probably suffered less poverty, although their mean personal wealth hardly differed in value; or they may have held a greater apprecia-

tion for property rights, a residual consequence of their waning artisan status.

Thus, if the shape of a customary hierarchy remained formally intact, according to the distribution of mean personal wealth, it eroded nonetheless as more distinct social classes began to appear. The middle classes and gentry became the high bourgeoisie of later Victorian society; the yeomanry, retailers, and artisans constituted a petit bourgeoisie; and weavers, clothworkers, and laborers formed a proletariat. At the same time, none of these classes remained monolithically encased. Had that been so, the standard deviations would have fallen well below their respective means. In every case, except for weavers and clothworkers, they fell significantly above their means, indicating extreme variability. For weavers and clothworkers, the standard deviations fell just below their means but were high nonetheless. The coefficients of variation express the standard deviations as percentages of their respective means and invite comparisons across occupational and status boundaries. The high percentages, particularly for the first five groups, provide a useful corrective to the mere distribution of means; they show that many individuals from different strata possessed overlapping estate values. This pattern ran counter to the tendencies of their respective means, which accentuated the differences between them, and accounted for the failure of several t -tests, designed to measure such differences. Even where no such

failure existed, the high coefficients of variation rendered the difference between means largely a formal one.

Thus, the erosion of the hierarchical system had a dual aspect, pointing toward the formation of modern social classes, in a manner affirming Marx's original perception of this process, as well as to a pattern of individual mobility which fundamentally denies it.^[62] The lower middle and working classes, furthermore, shared a petit-bourgeois attitude toward upward social mobility that Nonconformity appears to have reinforced. The Chapel community, as Halèvy had suggested, served as the mediator between a transitional and a modern England by encouraging an ethos of individualism tinctured by the spirit of deference.^[63]

However transitional, the social structure of the Vale community had assumed a distinctive settlement pattern considerably influenced by the landscape. Woodlands invited clearing, and the streams flowing down the hills marked the distribution of weavers', clothworkers', and laborers' cottages. The elevation of the hills, the quality of the soil, and the direction of the streams in turn affected the landscape's configuration.

The Landscape

The Stroud district is located at the midpoint of the Cotswold hills, which occupy the eastern part of Gloucestershire. At their highest point, they reach an elevation of 1,093 feet at Cleeve Hill, and the average height of twelve of the highest peaks is 834 feet above sea level. Elevations near Stroud are lower, ranging from 200 to 600 feet.^[64] Nonetheless, such extremes in elevation occurring within short distances transmitted an aura of remoteness to localities such as Nailsworth, as well as a sensation of social complexity (see map 2).

Approaching the Vale from the southwest, and moving northeasterly, the traveler, while on walking tour, encounters Horsley village on its immediate periphery at an elevation of 500 feet. Continuing in a northeasterly direction, the hamlets of Newmarket, Forest Green, Winsoredge, and Inchbrook emerge, varying in elevation from 300 feet at Newmarket to 400 feet at Forest Green and dropping to zoo feet at Winsoredge and Inchbrook.^[65] Turning

Map 2.
Elevations of hills at Nailsworth. Source: Ordinance Survey Map, with elevations (1885).

southeasterly, while moving along the bottom of the valley, the traveler passes Dunkirk and Egypt mills until reaching Nailsworth village. The Nailsworth valley continues in a southeasterly direction as the traveler passes Holcombe and Iron mills, finally reaching Longfords mill. Thereafter, the ascent begins once more, rising to 500 feet at Avening village on the southeasterly periphery of the Vale.

Beginning the ascent from Nailsworth village, however, and moving in a northeasterly direction, the traveler encounters the hamlets of Watledge and Nailsworth Hill, which rise, respectively, to levels of 400 and 500 feet. They constitute the Vale's outer limits as one moves toward the southernmost edge of Minchinhampton Common. Continuing northeasterly along the edge of the Common, the traveler passes Box and Forwood villages before finally arriving at the old wool town of Minchinhampton. The town and the villages that ring the Common (suggesting its importance to their original pattern of settlement) stand at 600 feet above sea level, the highest point in the neighborhood, overlooking the broad valley of the river Severn to the north. From these heights originate the streams and rivulets that fertilize the valleys below.

Each valley of the Stroud district is associated with a comb or "bottom"; and each comb, with a spring or rivulet that emerges from the strata of Lias Clay and Supra-Liassic or Cotswold Sand. The drainage of the area follows the slopes of the hills, and the valleys give a westerly direction to the flow. The Stroud district is drained by the river Frome, which empties into the Severn. At the town of Stroud, the springs flowing down from the north are joined by the Slad and Painswick brooks, and at Dudbridge by those of Ruscombe and Nailsworth, which flow in from the south.^[66] The Nailsworth stream is formed by the junction of two rivulets that rise, respectively, near Avening and at Horsley and contains the drainage of the Vales of Nailsworth and Woodchester^[67] (see map 3).

Map 3.
The Frome River valley and streams. Source: 1-inch Ordinance Survey 
Map, ca. 1885, Gloucester Records Office Q/RUM 304.

These streams, together with the water-bearing soils that allowed them to flourish, crucially determined the settlement of the Vale. "These villages," William Cobbet remarked in 1830, "lie on the sides of a narrow and deep valley, with a narrow stream of water running down the middle of Jr." Nor could he fail to observe how "this stream turns the wheels of a great many mills and sets of machinery for the making of woolen cloth."^[68]

Fig. 3.
Section of the hills near Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. Source:
 In the possession of David Playne, Bannut Tree, Avening, 
Stroud, Gloucestershire, Playne Family Papers.

The regularity of the supply of water and the actual power the streams generated were mutally dependent on the quality of the soil and the distances the flow of water needed to travel from hill to vale. The formation of Upper Lias Clay and Supra-Liassic or Cotswold Sand, because of their porous and fraible natures, acted "as . . . spung[es], into which all the water that percolated through the beds [from above] is received and stored."^[69] Notwithstanding variations in the rate of drainage, a reasonably good supply of water was usually obtainable year-round.^[70] The positions of the clays and sands, furthermore, were always marked by the lines of cottages that dotted the slopes of the hills: "Everywhere [the villages and hamlets] are all built near the base of the sands and just above the line where the water is thrown out by the Upper Lias."^[71]

Apart from the clays and sands, which were crucial to the establishment of cloth mills, numerous quarries of both the Inferior and Great Oolites were developed at Scar Hill, near Nailsworth, and around Minchinhampton Common. They provided much of the building material that has added another distinctive feature to the landscape (see fig. 3).

The Fuller's Earth, which normally lies between these two formations, is largely responsible for the fertility of the slopes. In the Vale of Nailsworth, especially, the hills tend to be capped by the Great Oolite; the slopes of Inferior Oolite are thereby covered with slipped Fuller's earth, which "has upon its surface a rich

soil well adapted for cultivation."^[72] In Horsley, Avening, and Minchinhampton—the parochial hinterland of the Vale—wheat, barley, and oats were the principal crops grown, while peas, beans, and turnips were secondary. Tables 8 and 9 indicate, respectively, the percentages of parish lands under tillage in 1800 and 1840 and the amount of acreage devoted to each type of crop around 1800. The increase in arable land under cultivation at Avening was caused by the shrinkage of the wasteland and at Horsley, very likely, by more intensive husbandry resulting from greater concentration of ownership; the fall in cultivated arable land at Minchinhampton was due to that parish's more complete industrialization.^[73]

Actual crop yields, however, are difficult to ascertain. Of the three parishes, only the tithe survey for Avening gives any indica-

tion. However, since each parish contained the same type of soil, one can assume that Avening's crop yield was typical of that of its region. If the tithe charge were one-tenth of the yield (as the name of this tax suggests), the total yield could be estimated;^[74] this estimate is depicted in table 10. Wheat was marketed for human consumption and oats for animals, while the very high barley yield reflected the strong demand from the malting and brewing industry.^[75] The low wheat yield and the significantly higher yields for oats and barley affirm that the region, as a wood-pasture society, was better adapted to stock rearing and industrial activities, some of which remained ancillary to agriculture.^[76]

A wood-pasture society, Nailsworth once was covered by dense forests, which were only partially cleared as settlements became established. Local place names such as Shortwood, Harleywood, and Collier's Wood testify to their importance, as occasionally do the field names. A parcel of arable land, occupied by a tenant of Robert Kingscote and consisting of 17 acres, was called "Horsley Wood field" in Horsley's 1841 tithe survey. Clearly, it had once been part of a common arable field, which served as woodland ground in an earlier period. The same could be said of three acres of arable land near Nailsworth called "Woodleaze," which was put up for sale in 1823. At Newmarket in this same year a half acre, sold by auction and "covered with a plantation of thriving timber trees of different kinds," revealed the extent to which the region remained forested even at this late date.^[77]

Field names, moreover, evoked the image of a once quite isolated district. "Hither Robbers Green," "Middle Robbers Green,"

and "Far Robbers Green" suggest the uses to which a forest region, combined with an uncertain parochial jurisdiction, might have once been put by shrewd evaders of the law,^[78] at least until the advent of a better communications system. "Until then," commented one local historian, "we can see what rough and steep perilous routes [the roads] must have been for the traveller, and not lightly to be followed."^[79]

By 1825 the Vale had become fully integrated into its surrounding region; increased geographic mobility, facilitated by improved communications, rendered Nailsworth a far less isolated locale. The growth of communications, while promoting the regionalization of local society, also contributed to the process of industrialization. Turnpikes, canals, and railway lines constituted a new infrastructure, on the basis of which the woolen industry expanded. Despite the advent of the factory system the woolen industry failed, however, reflecting the slow development and incompleteness of this very infrastructure. As a result, the network of improved communications, although promoting regionalization, altered the landscape only to a limited degree.

Regionalization

Little had been accomplished before 1780 to bring economic unity to the Stroud region, and especially to Nailsworth and its hinterland. The roads connecting the villages and towns of the region were generally old tracks that had hardly experienced improvement. One exception was the Minchinhampton-Tetbury road, which was found in 1667 in a state of disrepair; in 1758, it was one of the first roads to be turnpiked.^[80] Nevertheless, the road, while running north-south through Avening parish, bypassed Nails-worth, leaving this outlying settlement in comparative isolation.

Before 1780, Nailsworth depended on a series of tracks to bring it into contact with places as far as Tetbury, six miles to the southeast, and Dursley, five miles to the southwest. Tetbury was the second most important market town in the Stroud region and like Horsley, Avening, and Minchinhampton, was located in Longtree Hundred. Dursley was located at the center of the lower cloth-manufacturing district of the county, near the Vale of Berkeley.

Regular intercourse with such places was made difficult by the

fact that the tracks were narrow and not especially durable to support the weight of carriages.^[81] Prior to general road improvement, the transport of cloth in both its raw and finished states was undertaken by packhorses. The boundary map of Nailsworth (map 1, above) provides an overview of the local transport network. It shows the extent to which proximity to newly built roads, and later to the railway, provided convenient service to the neighboring mills. One of the more important roads linking Nailsworth to its surrounding hinterland passed from Woodchester in the northwest through Inchbrook and Forest Green, continuing east through Nailsworth and then southeast to Avening village and eventually to Tetbury. This last stretch came to be known as the Nailsworth-Tetbury road. Nailsworth was also connected to Avening village by an old route that ran along the hillside through Hazelwood, while another track through Balls Green connected it to the town of Minchinhampton. A road from Nailsworth to Dursley passed through Horsley village to the south and thereafter turned southwest toward the lower cloth-manufacturing district.

The first significant improvement occurred in 1780 with the construction of the Bath-Gloucester road, a major thoroughfare that passed through Nailsworth at closer proximity to the mills than the old road from Woodchester; the new road bisected Horsley parish from north to south. At the same time, an additional road was constructed at Nailsworth, connecting the new Bath road to Box village on the outskirts of Minchinhampton, while the old Nailsworth-Tetbury road was turnpiked. The Nailsworth-Dursley road through Horsley was turnpiked in 1800, and in 1822 a new road was constructed along the valley toward Avening, complementing the old hillside track.

Numerous efforts were made in the early nineteenth century to widen existing tracks and to make new additions. In February 1820 the trustees of the Nailsworth, Woodchester, and Dudbridge turnpike roads met for the purpose of "making and maintaining a road from Tiltups Inn, in . . . Horsley, to join the turnpike road from Cirencester to Dudbridge . . . in the parish of Rodborough, and from the bridge at Nailsworth . . . to Minchinhampton Common."^[82] In the same year, an application to widen some of the smaller, ancillary roads in the area was noted:

from the field called Boulden Sleight to the end of a lane adjoining the road from Horsley to Tetbury, near Tiltups Inn; and from the Market House in Tetbury to the turnpike road on Minchinhampton Common; and from the said road in Hampton field unto the turnpike road from Cirencester to Stroud, near Burnt Ash; and from the said turnpike road to Tayloe's mill pond in Chalford Bottom; and through Hyde to the bottom of Bourn Mill.^[83]

Such undertakings, together with the construction of turnpike roads, facilitated the transport of commodities and the geographic mobility of the population. From 1780, accelerated membership growth of the Shortwood Baptist Church, as we shall see, coincided with the building of the Bath-Gloucester road. The scattered population of the surrounding area found itself better able to travel to Nailsworth, although local residents responded more slowly to the stimulus. In 1794 Nailsworth was still widely viewed as a somewhat isolated district. Not until after 1812 did the local populace become more mobile,^[84] and by 1825 it was found moving routinely between Nailsworth and other villages.^[85]

The regionalization of local society was evident, furthermore, by the manner in which turnpikes and improved local roads were managed. The trustees of the Nailsworth, Woodchester, and Dud-bridge roads made joint decisions that clearly applied to places at some distance from Nailsworth.^[86] The toll gates, over which they also exercised joint control, were likewise scattered throughout the neighborhood;^[87] their jurisdiction, in other words, was extra-parochial.

In order to maintain the roads, the trustees were empowered by the General Turnpike Act of 1780 to call meetings of parish surveyors and to require them to mobilize the resources of their respective communities. Although turnpike trusteeships were not regulated by a manor court (and, in fact, were ad hoc bodies of landowners and clothiers), the form in which their orders appeared had a medieval aspect. In 1809 the trustees of the Nails-worth, Woodchester, and Dudbridge roads required the surveyors to produce

a true and perfect list . . . of the names of all inhabitants and occupiers of lands, tenements and herediments . . . that are liable to do statute work

or duty; and in such lists to distinguish . . . [those who] keep a team or teams and . . . to what annual reputed value they respectively occupy [land, etc.] and which of them are labourers, and liable to do statute duty as labourers only.^[88]

The order was akin to what a steward of a manor might direct to a Court of Survey; the specific reliance on statute labor, rather than wage labor,^[89] evoked the tradition of the corvée.

The collection of tolls, furthermore, was undertaken by the traditional method of tax farming. Farmers would compete for the privilege at auction; the winners were required to pay a monthly rental from receipts and were permitted to keep the surplus as compensation for their efforts. In 1824 it was reported that five gates in the Nailsworth-Woodchester-Dudbridge area rented for an average sum of £254; and in 1835 it was reported further that the toll revenue of the previous year was £1,320 above the expenses of collecting them,^[90] a sum sufficiently high to attract eager bidders.

In general, the turnpikes were not constructed with a view to turning a profit for a group of shareholders. The initial capital may have been raised through subscriptions, but this sum was usually treated as a loan to be repaid at low interest rates, although repayment was rarely accomplished.^[91] Funds for maintaining the roads were dispensed from monthly toll gate rentals and, evidently, from a property tax levied on small owners, who were permitted to commute their statute duty into a monetary payment. Such was the peculiar dialectic by which the quasi-feudal conscription of labor and resources, toll farming, and the reliance on a kind of "rent perpetuelle" for the raising of initial capital aided the modernization of the local and regional road systems.^[92]

The local elite employed more current financing methods to build canals; these ventures were viewed as profit-making enterprises and required investment of larger amounts of capital.^[93] A joint-stock company was formed in the 1770s to build two canals that would link the Severn and Thames rivers at Wallbridge, Stroud, and both to a small inland port at Brimscombe; the linkages were designed to facilitate the transfer of cargoes.^[94] The Stroudwater canal connected Framilode on the Severn to Wall-

bridge, and the Thames-Severn canal connected Wallbridge to Lechlade on the Thames.^[95] The project, begun in 1775, was completed by 1785.^[96]

Contrary to expectation, the canals did not significantly improve the flow of traffic to London.^[97] They did, however, facilitate commercial contact between the city of Gloucester and inland settlements such as Nailsworth. Improved contact was especially important for the grain trade, as Nailsworth relied on both the Tetbury and Gloucester markets. Messrs. Lewis and Company, owners of the Stroud barge, announced that their vessel "regularly loads every Saturday at Lewis's, warehouse, on the quay, Gloucester, sails from Gloucester to Stroud, Brimscombe, and all intermediate places every Monday and returns on the Friday following, delivering grain and other goods."^[98] One such "intermediate place" was Dudbridge wharf in Rodborough, which served as a delivery terminal for the Rodborough-Woodchester-Nailsworth area. An advertisement for letting a corn mill at Woodchester Park had noted the mill's strategic location just three miles from Dudbridge wharf and twelve miles from Gloucester.^[99]

The canals, however, were intended primarily to benefit the clothiers of the district, most of whom were initial backers of the various schemes to build them.^[100] Nevertheless, those who owned or occupied mills along the river resisted their construction since water drawn from the streams into the canals deprived these mills of their only source of power prior to the advent of the steam engine.^[101] Much later, after the arrival of steam power, clothiers could be found protesting against high transport rates for coal,^[102] charging that the canal company engaged in excess profiteering.^[103] The canal company sought to rebut the charge, and in doing so revealed much about the extent of regional economic growth.

The prevailing popular view was that the company's dividend payments had grown to £30 percent per annum, based on an initial subscription of £100 per share. The company published its annual dividend payments for the 1785-1824 period and pointed out that the initial capital of £100 per share was an underestimation of the true cost to each shareholder. Because of delays in construction, an additional £50 contribution was needed from the shareholders, and because of a ten-year interval between the initial proposal to build the canals and commencement of their opera-

Fig. 4.
Stroud canal dividend series, 1785-1824.

tions, the company sustained a further loss of interest arrears amounting to £75. Altogether, then, subscribers invested an initial capital amounting to £225 per share or £45,000 when all 200 shares of the issue are counted. The total dividend payment over the forty-year period totaled £528.10s. per share, which represented a 235 percent increase in capital. The company protested, however, that the average annual dividend amounted to less than £6 percent per annum; indeed, the time series of dividend payments shown in figure 4, indicates a growth rate or 4.7 percent per annum.

Despite the company's lamentations, such a rate of profit was not unreasonable under then prevailing conditions. In the first fifteen years of the canals' operations (1785-1799), the growth rate in dividends was 8.2 percent per annum, well above the 5 percent interest rate for private lending set by the usury laws.^[104] From 1811 to 1824, the trend in the Stroud canal company's dividend payments kept pace with the national movement of canal share prices. The partial correlation coefficient r_xy(t) between the two was a strong 0.65.^[105] This fact, however, could provide little solace since the rates of profit of most canal companies fell well below the expected 10 to 12 percent per annum.^[106] Indeed, the Stroud canals failed to become the major thoroughfare their backers had hoped for. Transport to London proved too slow, sometimes taking up to four months for goods to arrive.^[107] Coal and grain seem to have been the only important items carried to the inland settlements and at irritatingly high costs. Although the canals helped to effect the regionalization of local society, slower regional economic growth, revealed by their rates of profit, meant that the landscape remained untrammeled. Implementation of the railway eventually eclipsed the Stroud canals, but its effect on the regional economy and lanscape was hardly more revolutionary.

Both the slowness and high cost of water transport led many clothiers to advocate construction of the Great Western Railway. The line would run between Gloucester and Swindon via Stroud and would link up to the main Bristol-London trunk. Threats to promote such a scheme were made in 1824 and 1831,^[108] but no serious action was taken until 1834. In that year an important meeting was held at Stroud to consider public endorsement for building the railway; those attending "represented the most con-

siderable part of the wealth and influence of the neighborhood."^[109] Because of sharpening competition with the North of England in textiles and the promise of further development of the region's resources, especially coal,^[110] the project was given a unanimous vote of confidence. Moreover, the railway provided a significant investment opportunity for individuals. "Looking at it as a matter of investment," one speaker had commented, "if it paid only £6 percent, it might be considered a pretty good speculation. . . . The £100 shares [issued] were now producing £200." Nor was it expected that the burden of raising capital would fall entirely on the shareholders, who were not held bound to their subscriptions until all shares were sold, and the government promised assistance to the extent of half the needed capital at only 4 percent interest.

Despite these liberal terms, and apparent enthusiasm for the project, the railway was not completed until 1845.^[111] Delays were probably caused by the resistance of landowners whose properties lay along the proposed route,^[112] and by competition between promoters of the Bristol-London and Southampton-London lines; the latter would have bypassed the Stroud region entirely.^[113] In addition, there may have been greater skepticism toward the scheme than was apparent at the Stroud meeting. Although several speakers emphasized the importance of the railway for industrial development, one of the principal promoters clearly regarded passenger service as its primary advantage. His attitude, while generally optimistic, may have caused potential investors to doubt the long-term viability of the enterprise.

One indication of such resistance was the failure to consider construction of branch lines from the proposed Gloucester-Swindon trunk to the inland areas. W. H. Hyett, MP (Member of Parliament) for Stroud, confidently maintained that there would be little difficulty establishing such lines in the future. Yet the only branch in the region, from Stonehouse to Nailsworth, was not constructed until 1867,^[114] ostensibly because of the scattered settlement pattern of the district.

This difficulty had been cited as the main obstacle a decade earlier in a debate at the Nailsworth Literary and Mechanics Institute. "Nothing short of an indefinite number of stations," one speaker contended, "would be much if any service to the inhabitants" and

Map 4.
Stonehouse-Nailsworth Branch Railroad Line, ca. 1863. Source: Gloucester Records Office Q/RUM 304.

therefore of limited profitability.^[115] Certainly he had exaggerated the problem. When finally built, the section of the line from Stone-house to Rodborough, depicted in map 4, provided full service to mill owners on the south side of Stroudwater canal; and the section from Rodborough, running south to Nailsworth, passed close to the mills along the Nailsworth stream. Yet implementation of the railway did little to arrest Stroud's economic decline. Unlike Birmingham, with which contemporaries often drew contrasts,^[116] the Stroud region never urbanized significantly and therefore retained its rural character.

Summary and Conclusion

This chapter has depicted the interaction between landscape, ecology, settlement pattern, and social structure in and around the Vale of Nailsworth and has offered structural analyses of two aspects of the experience of modernization: class formation and regional integration. Local topography determined that Nails-worth was initially isolated and characterized by a dispersed settlement pattern. Located in a wood-pasture region, Nailsworth was a boundary settlement, not falling squarely within the jurisdiction of any one parish or manor. Nailsworth's ecology determined its industrial and social characteristics as the Vale emerged from the medieval period with an economy based on a system of cottage industry in woolen manufactures. Nailsworth's initial remoteness, dispersed settlement pattern, and socioeconomic configuration combined to make it a center of Nonconformity in the eighteenth to early nineteenth century, while its progressive integration into a wider regional community was reflected in and facilitated by improvements in transport and communications, however ineffective these remained from an economic standpoint.

A district with a hierarchical social structure in the eighteenth century, Nailsworth's transition to the factory system helped bring into being a more horizontally structured, class-based society in the nineteenth century. Analysis of class formation documents a pattern of accelerated upward social mobility among the "middling sort," the corresponding erosion of the traditional status of "gentleman," and a pattern of downward social mobility, or derogation in status, among artisan weavers. This process had

antecedents in earlier periods, but between 1780 and 1850, wealth had become a more obvious criterion for defining status than in the past, so much so that men with the humblest occupations might call themselves "gentlemen" if the size of their personal estates seemed to warrant the title. This change reflected itself further among the traditional gentry and the wealthier bourgeoisie in the closer intermingling of landed and industrial wealth, as well as by the depreciated role of the classics in commonly accepted standards for educating gentlemen. The experience of downward social mobility among weavers became manifest in the analysis of wealth distribution by the failure of their estates to rise appreciably in value above the mean wealth of clothworkers and laborers, however much they outnumbered the latter as testators.

Evidence from wills also suggested a pattern of horizontal social mobility, by which small retailers, artisans, and ordinary laborers could find common ground in feelings of neighborliness, forged by an entrepreneurial spirit. Clothworkers, laborers, and shearmen could be found purchasing real estate in either land or buildings, pooling resources for investment in the public funds, or acting as creditors even to their employers, and all with the expectation of turning a profit. The most spectacular examples of such initiative came from among Nonconformists and thereby lent credibility to the Weberian relationship of a "Protestant ethic" and a spirit of capitalism, at least as applied to Calvinists. These findings take issue with E. P. Thompson's view of working-class culture in the early industrial period, insofar as working people appear more receptive to capitalist values and less committed to communitarian ones than he has suggested. Yet they support, with some irony, his and Elie Halèvy's contention that evangelicalism mediated the transfer of middle-class values to a working class in formation; the Calvinist ideal of the "calling" seems to have promoted individualism and personal autonomy, more than a collective form of work discipline.

Finally, the growth of a regional transport and communications network brought an end to Nailsworth's historic isolation. Although the locality remained a boundary settlement until 1892, Nailsworth village urbanized moderately and integrated itself into the economy and society of its parochial hinterland. Geographically and socially, as a boundary settlement and industrial village

embedded in a wood-pasture region, Nailsworth captured the spirit of individuality conducive to the spread of religious dissent. The hinterland of the Vale, in its structures of landownership and authority, likewise provided an appropriate setting for communities of Dissenters and for this reason also warrants close study.