Straw Plaiting in Walkern

An article by Janet Woodall & Eleanor Waldock that first appeared in the September 2010 Walkern Journal

Luton was a centre of British straw hat production from the beginning of the 17th century with production of the raw material, straw plait, giving employment to many thousands of women and young children in neighbouring counties. Literally a cottage industry.

The quality of straw grown on the chalk fields of Beds, Bucks, and Herts was ideal for plaiting, and in 1850, a superior variety of wheat called ‘Red Lammas’ was introduced from Cambridgeshire. The proximity of the Beds/Herts plaiting areas to Watling Street and only 20 to 30 miles from the hat manufacturers in London, was ideal.

Plaiting was essentially a rural occupation with the women in towns sewing plait to make the hats, and getting better pay than their rural cousins. In the 19th century the average Hertfordshire agricultural wage was between 10s and 12s a week. Izzard Prior of Clay Hall (now Walkern Hall) noted that during 1845 wages fluctuated from 9 to 11 shillings per week, and when at the lower level he found it hard to collect the rents. Straw plaiting wives and children could potentially earn appreciably more than their husbands and fathers, and it must have been a very welcome income around the village.

When areas of England were embroiled in discontent at low rural wages, Hertfordshire was relatively peaceful thanks in part to the extra wages brought in by straw plaiting. John Izzard Pryor commented in his diary on a ‘state of dismay and terror’ in December 1830 when several farms had been ‘set fire to by wicked incendiaries very near’, adding that, ‘Fires continue to be seen in the distance most nights’. However, in Hertfordshire only one serious case was dealt with arising from the Farm Labourers’ Revolt (John Pryor himself was a member of the Grand Jury which heard the case). But plaiting helped keep the lid on the boiling pot of rebellion in Hertfordshire.

Arthur Young in his General View of the Agriculture of Hertfordshire (1804) noted that ‘About Stevenage, spinning has given way to plaiting straw, by which they earn three or four times as much.’ though  ‘The farmers complain of it as doing mischief’ ‘for it makes the poor saucy and no servants can be procured or any field work done where this manufacture establishes itself’‘There is so much plaiting at Hitchin, that they will not go into service’

Before the invention of a straw-splitter in the early 1800s much of the plaiting was done with whole straws, although this made quite a coarse plait. A finer plait could be made by splitting the straw with a knife the straw-splitter, which had a spiked bone head surrounded by cutters and securely attached to a wooden handle, made the task easier. The spike went into the hollow stem and, when drawn downwards, divided the straw into even strips. Some cutters offered a choice of splint sizes. The plaiter would hold a bundle of damp, prepared straws under her left armpit and as she worked she would bend her head and pull out the new splints, moistening and working them round with her tongue to keep them pliable. This would often cause scarring at the right-hand corner of her mouth, as a result of removing the splints. The resulting split straws were plaited into lengths which were then flattened out and sold on to the straw dealers.

In Italy, the plaiters used fine straw and grasses to produce a plait which was superior to that made in England. The Italians exported both plaits and straw hoods which could then be shaped into finished hats, but during the Napoleonic wars (1793-1815) with their blockades and high import duties , supplies were cut off, and this was a big incentive for improving the quality of local plait. The invention of a straw-splitter in the early 1800s solved this problem and meant that much finer plait could now be produced locally.

Plaiting schools were set up in most Hertfordshire villages designed to teach children the trade and to furnish them with a rudimentary education. In reality the plaiting schools were often workshops employing child labour from the age of five. Walkern was fortunate in having a National School, set up in the 1830s by our rector, Rev JC Wright and funded by subscription. From the 1851 census onwards, most Walkern children were described as scholars, and by 1886 the school had 91 children on its books with an average attendance of 79. The infants’ school was built in 1877, with 60 infants on the books 60 and an average attendance of 48.

Unfortunately, the first usable census, that of 1841, doesn’t show straw plaiting as an occupation in Walkern, or indeed any female occupations other than “female servant”, but it is a sure bet that many women and children supplemented the family income through plaiting in Walkern as elsewhere in Herts.

By 1851 the census was more descriptive of occupations. Walkern at that time had a population of 718 of which 368 were female. Of these females,66 were plaiters, which is 18% of the female population. One villager, Elizabeth Savage, was a “bonet sower”. Seventeen plaiters were under 15 years of age and five plaiters were under ten, the youngest, Hannah Warner, being only six. The oldest straw plaiter was 70 year old Elizabeth Clemence of Froghall Lane. Most of the plaiters were married to agricultural labourers and lived in the poorest accommodation in the lanes of Walkern.

Table 1: The number of straw plaiters in Walkern

Census year	1851	1861	1871	1881
Total population	738	823	799	843
Females	368	400	393	370
Total no. of Plaiters	66	77	16	1
Plaiters aged 6-15	17	12	4	0

 

10 years later little had changed. Walkern had 77 plaiters – 19% of the female population – plus two local plait dealers (husband and wife, Joseph & Sarah Warner) and a bonnet sewer, Emma Kitchener. Emma was the 34 year old wife of John Elliot Kitchener who would later found Kitchener stores. There were slightly fewer child straw-plaiters than there were ten years previously – twelve under the age of 15. The youngest was seven, the oldest 75 year old Elizabeth Godfrey whose husband, 77 year old George, worked on the roads. There was no such thing as a pension.

By 1865, cheap foreign imports from Italy but also from the Far East made it less attractive for the London market to buy British plait, but straw plaiting carried on locally to supply the Luton hat industry. The 1870s was its heyday with weekly Plait markets held at Luton, Dunstable and Hitchin and other nearby towns. Plaiters could sell their plait to travelling dealers or they could go to one of the markets themselves where they would get a better price, although few were actually able to do this.

An extract from the Hertfordshire Express, 1874 illustrates the economics of this trade. ‘…One hundred weight of straw is worth 3 shillings. This… is capable of producing about 40 pounds of plaiting straws worth between 8s -18s according to the season or quality. This amount of straw….produces 17-18 pounds of plait worth £7 – 20. This plait can be converted into 16-17 pounds of straw hats or bonnets which wholesale would be worth £23 – £45’

Surprisingly, given that the 1871 census saw a peak in the  numbers of plaiters in Herts and the surrounding counties, the number of plaiters in Walkern was fell to just 16. Not only had the number of plaiters decreased markedly, the spread of ages had also changed with the youngest aged 14, and the oldest 39. And by 1881, only one plaiter remained in the village, Sarah Mardell, widow and head of household, aged 58, living with 11 year old son Albert in Beecroft Lane.

Luton continued to be a centre of the industry during the 19th century but cheaper foreign plait imports saw the average wage of local plaiters fall to 4s a week, and so the number of plaiters declined. Straw hats, having been the height of fashion for two centuries, were no longer so after the First World War, and the Luton industry collapsed.

The decrease in numbers of plaiters in Walkern took place much sooner than in other Herts villages, e.g. Preston (see table – figures from Straw Plaiting in Preston, Herts, at www.prestonherts.co.uk) which showed a decline similar to that of Hertfordshire as a whole, and to neighbouring counties (see table below). Why did Walkern follow a different trend to Preston?

Table 2: Comparison of the number of straw plaiters from the 1851 to 1901 census records for the villages of Walkern and Preston, for the whole of Herts and for neighbouring counties.

Census year	1851	1861	1871	1881	1891	1901
Plaiters in Walkern	66	77	16	1	0	0
Plaiters in Preston	97	100	64	34	12	13
Plaiters in Herts	8753	8598	12089	7543	3133	681
Plaiters in Beds	10054	11476	20701	15058	10191	485
Plaiters in Bucks	2922	2976	3412	1654	515	173
Plaiters in Essex	3058	2444	2839	922	37	0

 

Preston was a much smaller village than Walkern with a population that decreased from 460 to 360 over the 1851-1881 period, while the population of Walkern grew from 728-843 over the same period. As the 19th century progressed, although Walkern remained a farming village, it was not so dependent on rural occupations. From 1870 the Victoria Brewery, owned by the Wright family, began to be a major employer, as did Pearman’s steam mill. Other trades, shops and professions appeared along the High Street, offering a greater variety of occupations.

 

For more information about straw plaiting in Hertfordshire see the Herts Genealogy website