Adam Smith revisited: coal and the location of the woollen manufacture in England before mechanization, c. 1500-1820

This study uses male occupational data abstracted from the Court of Common Pleas to determine the location of the English woollen manufacturing industry circa 1500, and from county probate records to track temporal change 1601-1801. It shows that the onset of de- industrialization in textile counties in southern England occurred toward the end of the seventeenth century when the industry began to shift to the West Riding of Yorkshire. Occupations of fathers recorded in Anglican baptism registers 1813-20 indicate that the industry relocated to a relatively small number of places. This study establishes a clear association between these places and the proximity of water and the coalfields. This relationship concurs with the views of Adam Smith to show that coal was important to the woollen manufacture decades before the mechanization of spinning and weaving and the use of steam power.