Agricultural History Review, Volume 62 Part 2 (2014), p. 367

Rural domestic workers, with a foot in agriculture as well as manufacture, lay behind the rise of West Yorkshire as the major wool textile region of industrializing Britain. Cornelius Ashworth (1751–1821), living at Walt Royd, Wheatley in Halifax parish, was one such, although he was not a typical farmer/handloom weaver. Following an early marriage to the widow of a propertied family he was unusual in that his wife had inherited the farm (16 acres with farmhouse and seven additional cottages) for her lifetime. The Ashworths were therefore ratepayers and Cornelius played a role in the administration of his township. Through his wife’s family he also had close London connections and step children (though no issue of his own). He was also unusual in keeping a diary. Four volumes of everyday observations have survived covering two separate years of the 1780s, a year or so of 1809, and just over a year 1815–1816. They are here the subject of careful (and for the first time complete) transcription, indexing and analysis by three experienced researchers of the Hebden Bridge Local History Society. It is published by the Society, on high-quality coated paper with both black-and-white and colour illustrations, with the aid of bequests and subscriptions that have rightly recognized the unique value of this, albeit intermittent, record of daily life at the cutting edge of the first industrial revolution.

The book starts with a thorough and knowledgeable introduction to Ashworth’s various occupations, their routines and technologies, his religious practice, travel and the economic and social conditions of Halifax parish at this time. Footnotes point the reader to a wealth of complementary information and potentially puzzling entries in the diaries are thereby clarified. Nigel Smith’s exemplary indexes to places, persons and subjects complete what is a thorough context for the diaries themselves. It even includes a glossy copy of J. F. Myers’ Map of Halifax Parish, 1835, tucked into a sleeve in the back endpaper. Students will find it instructive to trace Ashworth’s perambulations.

In the mid-1780s Ashworth records when he carried each piece of cloth to market, as well as the amount he wove each day. His output was just less than half a piece of 30-yard kersey per week but sometimes he wove twice that amount. Shifts to weaving different sorts of double worsted cloths are recorded and the diary shows Ashworth weaving into the twilight hours and before dawn. He was also involved in building, quarrying, labouring and hop dealing. By the time of the later diaries weaving is no longer mentioned. Farming and social events become more prominent, including the Ovenden enclosure of 1817. Throughout there is intermittent but useful mention of prices for farm produce, animals, and labour, much about oats, cows, harvesting and water furrowing. Ashworth was a reticent recorder with little time for sentiment but two things stand out: his faith and his preoccupation, on a daily basis, with the weather.

Whether entirely new to the economic and social history of this part of Yorkshire or already an expert, this book has much to offer. It will be very useful for those wishing to understand: the industrialization process; domestic textile manufacturing and hand weaving; small scale mixed farming; multi-occupations; the importance of seasons and climate, familial ties; the central importance of the evangelical revival in this part of Yorkshire; and the everyday lives of relatively lowly people living in a period of economic and social transformation.