During the last two decades of the 19th century in Wirksworth, the
inhabitants of the Dale and Greenhill provided the labour for the local
quarries and the tape mills. In the quarries the work was hard and
unrelenting since there was little mechanisation and the sole source of
power was man. The stone was won from the bed of the quarry by hand boring
a series of holes using a hammer and a flat blade chisel, and then
splitting the stone from the bed using a plug and feather. Because the
chisel used in the initial boring of the hole was a flat blade, the chisel
needed to be turned through about 60 degrees between successive strikes
with the hammer. To achieve this the quarrymen worked as a gang of three
consisting of two strikers each wielding a hammer, and a young lad turning
the chisel, rather like the turning of champagne bottles, thus boring a
pair of holes at the same time. The three quarrymen were paid as a group
based on the yardage bored, and usually the group of three consisted of
men from the same household.
Examples of such family groups from the Wardman and Else pedigrees could
have been the quarrymen members from the households of
Ebenezer DOXEY,
William BYARD,
Samuel ELSE,
Robert WARDMAN,
Elizabeth WARDMAN,
with the 6 quarrymen from the combined households of the brothers
Anthony WARDMAN and
John WARDMAN
jointly providing two more groups.
Having won the stone from the quarry bed, in some of the quarries the next
stage was to convert the blocks into setts and kerbs. Using the admirable
word search facility on this website the instances of sett and
kerb in the occupation description field of the census should give
an idea of the numbers of men involved in sett cutting. The sett cutters
are seemingly surprisingly few, and the great majority of those so
described are not native Wirksworthians, examples of non Wirksworthian
sett cutters being
MARTIN from Corely;
TAYLOR from Burslem;
ROBERTS from Caynham;
SOUTHAM from Enderby;
INGLESANT from Mount Sorrel;
HUNT from Mount Sorrel;
MILNE from Groby;
RILEY from Port Madoc;
FREER from Enderby; and
BRAY presumably from Stoney Stanton.
Was there a tradition of Wirksworth born quarrymen simply being called
quarrymen irrespective of the work done, whereas immigrant workers into
the quarries demanded a precise job title? Or was the census enumerator
just being economical with details? The number of sett makers must surely
have been more than indicated by the census, and some must have been
Wirksworthians.
Whilst the men were working in the quarries the women were no less
industrious, many of whom were employed as tape lappers. Lapping was
the process whereby the finished tape was manually wound off a reel
containing very many yards of tape onto a manually rotated two pronged
spigot, to produce the desired length which was then cut off and tied as
a flat pack for retail sale. Lapping was the one process which could be
done both at the mill and by out workers at home, the lapping frame being
only about 1000mm by 600mm and easily clamped onto a table. The opportunity
presented by outworking would have enabled
Elizabeth WARDMAN not only to earn herself
a wage; but also act as housekeeper to her father; cook and clean and sew
for her younger brother and sister, Daniel and Eliza; raise her own son
William; and raise her niece Mary E ELSE who was the daughter of
Elizabeth's deceased sister Sarah Anne ELSE nee WARDMAN.
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