KILSBY VILLAGE

The enormous growth and significance of sheep-rearing in this area during the 1400s and 1500s brought with it a number of important knock-on effects in terms of trade and industry within Kilsby, including the growth of the roads around the village, a significant increase in the population, and the builing of a number of stone houses in the 1600s and 1700s, indicating that this had been a time of relative wealth and prosperity for some.

Rather incongruously, the trade which produced this rise in Kilsby's fortune was the manufacture of woollen "tammies", or knitted headgear - a sort of sassenach cousin of the highland bonnet.

Kilsby was certainly not the only village or town in these parts to engage in the weaving of worsteds - Coventry, Rugby and others all had numbers of people involved in the business - but for a humble village it was well-situated either on or close to a number of important overland routes, and thus was able to prosper from the activity. A report on Kilsby in Baker's history of 1822 states that:

"The great increase of population during the last century was owing to a considerable manufacture of tammies and other worsted goods being carried on here, which has been rapidly on the decline since the termination of the late [ie Napoleonic] war."

Furthermore, Bridges' history of the 1720s states that Kilsby comprised 72 houses (9 of which were set aside for the poor), whilst Baker's history records 148 houses in 1801, with 703 inhabitants. Statements such as this, together with other reports on population in church annals, place the period of Kilsby's greatest wealth as between the late 1600's and the late 1700's; and during this time there was an enormous amount of activity in the village associated with the weaving and making-up of woollen goods. A number of families prospered, of course; among them, some became merchants of such standing that they were able to issue their own trading tokens. These trading tokens - metal discs a good deal like ordinary coin - were a popular means of recording the flow of money between traders in particular lines of business, or between merchants and their employees, during this period of British history, and there were a number of Rugby merchants using this system. Amongst the records of 17th century trading tokens in Northamptonshire (W. C. Wells, 1914) are some references to the use of tokens by Kilsby inhabitants. There is specific mention of a certain John Burgis of Kilsby, whose tokens bore inscriptions such as "JOHN.BVRGIS.MERCER - HIS.HALF.PENNY" on the face, and "IN.KILSBEY.1670 - I.M.B" on the reverse. There were quite a few rules and regulations in force at this time, some of which seem amusing in retrospect. For instance, a statute of Queen Elizabeth I dating from 1571 required that:

"... all citizens, artificers and labourers above the age of 7 shall wear woollen caps on Sundays and Holy Days, with a fine of 3s-4d [17p] for each day's transgression."

This statute (which was enacted primarily to offset the effects of a marked decline in England's woollen exports during the reign of Henry VIII) was strictly enforced, to promote the wearing of woollen produce, and fines were levied not on the offending individual but on the whole village or township - so a great deal of civic vigilance was ensured.