Atherstone's position, laid out as a long 'ribbon development' along Watling Street, ensured its growth as a market town. While in the medieval period it was still, primarily an agricultural settlement, attempts were made to encourage merchants and traders through the creation of burgage plots, a type of land tenure giving them special privileges. A manuscript reference to the creation of nine new burgage strips from land belonging to seven tenants in Atherstone vill, discovered by Marjorie Morgan among the muniments of Cambridge's Kings College (Ms.C9), provides clear evidence of this.
 

By the late Tudor periods Atherstone had become a thriving centre for leatherworking, clothmaking, metalworking and ale-brewing. Local sheep farmers and cattle graziers supplied wool and leather to local tanners and shoemakers, while metalworkers, locksmiths and nailers fired their furnaces with local coal and the alemakers supplied thirsty palates on market days.
 

Marion Alexander's survey of sixteenth century Mancetter probate wills and inventories (below) gives a fascinating and informative coverage of these local trades and occupations. The 40 inventories listed for Atherstone include that of John Drayton (1556), here described as a butcher and elsewhere styled 'yeoman', and William Drayton (1557), a leather tanner. Hugh Drayton, who is also described as a tanner was probably related to the alehouse keeper of the same name mentioned in a 1597 Leicester archdeaconry court case relating to events which took place at the annual fair. Marion points out that tanners and butchers often engaged in farming and that many of these occupations were complimentary - farmers slaughtering their own cattle to provide tanned hides for shoemakers and saddlers.
 

Atherstone was also an important centre for weaving and clothmaking. Marion suggests that the area marked 'Tenter Flatt' on the Bracebridge map may have been used for stretching and drying cloth. William Reppington, a forebear of the family that later bought the manor of Atherstone, was a weaver and among those who left inventories are Hugh Middleton, a prosperous draper and Henry Blew, a 'haberdasher', selling finished cloths and felt hats.
 

As for alemaking, late medieval manor court rolls provide clear evidence that local women brewed ale to sell in the local alehouses, and that two ale tasters were employed to supervise the trade. Benjamin Bartlett, the 18^th century antiquary, author of the famous History of Mancetter, observed that the town was 'walled with ale and paved with marble'. Francis Goddard's reference to 32 alehouses in Atherstone in 1720 also suggests there was also a thriving alehouse trade in Elizabethan times as local villagers from the surrounding area crowded into the town on market days.
 

The inventories reveal that the sixteenth century houses in Atherstone were quite modest in size. Even though many were double storied they rarely had more than four living rooms, but many had 'shops' and there were numerous baking houses, dairies, malthouses, kilnhouses, candlemaking rooms and tanneries attached to the premises. Larger residences such as John Abel's Mansion house which had eleven rooms, and on the outskirts of the town, Nicholas Lawrence's Oldbury manor, which had sixteen rooms, reveal the town's popularity as a haven for retired gentlemen.
 

Although only one of the surviving inventories belongs to a miller, that of John Rampton described both as a yeoman and a miller in 1557, there were probably others: two mills are recorded in 1573, one a windmill the other a watermill, grinding corn for bakers like Richard Knight, who also left an inventory. According to the antiquary John Nichols, as far back as 1388 several inhabitants of the town were fined for failing to bake bread in the public bakehouse in Bakehouse Lane and as late as 1780 copyholders were still being obliged to grind their malt at a horse mill in this lane running off the market square
 

The inventories from 16^th century Mancetter provide a fascinating glimpse into Atherstone's Elizabethan merchants and traders, before the town was economically overshadowed by the bustling city of Coventry. They show Atherstone at this time as a typical midland market town, taking full advantage of its location and agricultural setting.
 

Sources:

Particularly Marion J. Alexander, 'Sixteenth century probate documents from Mancetter', Warwickshire History, Winter 1985/86, Vol. IV, No.4. pp 122-133.

Mancetter Parish Register : W.C.R.O. DE 130/1 (starts 1576)

Manor Court Roll W.C.R.O. MR 13.

W.H. Beresford, 'The Origins of Mediaeval Boroughs in Warwickshire: An Additional Note: Atherstone', Warwickshire History I, no. 3 (1969)

VCH Warwickshire, Volume IV.

Bartlett and Goddard cited in John Nichols, Antiquities of Leicestershire, Vol. IV, Pt II, pp.1037-8.
 

© Alan Roberts with acknowledgements to Marion Alexander, January, 2001
 

List of 16^th Century Mancetter Parish Inventories compiled by M.J. Alexander
 

Henry Blew, 1534, haberdasher, Mancetter

John Glover, 1535, gentleman, Mancetter

Christopher Eton, 1535

John Eton, 1535, [apothecary?]

Ellen Eton, 1535, widow

Robert Pass, 1537, tanner

Richard Knight, 1537, baker

John Whittington, 1537, yeoman

Robert Barfoot, 1538, vicar of Mancetter

Maud Newbold, 1539, widow

Edmund Parker, 1539, gentleman, Hartshill

Richard Harris, 1542, yeoman

John Goodall, yeoman, Mancetter

William Goodall, 1543

William Reppington, 1545, weaver

Thomas Chetwyn, 1547, gentleman

Isabel Northcroft, 1549, widow

William Divett, 1550

William Alsop, 1551

Richard Alyn, 1552

John Drayton (the elder), 1556 yeoman/butcher

Isabel Freeman, 1557, widow

Isabel Divett, 1557, widow

William Drayton, 1557, tanner

John Rampton 1557 yeoman/miller

Hugh Drayton [1557-8?], tanner

Hugh Middleton, 1558, draper

John Harding, 1558, husbandman

John Abel, 1559, smith

Simon Preston, 1559, weaver

Anne Glover, 1559, Mancetter

John Lewis, 1565, gentleman, Mancetter

Richard Harding, 1560, singleman, Oldbury

Jone Barfoot, 1576, Oldbury

Alice Rawlett, 1577, widow

Nicholas Ethel alias Lawrence, 1577, gentleman, Oldbury Manor

Joan Cowdall, 1578, Hartshill

Edward Bannister, 1579, gentleman, Mancetter

John Sydgewick, 1580, yeoman, Hartshill

William Hodgekinson, 1580

John Allsop, 1582

William Green, 1585

Thomas Nutt, 1586, shoemaker

John Checkley, 1586

Nicholas Bull, 1586, tanner

Margaret Green, 1587, widow

Michael Parker, 1587, Hartshill

John Weston, 1589, carpenter

John Person, 1589, tanner

Henry Disen, 1590

John Hopkins, 1591, husbandman, Hartshill

Thomas Wryght, 1592, chandler

Edward Nutt, 1592, shoemaker

William Launder, 1592, pewterer

William Brooke, 1593

John Hegge and wife, 1594, chandler

Robert Foscott, 1597, tanner, Mancetter

Thomas Wilson, 1598, butcher

John Abell, 1599, smith

Alexander Weston, 1599, husbandman, Mancetter