ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the agrarian and institutional environment was the major influence on the ways in which textile manufacture was conducted outside the larger towns during the eighteenth century. The full results of analysis of the mass of data extant for the two townships must await the completion of the project, but here examines some initial findings from the reconstructional work using record linkage and looking in turn at occupations, social structure, landholding and inheritance. It establishes that Census Sowerby and Calverley conform to the typologies regarding occupation and social structure boldly stated in my earlier work, although Sowerby, and possibly also the other townships of the worsted area, possessed a much more significant and varied middle stratum than was originally thought. The more directly comparable figures for both ownership and occupation of land in the townships highlight the same contrasts, but here we can now also see the different distributions of owners, occupiers, owner-occupiers and owner-part-occupiers.
