Mentioned many times in our journey through the village has been the straw plaiting cottage industry, and the essential part this must have played in the everyday life of the poorer sections of our community. This craft however was not confined to the 19th century alone. Straw had always been an essential product, not only for thatching, but for the making of hats, baskets, beehives and bee skips. It is claimed that the chalky Chiltern Fields grew the most suitable straw and their products were sought after by the makers of these hats in Dunstable and Luton.
As regards the thatchers, this was an occupation where, like so many others in everyday life, was carried out by members of the same families. In this case, Proctors were the people always concerned with thatching, hedging and ditching, and only a few years ago they were well sought after for special work, even to offers of working overseas. During the 19th century however, with better means of communication and transport, and the increase in population, more and more hats and baskets were needed and the plaiting of straws became a popular domestic industry.
It provided a profitable part-time employment for women and children. The work could be carried on anywhere outdoors in summer and inside in winter. During the very busy time women could earn quite as much as their husbands and, in many cases, whole families were engaged in this trade. The area covered concerned most towns and villages in North and West Hertfordshire, Beds and a small area of Bucks.
Towns and villages had their own plaiting schools where children were taught from a very early age for a few coppers per week. The authorities stipulated that reading and writing should be included, but plaiting was the main and, in most cases, the only subject taught, the teachers, with few exceptions, being unable to read or write themselves.
These children, some of them only four years of age, were crammed into small cottage rooms far from standards of health and safety, and much illness and deformity was the outcome. Three such schools existed in the village, one in the cottages at the lower end of the village, the cottage joining the Post Office Stores, and another in Deans Lane, which over the years was referred to as a Dames School.
Still to be found in a few homes today are straw slitters and small wooden mangles, which years ago would be screwed on the door post and, before many of the cottages were renovated, it was possible to find old mantlepieces with notches cut in them for measuring the plait which, when finished, was sold in twenty yard lengths. The last one in Wilstone was in the late Mr Harry Cartwright's cottage, 46 Tring Road, but this disappeared with the renovations many years ago.
The 1841 and 1861 census returns for Wilstone and Long Marston record that up to two hundred persons were engaged in the trade, and connected also were straw cutters, straw drawers, bleachers and, of course, straw dealers, all living in the villages. For this area the market for finished plait was held every Friday in Tring, the goods being mainly bought by Dunstable and Luton manufacturers of hats and baskets. Luton even now still maintains its recognition as being Britain's premier hat town. For the ladies not able to take their wares into Tring, these were picked up by an old man named "Sukey" from a room at the Buckingham Arms for a small fee. There are however records of plait being taken to Dunstable as late as 1925.
Farmers in 1871 had many complaints about this source of village income, and a letter to a local paper complained that "It did mischief, making the poor saucy and causing a dearth of indoor servants and farmworkers".
But changing fashions and foreign competition, and of course the Education Acts that came into force during the 1870s, eventually brought an end to this cottage industry. In any case, it was impossible to compete with continental labour, even from as far away as China; these hats were flooding our markets for as little as twopence-halfpenny each. Straw hats, at least those particular types, are now relics of the past. Are not the same trading problems with us today?