As will be inferred from the statements in earlier chapters with regard to its essentially agricultural nature, Hertfordshire is in no wise a manufacturing county like Lancashire or Yorkshire; this being due, no doubt, in great part to the fact that it possesses no commercially valuable minerals of its own, or, at all events, none which are at present accessible to the miner.

During the last quarter of a century or so a certain number of manufacturing and industrial establishments have been moved from London and set up in various parts of the county, as at St Albans and elsewhere; but these cannot be termed Hertfordshire industries in the proper sense of the term, and do not need further mention.

One of the great industries of the county is the malting business carried on at Ware, as is indicated by the number of cowls over the drying-kilns, which form conspicuous objects for miles round. Ware was the greatest malting place in England. The method of malting is too well known and the industry too widely spread to call for any special notes on the subject.

In former years, say up to about 1865, the straw-plait industry afforded employment to a whole army of workers in north-western Herts and the neighbouring districts of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire; and at that date the women and children might be seen in summer plaiting the straw at almost every cottage-door in each village or town. As already mentioned, the chalk districts of the county grow wheat-straw specially well suited for plait. The straws to be used were selected and pulled one by one from the sheaves before the latter were threshed; and, after having the corn-ears cut off, were done up into bundles. The latter were in turn cut into such lengths as could be obtained free from knots, and tied up into smaller bundles ready for sale to the workers. Before being employed in plaiting, each straw was split longitudinally into several strips by means of a brass instrument, which consisted of a handle and a pointed, star-shaped head bent down at right angles to the former. The finished plait was sold at so much per “score” (that is to say twenty yards) for manufacture into hats and bonnets. Cheap Chinese labour has completely killed the local plaiting industry; but the manufacture of the finished foreign plait into hats still constitutes an important trade in St Albans and elsewhere, as well as at Luton and Dunstable in Bedfordshire; the sewing of the plait into hats being done mainly, if not entirely, in large factories. Tring was a great plait centre.

The manufacture of textile fabrics was formerly carried on in several parts of the county, but in most of these has either completely ceased or fallen into decline. About 1802 there were mills for the manufacture both of silk and cloth at Rickmansworth; and the occurrence of the name “Fuller Street” in the records of St Albans apparently indicates the existence at some unknown date of the latter industry in that city, and there were certainly cotton-mills at Sopwell, to the south of it. The Abbey silk-mills, on the Ver, are still working at St Albans, although with a much diminished output; but those at the neighbouring village of Redbourn have been recently closed. Tring had silk-mills, and canvas was also made there. Lace-making was probably carried on by some of the cottagers on the Buckinghamshire side of the county, where it flourishes to a certain extent at the present day, and may even still here and there survive.

Nowadays perhaps the most important manufacturing industry in the county is that carried on at the paper-mills at Abbot’s Langley, where a large amount of high class paper is turned out. Being on the canal, these mills have the advantage of water-carriage. Paper, it may be observed, is made nowadays from wood-pulp and esparto grass, as well as from linen rags.

Brick-making employs a considerable number of hands in various parts of the county; the glacial and other superficial deposits on the chalk area frequently yielding excellent brick-earth; while the London clay may be employed for brick-making anywhere in the south-eastern districts. Bricks from the London clay, which is naturally blue, turn yellow or white after burning in consequence of the combustion of the organic colouring matter; but many of those from the glacial clays are of a full rich red At Pepperstock, near Caddington, however, there are manufactured certain very hard, heather-coloured bricks, which are much favoured for house-building in north-western Hertfordshire, although their colour compares very unfavourably in the matter of effect when contrasted with the “brick-red” of the more ordinary kinds.

As we approach the Gault plain of Bedfordshire numerous cement works may be seen at the edge of the chalk-marl near the northern borders of the county, some of which may be within the county itself. Chalk is much worked, as at Hitchin and elsewhere, for lime; and, as already mentioned, is dug largely by the farmers for “chalking” their fields. It is to such diggings that the deep circular pits (now generally ploughed over) to be seen in many arable fields are due. The Totternhoe stone has been, and perhaps still is, quarried locally for building in some parts of the northern districts of the county.