In AD 1750, most industries in Britain were in the countryside. This was usually because the raw materials like coal or iron were there, or water to provide power. Other industries were carried out by villagers or smallholders, often working part-time, who specialised in making a particular product, or a stage in the manufacturing process. Villages where several people specialised in the same trade, like weavers or miners, became weaving or mining villages. Some later developed into industrial towns.

The textile industry was the biggest employer of outworkers. Entrepreneurs bought wool, cotton or linen and gave it out to different individuals to be combed or carded, spun and woven. Most finishing work (washing, drying, dyeing) was done with bulk cloth in towns. The Cotswold woollen industry was managed by wealthy ‘gentlemen clothiers’ based in small towns like Stroud in Gloucestershire. Handloom weavers continued to work until after the Napoleonic wars when they were squeezed out by factory production.

Many regional handcraft industries in which individuals owned their own material and tools, continued to thrive into the industrial period. The small metal trades, in which hand tools were used to punch out a wide range of shapes, congregated around Birmingham.