London Welsh trades: cattle drovers

Welsh cattle drovers had been coming to London since before the thirteenth century, and for hundreds of years the trade kept growing. By the 1700s, cattle were used as a form of money transfer: cows were safer than cash on the two or three-week journey. Many received their final fattening-up in the fields of rural Islington, and finished their journey in Smithfield.

As London grew, so did the cattle trade. It prospered under the Tudors and expanded with the city in the eighteenth century - tens of thousands of cattle made the journey every year. Often, blacksmiths travelled with them as the cows wore horseshoe-like shoes. The drovers also carried money, messages and news in both directions. Because their trustworthiness was so important, they were licensed and had to be married householders over 30 years old.

This lively trade eventually died away in the 1850s, when the railways replaced drovers travelling on foot. However, all those trading contacts didn't go to waste. The cattle drovers would be replaced by the famous Welsh dairies of Victorian London.