CHRIS KOENIG reveals a time long ago when every village was a microcosm - with its own, special trades

All the moving about we do these days is probably the aspect of early 21st-century life that would most astonish a time-traveller from the rural Oxfordshire of 100 years ago.

True, poor young people from the remoter parts of west Oxfordshire were emigrating in droves to Canada and Australia, catching the train from small halts along the Cotswold Line while their families stood tearfully by on platforms.

But the notion of commuting huge distances was unknown. People might walk several miles every day to and from work, but by and large their lives were lived locally; their horizons were narrow since every village or small town had its set of small-time employers: blacksmiths, bakers, brewers, timber yards, millers, rope-makers, brickworks and yes, candlestick makers. Not to mention the hundreds who went into service in large country houses.

Then there were the old equivalents of light industries. Some of these were particular to Oxfordshire and required skills that were handed down from generation to generation.

We all know about glove making at Woodstock for instance (I remember watching the Queen being presented with a pair by the town's mayor, just as Elizabeth I had been some 400 years before), but less well known is Woodstock's metal working trade.

The last Woodstock metal worker, whose shop closed down little more than 100 years ago, displayed in his window a Royal Warrant for steel-making, granted to his ancestor by Queen Anne. The industry consisted of making polished objects out of horse-shoe nails; but details, such as whether the technique involved heating the nails up or working from cold, are now forgotten.

A typical product would have been a chatelaine's chain, a belt worn by a lady of a house, from which hung the keys to various cupboards and outhouses.

Thame, too, had an industry it made its own: the manufacture of hooks and eyes, now superseded almost entirely by the zip fastener. Until the 1930s the town, like most other rural centres, also had its own brickworks.

In Shutford, near Banbury, the once flourishing business of making plush, a sort of velvet used in the liveries of footmen, or the fabric used to cover grand furniture, continued until 1944 when the last remaining hand weaver, John Turner, retired after 53 years service.

Sadly, a fire in 1913 destroyed the records of the principal plush manufacturer, though looms were salvaged which bore the date 1747.

William Cobbett on his Rural Rides despised Witney's blanketeers, apparently recognising them as early manifestations of the Industrial Revolution and therefore enslavers of country folk - but the town had other old trades: rope- and mop-making for instance.

The firm of H and F Ford, which made not only ropes of all sizes but also halters and covers for horses, closed in 1944. Mop-making, an offshoot of the blanket business, continued until 1960. Its main customers were British Railways, prisons, and the Royal Navy.

Chipping Norton benefited from the skills nurtured in both Woodstock and Witney. Its ornate Bliss Tweed Mill used some of skills of the blanket makers while its glove industry, which operated until the late 1920s, acquired workers from Woodstock.

Perhaps our time traveller, watching us all whirl about in cars, would also wonder how we ever got to know anyone. He would have known all his neighbours well.