Bundles of raw cork bark unloaded from ships were bulky and difficult to transport and so the trade of corkcutting took root in port towns. London was the major centre, but there are references to corkcutters in many smaller ports, such as Bristol, Chester and Kings Lynn in early times.
After London, Liverpool became the second most important cutting centre though it developed later. There were only forty cutters working there in 1831, but by 1851 there were over two hundred. Some merchants specialised in cork, holding the bundles in warehouses near the docks ready for individual corkcutters to purchase.
In the 1790s William Sargent (aka Largent) of Bishopsgate Street, London commissioned regular supplies from the Portuguese port of Porto, storing them in his warehouse at Foster Street. He sold it to firms as far away as Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Norfolk, though most of his customers were Londoners.
In the 1840s William Bucknall of London was setting up nine year contracts to buy supplies from cork farmers in the Alentejo region of southern Portugal.