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.