How we love a comment or observation which takes us further into the history! This, today from Susie Morgans regarding the item on Tenterhooks:
“Very interesting and I’ve always assumed that the several places in Salisbury which are or have been called Rack Close are related to stretching newly made cloth. The best known of these is, of course, at the bottom of the Close behind the car park, which Leehurst Swan use as a cricket field . Do tell me if I’m wrong. “
Not wrong at all, I’m sure. The tenter fields must always have been close to the river as large amounts of water would have been needed for the washing. What is surprising, perhaps, is that Salisbury doesn’t have more place names that recall its textile production heydays. Time to trawl through some early maps!
Is there any chance that there are early photographs of any tenters, which may have been used into the nineteenth century? It did become common to have the cloth dried indoors later on, and the frames were not very robust and so may have quickly disappeared when they fell into disuse but….it’s possible. Over to Alan Clarke, I think.
This item turned up in the Portable Antiquities Office at the museum this week. No date, no provenance or context unfortunately, so unlikely to be recorded, but interesting nevertheless.
It is a tenterhook. Tenters were used from at least the 14th century – big wooden frames on which newly made cloth, recently washed to remove muck and oil, would be stretched and dried. The cloth was, as you can see below, held to the frames by these metal hooks.
Salisbury was once surrounded by fields of these tenter frames and we have seen this painting as an example, before:
Tenter frames visible in the extreme left of picture, somewhere near St Martin’s Church
Weavers were still listed in the censuses as at work inside the city of Salisbury in the first half of the nineteenth century and so tenter frames may still have been seen on the outskirts of the town then, perhaps even on the Greencroft or along the Southampton road.
Meanwhile, also in the office this week and perhaps with the same origins, this object……Does anyone have any idea what it is? At one end it has a ring not unlike a crown bottle cap remover, and another, rectangular, opening. At the angle the metal is sharp at the edge as if for cutting and leads down to, at the other end, a pierced ring, as if it would be screwed down to a surface….
A silver halfpenny of the reign of James I, processed by the PAS team at The Salisbury Museum, and, who knows, one which changed hands in the city in 1607?
History is, as we know, not only about Kings and Queens, dates and facts. Quite often the ‘ordinary’ people appear in unexpected places……
Links to some of the people involved in the Wylye valley textile industry found in transcripts of primary documents (thanks to NJ WILLIAMS in a WANHS Records Branch volume XV 1959 and JULIA D L MANN in WANHS Records Society volume XIX 1963 ):
Records of fines
These are just a few of the record of fines imposed by the clerk of the market of the King’s household at his sessions held in Wiltshire during King James l’s visit to the county in I607. Named cloth workers and business men are included, together with some of the Wylye villages.
For nearly five hundred years the royal clerk of the market was a figure of some importance in England. Within the precincts of the royal court, that is to say the length and breadth of the ‘verge’, he was inspector-general of weights and measures, minister for retail trade and controller of purveyance. As the King progressed through his realm, whole tracts of the country were temporarily brought ‘within the verge’: all that area within a twelve mile radius of the sovereign ‘wheresoever he might be in England’. Within this area it was the clerk’s business to see, amongst other things, that the assizes of bread, wine and ale were being kept and to regulate all weights and measures.
Extracts:
Heytesbury Hundred: Estreats of fines made before John Beale in the market sessions held at Heytesbury, 15 July 1607.
Hugh Bampton of Warmester, for keeping in his house a false measure, larger than the standard, by which many inhabitants there daily sell grain to him, 20s.; Richard Porte, John Whitehead” and John Wilde, severally for the like, 20s. each.
A more common offence…in Salisbury itself: ; Richard Williamson, baker, of the same, for breaking the assize of bread, his penny white loaves being 1 ounce light, 20d.
William Hopley of the same, woolman, for gashing the hides of his sheep in flaying, so that they deteriorated, to the grave damage of the King’s subjects, and contrary to statute. Therefore he is in mercy, 2s. 6d.(shoddy goods!)
Thomas Tincker of Sinde, woolman, for publicly offering his meat for sale on Sunday before Divine Prayers, 3s. 4d.
Richard Selman of Foxeham in Chippenham Hundred, for buying wool from one Edward Cooke of the same with an illegal 21 lb. weight, heavier than the standard by 1 lb.
Lenten Recognances 1620 Some examples from the Wylye and close by, involving the wool trade:
James I was a rigorous observer of Lent… innkeepers and the like were not to serve meat or charge too much for fish during that period, and undertook recognances (obligations) not to do so.
Taken at Salisbury: Giles Sherston of Fisherton Anger, tippler. Sureties: Edward Waterman, shearman(1), and John Lewes, chapman, both of the same.
Taken at Warminster: Thomas Holloway of Chapmanslade, alehousekeeper. Sureties : Edward Cooche, weaver, and Thomas Barnes, plasterer, both of the same
William Mullins the younger of Deverell Longbridge, alehousekeeper. Sureties: William Mullyns the elder of the same, husbandman, and Thomas Davis of Crockerton, tucker.(2)
(Incidentally, it was not unusual for women to be inn keepers…)Alice Turner of Codford, innholder. Sureties: Thomas Crouche and John Smithe, both of the same, husbandmen.
William Downe of Meere, butcher. Sureties: John Wattes, butcher, and Thomas Kinge, linenweaver, both of the same.
And up-coming cases – informants were used in the absence of anything like a police force… Some people became professional informants, paying small sums to locals – who might just be making trouble for a neighbour – and pocketing the main reward given for thus informing. It effectively meant trial without jury…
William Allyson of Segrie, for buying wool at 30s. per tod(3), at Slymbridge, co. Gloucester, intending to resell it instead of to make it into yarn, not being a merchant of the Staple or apprenticed to a Stapler; information by Richard Ayer of London, 25 Oct. 1605 (The textile trade, and those working within it, were tightly controlled by statute, intended to protect everyone, including the consumer, but also the King’s/government’s profits)
Nash Whiteacre of Tinehead in the parish of Eddington, for holding above 20 acres of land and using (ie claiming to be) the trade of clothier; information by Thomas Lavington of Westburie under le Plaine, 26 Feb. I607
Christopher Pottecarie (well-known clothier family) of Stockton, for the like offence; information by the same, 26 Feb. I607
]ohn Edwardes of Westbury, for selling broadcloths and kersies(4) in the parish of St. Mary of the Arches, London, before they had been entered for sealing(5) at Blackwell Hall; information by Anthony Tayler of London, deputy ulnager(6) to the king, 9 ]une 1610
Thomas Somner of Littleton, clothier, for selling broadcloths in the parish of Allhallows, Cheap Ward, London, before they were entered at Blackwell Hall; information by Anthony Story of London, gentleman, 1 Dec. 1610 Andrew Pewe of Salisbury, for the like offence; information by the same, 1 Dec. I610
John Slade, Oringe Gricker, Morgan Spencer, John Burges and John Holbrooke, all of Warmister, for buying wool at 3os. per tod, not intending to make it into yarn but to sell the same, none of them being Staplers or apprenticed to Staplers; information by the same, 11 June 1611
William Miller of Lacocke, clothier, for keeping a loom in his house, living outside a corporate town; information by John Stapleford of Cherrill, 9 Nov. 1611
Francis Reade of Le Vyse, for buying wool at Cirencester, co. Glouc., at 20s. per tod, not intending to make it into yarn; information by Robert Dawkes of Banbury, co. Oxon, yeoman, 27 Aug. 1611 William Powell of Le Vyse, for the like offence at Winchester, co. Hants; information by the same, 27 Aug. 1611 John Phelipps of Le Vise, for the like offence at Winchester, co. Hants; information by the same, 27 Aug. 1611 . Robert Butler of Netherhaven, for the like offence at Salisbury; information by the same, 27 Aug. 1611
William Oliver of Salisbury, for having in his possession 2,000 lb. of blue starch(7), valued at 12d. per lb., landed at Ratcliff, co. Midd., the custom and subsidy due on it not paid; information by George Wolridge of Southpetherton, co. Somers., chandler, 29 Jan. 1613
(1) A shearman was not, as we might expect, the person who sheared the sheep but someone who sheared the completed cloth – a ‘finishing’ process to improve the look or feel of the material, as required, depending on its intended use. A common way of doing this was to use shears across the cloth, which was spread flat, to remove rough fibres.
(2) Tucker was another name for a fuller. See Tucking Mill Lane in Tisbury.
(3) tod – a unit of weight for wool equal to about 28 pounds
(4) kersies were a coarse woollen cloth
(5) Excavations at Guildhall Yard between 1987 and 1999 uncovered, for the first time, substantial remains of Blackwell Hall, the centre of the woollen cloth trade in London from the 14th to the 18th century. Developing out of a medieval domestic hall belonging to the Cliffords, the building complex grew to comprise several ranges of buildings around two linked courtyards, and occupied all the land between Guildhall Yard and Basinghall Street. It had become the rule that cloth manufacturers and clothiers from provincial England brought their material to Blackwell Hall to display and sell it on tomerchants and drapers abroard. As time went on, Blackwell-hall ‘Factors’ began to control this trade, testing the wool for weight and quality and making sure it was fit to be moved on. If it was ‘passed’ it was given a seal. Cloth was also sealed by the weaver, or clothier, or sometimes the dyer. These turn up occasionally to be processed by Salisbury Museum Volunteers who work for the Portable Antiquities Scheme. It wasn’t a popular process as far as the clothiers were concerned as they had once controlled the trade. It went on, however, until the factory system and the East India Company began to take over andBlackwell Halldisappeared into history in the 18th century.
(6) An ulnager or alnager was an officer of the king who checked the quality of cloth. and who would also apply a seal.
A cloth seal found in the Salisbury area, showing the head of Queen Anne 1702/14
(7)Yes – apparently the same stuff as granny had, used widely in Europe at that time to stiffen cloth.
George and John Wansey were clothiers in Warminster. George kept a diary…
28-30 Nov. 1738. These days there has been a very great riot at Melksham. Great number of weavers and shearmen and others being tumultuously assembled together forcibly entered the house of Mr. Coulthurst, ransacked his goods, demolished the house, destroyed his utensils in trade, cut to pieces several cloths, threw out his yarn and wool into the river, cut many of his chains, pulled down his mills, demolished several houses belonging to him, lived upon free quarter upon the people of Melksham, extorted money from many; many families fled for fear of their rage. They proceeded afterwards to Trowbridge, threatened and defied the inhabitants there.
3 Dec. Several companies of foot and troops of horse were sent to the towns about.
5 Dec. We were much alarmed at Warminster, hearing that they were that day coming among us, and prepared to stand on our defence. The day before we heard they threatened to come and demolish the houses of our two shearmen, for teaching boys not apprenticed which put us in great fear.
6 Dec. Their fury seems to be abated and strength broken.
7 Dec. Many were impeached and taken up at Trowbridge, and at Warminster John Howel, said to be a principal ringleader in the riot at Coulthursts.
Early on, and into the Middle Ages, weaving was done in the home, along with the spinning and all the other processes of cloth making. An upright loom is the simplest type. Something like the example below would have been used in the Early Medieval (Saxon) period, developed further as time went on.
Illustrations from wiki.vikingsonline.org.uk
Notice the weights in each case. These held the vertical threads (the warp) straight while the weaver threaded the weft through those threads with a shuttle, or, in this case, a ‘weaving sword’. For archaeologists it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between loom weights and spindle whorls (see earlier blog) but here is a probable example:
Uncertain, but probably a lead loom weight, dating to perhaps cAD1400 – 1700 (from near Devizes)
A weaving frame of the sort used into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
By the sixteenth century the country’s (and Wiltshire’s) textile industry was well established and cloth was being exported into Europe. The industry was, then, what is now described as ‘domestic’ – carried out in the home. Some tasks, such as ‘fulling’ (a process of cleaning, thickening and pre-shrinking the completed cloth) could, however, be achieved by using water mills, but might also be done in the home. The whole family could be involved in ‘treading’ the cloth in vats, much like traditional methods of making wine. Fuller’s Earth, a traditional natural additive to this process was found locally in Wiltshire. The Romans used urine…. Both helped whiten the cloth.
Scottish women ‘waulking’ (fulling) the cloth from c 1600, their feet beating a rhythm while singing traditional songs
Because it was such a profitable industry, ‘middle men’ had become involved. No doubt this was partly of necessity, as locals in the Wylye Valley, for example, would have found it difficult, costly and inefficient to try and organise export of their surplus abroad on their own. However, ‘middle men’ should have come with a health warning.
The system usually worked like this: a ‘clothier’ would set up supply routes in response to demand from elsewhere, organise transport and pay a wage to spinsters, taking their excess yarn to local weavers, and in turn paying them to produce cloth. The clothier wanted his share of the profits of course, and this often led to low wages for the workers, especially if demand fell away. There were also attempts to create monopolies by thwarting independent producers. All of this led to unrest. Legislation was continually being brought in to protect everyone but it was difficult to enforce. in 1593 there were riots in Warminster over low wages and yet more legislation was introduced.
Families had come to specialise rather than necessarily carrying out all the processes themselves as once might have been the case. As early as 1379 tax records show that between Heytesbury and Codford there were nine householders recorded as ‘fullers’. A water fulling mill at Upton Lovell was probably one already operating at that time in the Wylye Valley. By the end of the nineteenth century OS maps of Upton Lovell indicate a ‘cloth factory’, possibly on the same site as the original mill. It was one of the last to survive in the valley, the owners having introduced steam power , and at one point in the early 19th century it employed 400 workers, most coming from outside the valley.
Extract from a late 19th century OS map accessed online. Shows factory at Upton LovellThis photograph is, apparently, the factory at Upton Lovell, taken sometime before the 1890s when it burned down. It was copied from a website which highlights a walk in the area.
The Wylye was well known for its ‘white cloth’, a heavy material for outer wear. Useful at home, but also exported to north west Europe. It was undyed because the water was too hard to allow dyers to achieve an even colour. Dyers were not common therefore, except perhaps in Salisbury, although there is a Dyers’ Lane in Wylye village itself and Dyer was not an uncommon surname in the county.
In the seventeenth century, European wars, and, in Britain, the Civil War of the 1640s, affected trade and there was depression in the textile industry, leading to hard times for Wiltshire and the Wylye valley.
There had, anyway, been complaints from the London markets about the quality of the Wiltshire wool. The quality of the finished cloth varied widely and in addition there were theories that the wool from the Wiltshire horned sheep was becoming coarser. The Sussex Downs variety was introduced to try and solve this problem and eventually took over the Downs here. This, together with the use of finer, imported Spanish wool to mix with the local fleece improved quality and allowed colours to be introduced.
Meanwhile, in the early 1600s, Christopher Potticary, a clothier from Stockton in the Wylye Valley, introduced what was called ‘say-dyed’ cloth. This was cloth dyed before fulling which worked well, and this technique spread throughout the county. It was an excellent solution to the dying problems but encouraged further experimentation. Wiltshire then became famous for ‘medleys’, where the finer Spanish thread was dyed before weaving. It gave a pleasing textured, flecked look to the cloth. Druggets were also produced – cloth which was printed on one side. Full marks all round for finding ways… Out of this latter technique grew the later carpet industry, famously centred on Wilton.
As explained earlier, fulling was a process which had long since been ‘mechanised’ through the use of water power. The flowing river would turn a water wheel which, via cogs, would convert the turning motion to an up and down action to power heavy wooden hammers. It was particularly important in Wiltshire where the cloth was thick and heavy and the Wylye river was suited to this.
Meanwhile, in 1733, a ‘flying shuttle’ was invented in Lancashire which allowed the weaver to weave one set of threads through the other simply by pulling a chord which made the process quicker and allowed wide cloth to be made by only one operator. Spinsters in their homes were hard put to keep up but by the second half of that century spinning frames had also been developed which spun more several threads at once and then a spinning machine that could be powered by water wheels, and a little later, steam engines. The Industrial Revolution, the factory age, had begun and Wiltshire would change.
It was in the 1770s that machinery was first introduced to the valley at Warminster, provoking riots amongst local producers. In Heytesbury, the Everetts, a successful mill owning family with a chain of mills in the valley, built a mill at Greenlands to the west of the village and another in Mill Lane to the east. One made broadcloth (a dense cloth, almost felt) and the other twilled cloth (woven to give a raised diagonal texture). These water mills, some also now using steam engines, were built to drive the new machinery introduced into the cloth industry. In 1822 there were further riots, in Crockerton and Heytesbury.
The ‘world’s first factory’ – Cromford Mill Derbyshire (water powered)
How an early steam powered factory might have looked in the Wylye Valley, though most would have been very small (except for Upton Lovell?!)
Factories (if producing cloth they continued to be known as ‘mills’) in Crockerton and Upton Lovell survived into the last decades of the 1800s. But these, and others all over south west Wiltshire were long since struggling and gone by 1900. Issues around moving coal and accessing the new raw material, cotton, contributed to the end. There was some attempt to establish a silk weaving industry in the area but this too faded away. The textile industry in Wiltshire was at an end. Many Wiltshire people would emigrate at this time.
That is another story…
Resources used:
KH Rogers 1976 ‘Wiltshire and Somerset Woollen Mills’
Anthony Houghton-Brown 1978 ‘Water Mills of the Wylye Valley’
Eric Kerridge 1985 ‘Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England’
Danny Howell website at dannyhowell.net
Wiltshire and Swindon Archives accessed on-line at history.wiltshire.gov.uk
This is not ‘expert’ stuff, but readers may find it interesting and be encouraged to further their own research on the Wylye valley textile industry. Some readers, of course, will know all this already….
Some sort of textile industry has existed, for thousands of years, wherever there has been a fibre to spin and weave – the hair of a sheep or similar animal, or fibres from certain plants, like cotton or flax.
A woman, hand spinning
The reason unmarried women were, and still sometimes are, described as ‘spinsters’ is because this was, traditionally, women’s work. The photograph above, although modern, shows how spinning was done before the advent of machinery and reminds us that, in some areas, the old ways continue.
It is probably sheep’s wool being spun in this case. After shearing, the wool would be washed (or not, if the natural oils – lanolin – were needed to help make the garment waterproof) and carded or combed to remove any further impurities and to untangle and straighten the fibres. It would then be ready for spinning.
Cards or combs have come in many shapes and sizes. Cotton, of course, has seeds in it. Wool may include all sorts of bits and pieces picked up in the fields. The metal teeth on these cards catch the debris, comb it out and straighten the hairs. The resulting roll of wool is called a rolag and is ready for spinning.
Interestingly, our woman in the photograph has the rolag wrapped around her left wrist and hand. In this country it was common for the wool to be wrapped around a stick called a distaff. My grandfather sometimes spoke of “the distaff side” of a family, meaning the wife’s side.
This is the first really tricky bit and takes some skill. A small ‘sausage’ of fibres had to be twisted between the fingers to start off the thread. This was then attached to a spindle (you can see our ladies here, in both pictures, holding the spindle in their right hands). The spindle was then spun and repeatedly dropped from the hand to allow it to spin freely in mid air. Because it was weighted, it drew the fibres from the distaff (or woman’s left hand) and, as it spun, it twisted them to make a thread.
The weight on a spindle is called a whorl. This example (below) was processed for the Portable Antiquities Scheme by one of our Salisbury Museum Volunteers, Mrs Alyson Tanner. It is made of clay and was found near Brixton Deverill which is in the upper Wyye valley. It dates from possibly as early as BC800, or may be closer to the Roman period.
Other examples from the area were made from stone (chalk), ceramic, bone or lead and date from the Iron Age to the Post Medieval period (ie up to c AD 1700).
The first hand spinning wheel is said to have been invented in China around AD 1000 and the idea gradually spread westward, being adopted slowly worldwide with all the usual advantages and issues associated with anything new. The painting above shows a family producing thread at home in 18th century England , everyone involved, even the children. This would have been a familiar scene in the Wylye and in most other places at that time.
It can be seen how the distaff and spindle system has been adapted to make things easier by using a spinning wheel:
A thirteenth century AD painting of spinning in Iran
Once you have your thread you can weave. More on this later.
There must have been hundreds of years when babies fell asleep at home on a winter’s night to the soothing rhythmical sound of a spinning wheel….
Lord Carnarvon never saw Tutankhamun’s mask. He died before the sarcophagus was opened! The curse of the tomb-raider….
When HMS Victory was built she was too wide to get through the dockyard gates and no-one noticed until the evening before the planned launch!
The space shuttle Endeavour carried a fragment of Captain Cook’s ship of the same name in her cockpit.
This week,at Knapp Castle, Sussex, a white stork hatched in a tree top. it was the first one to hatch in this country for 604 years…that’s one year after the Battle of Agincourt (1415)!!
AND SOME MORE…… (from your blogger)
Did you know that to be “on tenterhooks” (which means to be very tense, etc) is an expression which comes from textile making communities? Tenterhooks were hooks on frames on which newly manufactured cloth was stretched when drying.
My father had Lancashire connections and used many expressions linked to the textile industry, including this one. But tenterhooks and their frames were seen on downland around Salisbury and other parts of Wiltshire in the late Middle Ages as woollen cloth was made here too.
Another of my father’s expressions was “get weaving” (“hurry up”). No explanation necessary.