This Foldout looks at some aspects of the local woollen industry:
| A brief history of the woollen industry |
England has a long history as a producer and exporter of wool.
In mediæval Britain, many sagas – woollen cloaks – were produced in Mercia for export to France. In the 8th century, Charlemagne is recorded complaining to Offa about the variation in size of the cloaks.
From the 12th and 13th centuries, most parts of the country manufactured cloth.
Henry III favoured foreign connections – especially the people of Flanders who processed much English wool – and this annoyed many Englishmen with the result that, in 1258, a Great Council, headed by Simon de Montfort, ordered that:
the wool of the country should be worked up in England and not sold to foreigners, and that everyone should use woollen cloth made within this country
However, this was likely to upset the Flemish – our allies against the French – and people in England still had a liking for the cloth of Flanders. One solution was to improve the quality of the home-produced cloth. In 1271, the government declared that:
all workers of woollen cloths, both male and female, as well of Flanders as of other lands, may safely come into our realm, there to make cloths, upon the understanding that those who shall so come and make such cloths shall be quit of toll and tallage and of payment of other customs for their work until the end of 5 years
Nothing happened for several years, during which time the English woollen industry declined considerably.
In 1326, Edward II ordered that:
... no cloth which was manufactured outside England, Ireland and Wales could be bought in this country, except by kings, queens, earls, barons, knights, ladies and their legitimate children, archbishops, bishops, and others who spend £40 a year of their rents
In 1331, Edward III invited foreign cloth-workers to England, including a number of Flemish weavers, and settled them in Norfolk and in Yorkshire. Seventy families came in the first year. He then imposed a tax of 50/- per pack for wool exports, and a further tax on imported cloth. This was the founding of the clothing industry in the West Riding. Manufacture on a small-scale began around 1414.
In 1496, the Magnus Intercursus encouraged the export of wool to the Netherlands.
Large-scale manufacture of woollen cloth is thought to have begun in Worcester in 1534, and was England's chief industry until the middle of the 18th century, being carried on in East Anglia, the south-west of England, and the West Riding of Yorkshire.
In 1615, the Merchant Adventurers Company was granted a monopoly on the export of British cloth.
The history of sheep farming and the local woollen industry is suggested by a gravestone which stands in the porch of Halifax Parish Church. The stone is dated to about 1150 and shows a pair of shears.
Any success in the Halifax district came because the land was suitable for sheep-rearing, and the water from the rivers and streams allowed the raw materials to be washed and the woollen fabric to be produced, although the local wool was often too coarse and producers bought much wool from other areas – such as Lincolnshire and the North Riding. Kersey was the main product.
In 1473, cloth production in Halifax was greater than in any other part of the West Riding, and this continued for more than 300 years. The Halifax Act of 1555, suggests that fine wool production came late to the district.
William Camden wrote that
The number of men in Halifax was greater than the total of cows, horses, sheep and other animals
because – unlike much of the country – the people of Halifax lived making cloth by the domestic system and not by farming. The domestic system often involved yeoman clothiers. In 1586, he wrote:
The people of Halifax have so flourished by the cloth trade, which within these last 70 years they fell to, that they are both very rich and have gained a great reputation for it above that of their neighbours
Women have always been employed in every branch of the woollen industry and were eligible as members of the guilds. In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer's wife of Bath:
... of cloth-making she had such an haunt [practice]
she [sur]passed them of Ypres and of Ghent
In the 17th century, during the reign of James II, a great many Huguenot weavers fled from France to England. In order to encourage the home woollen trade, Charles II passed a law in 1665 requiring that the dead be buried in woollen shrouds, and that an affidavit be made to confirm this; a penalty of £1 was liable if the law was ignored. The Act was repealed in 1814.
From the early 19th century, cloth, often of inferior quality, was manufactured wholly or partly from reclaimed wool. See Heavy Woollen District and Recovered wool industry.
The industry thrived through the mediæval and into the Victorian era, its heyday. More recently, there were considerable downturns in the industry as a result of the slump after World War I. The home market revived in the 1930/1940s, but the 1950s saw the appearance of man-made fibres in the clothing and carpet market, and the industry declined from 1965 onwards. Many businesses suffered, but some local textile firms survived by adapting to the changing markets.
| Terms used in textile production |
The following terms were used in the local textile industries
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