Woollen industry in Wales
The woollen industry in Wales was at times the country's most important industry, though it often struggled to compete with the better-funded woollen mills in the north of England, and almost disappeared during the 20th century. There is continued demand for quality Welsh woollen products.
Wool processing includes removing the fleece by shearing, classing the wool by quality, untangling, carding and spinning it into yarn, which may be knitted or woven into cloth, then finishing the cloth by fulling, napping and pressing.
Spinning and weaving of sheep's wool dates to prehistoric times in Wales, but only became an important industry when Cistercian monasteries were established in the 12th century.
Water-powered fulling mills to finish the cloth enabled rapid expansion of the industry in the 13th century, although spinning and weaving continued to be a cottage industry.
In the early 16th century, production shifted from south Wales to mid and north Wales. The Shrewsbury Drapers Company in England took a dominant role in distributing Welsh cloth. In the 18th century, there was strong demand for cheap and sturdy Welsh material shipped from Bristol, Liverpool, or the Welsh ports to clothe slaves in the British colonies in the Americas.
During the Industrial Revolution in Wales, the Welsh woollen industry was slow to mechanise compared to the mills of northern England. When railways reached mid Wales in the 1860s they brought a flood of cheap mass-produced products that destroyed the local industry. However, development of the South Wales Coalfield opened a growing market for woollen products from water-powered mills in the south west, which prospered until after World War I. At one time, there were more than 300 working wool mills. The industry went into steady decline after World War I, and only a few mills continue to operate today.
Process
Sheep shearing was a major social event on Welsh farms.The fleece would be removed intact, then carefully folded to make it easier to sort out the different grades of wool at the mill.
The quality of wool depends on the individual sheep and on the part of the sheep's body from which the wool has been taken.
The common Welsh Mountain sheep are hardy and thrive in the cold and wet conditions of the Welsh highlands.
The wool is soft and may have kemp and black, grey or red fibres, which makes it attractive in tweeds and upholstery.
Staple length is.
Black Welsh Mountain sheep had mutton that was prized for its quality, and produced valuable Cochddu wool with a staple length of.
After sorting, the raw wool would often be soaked in a 50–50 solution of human urine and water, then passed through a willy to untangle it and remove foreign matter.
Carding completed the disentangling process, creating rolls of wool called rovings.
The fibres in the roving were then spun into woollen yarn.
Spinning machines were introduced in the 19th century.
The spun fibre would then be woven into cloth, which would be finished by washing and drying, fulling, napping and pressing.
Natural dyes were used until the mid-19th century.
The fleece could be "dyed-in-the-wool", the fibre could be dyed after being spun, or the fabric could be dyed after being woven.
Prehistoric to early medieval times
dates to prehistoric times.There is evidence of spinning and weaving in late prehistoric houses throughout Britain, particularly in the later first millennium B.C.. Finds include scraps of fabric, loom-weights, spindle-whorls and bone needles, and the arrangement of post-holes may indicate they supported looms.
For example, a Bronze Age weaving comb was found in the Ogof yr Esgyrn cave in Glyntawe.
The Romans probably imported the white breed characteristic of Welsh sheep today.
The sheep at this time would have been much more variable than modern breeds, which have been carefully selected for specific characteristics.
In the early days the sheep were not shorn, but the wool was collected when the sheep moulted in the summer, either by plucking it from their fleece or collecting it where it had been rubbed off on a tree or rock.
Excavations have been made at the Dinas Powys hillfort in Glamorgan of what seems to have been the court of an important ruler in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D.
The bones of sheep were found, but there seems to have been little spinning and weaving.
The 6th century writer Gildas, thought by some to have lived in Wales, mentioned "mountains particularly suitable for the alternating pasturage of animals". This seems to refer to transhumance, or seasonal movement of shepherds with their flocks, and if so is the earliest mention in Britain.
The 10th century Welsh laws of King Hywel Dda allocate pigs to the husband and sheep to the wife.
In the summer the pigs were kept in the woods while the wife took the sheep and the children to the highlands.
The wife also controlled the dairy, and took the milking and cheese making equipment.
Divorce remained an option in Wales longer than elsewhere in Britain. It was assumed that the woman deserved a share of the lambs and calves.
Medieval period
In the Middle Ages, sheep were probably kept mainly for their milk and wool rather than their meat.Sheep do not seem to have been important to the Welsh economy before the 12th century, when the first Cistercian monasteries were established in Wales.
Tintern Abbey in the Wye valley was founded for monks of the Cistercian order by Walter FitzRichard, lord of Netherwent and Striguil, on 9 May 1131.
All abbeys of the order were to be built in remote rural locations, and had to be simple and unadorned.
The order expanded rapidly.
Tintern was followed by Whitland, its offshoot Strata Florida, Strata Marcella in Powys Wenwynwyn, Cwmhir in Maelienydd, Llantarnam near Caerleon, Aberconwy in Gwynedd, Cymer in Merionethshire and Valle Crucis in Powys Fadog.
The monks were granted extensive lands for sheep grazing and were the pioneers of the woollen industry in Wales.
The invention of the water-powered fulling mill in the Later Middle Ages caused an industrial revolution in Wales.
In the century that preceded the Black Death, the monastic landowners and manorial lords built fulling mills in eastern Wales, with up to 80 operating before 1350.
Sometimes a fulling mill and gristmill would share the same building or the same leat and mill pond.
There would be a tenter yard outside the fulling mill where the cloth was stretched on frames.
Woollen manufacturing became one of the main rural industries in Wales.
Most Welsh cottages and farmhouses had a spinning wheel, almost always operated by women, and most parishes had carders, spinners, weavers and fullers.
However, most of the production were for personal use rather than for sale.
The main centre of the new woollen industry was initially in south east Wales drawing on sheep from the monasteries of Margam, Neath and Tintern, and the flocks of the Bohun family, which produced 18,500 fleeces in 1372.
Fulling mills were later established elsewhere in Wales, particularly in the north east and the Ceiriog valley.
In 1380, the lordship of Ruthin in Denbighshire had 36 weavers.
However, the period from 1350 to 1400 was difficult, with recurrences of the plague and heavy taxation to pay for the war with France.
Between 1350 and 1500, an average of 50 fulling mills were operational.
The reduced number was due to the unsettled state of the country before, during and after the Glyndŵr Rising.
The quality of wool depended on the local breeds of sheep.
In the 15th century, south-east Wales produced particularly high quality wool. Margam in West Glamorgan and Tintern in Monmouthshire were noted for their excellent wool.
According to Thomas Fuller's Church History, Wales specialized in manufacturing friezes.
A frieze is a coarse woollen cloth that usually has a nap on one side. It was hard-wearing and well-suited for outer garments, and was popular with working men.
Cloth was made in many places in Wales, particularly the south west and the northern and southern borderlands.
In 1447, there was a guild of weavers and fullers in the lordship of Ruthin, and in the 1460s, at least five fulling mills were operating in this location.
The cloth was sold locally, in border town markets and in the yearly Bartholomew Fair in London.
Welsh friezes were also exported from Welsh ports or from Bristol.
In the early 16th century, cloth for export was mainly produced in south Wales and shipped from the local ports.
During that century there was a shift in production to mid-Wales and north Wales, and the woollen production was exported via Shrewsbury in Shropshire.
The Shrewsbury Drapers Company tightly controlled the trade.
The Welsh cloth makers, who lacked capital, produced poor quality drapery for which there was relatively low demand.
Foreign trade
In 1660, wool made up two thirds of Welsh exports.Slaveowners in the West Indies and the American colonies found that slaves were more productive if they were clothed.
William Lee of Virginia stated that "Good Welch cotton seems upon the whole to answer best", and others were "light and insufficient."
The main market was at Shrewsbury.
The demand for colours was limited.
In the 1730s, a Charleston merchant ordered "White, Bleue, & Green plains for Negro Clothing."
The South Carolina "Negro Act" of 1735 commended "white Welsh plains" and outlawed rich or colourful materials that might be discarded by the slave masters.
In the 1770s one observer said the whole purpose of Welsh woollens was "covering the poor Negroes in the West Indies."
Before 1800, there were very few factories in Wales, and almost all production was at home.
As trans-Atlantic demand for Welsh cloth grew, growing numbers of people in the rural areas of Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire became dependent on the woollen industry, finding that spinning and weaving gave a larger and more stable income than farming.
Some hamlets grew into woollen manufacturing centres. For example, Trefeglwys tripled in size during the 18th century.
In the last decades of the 18th century, there was a great expansion of woollen production.
Sales of stockings at Bala rose from £10,000 to £18,000 annually, and the annual profit of flannel sales in Montgomeryshire was more than £40,000.
At first, much of the cloth was shipped via Shrewsbury and London, but later the specialized Atlantic port of Bristol became the main place from which Welsh plains were shipped across the Atlantic.
Over time, factors from Liverpool and Bristol took control of the trade away from the Shrewsbury drapers.
Instead of the weavers carrying their cloth to the market towns, the factors came to them to buy the cloth.
The factors would extend credit to the poorer weavers so they could buy wool.
The Shrewsbury Drapers were losing their control of the trade by 1770.
The port of Barmouth exported woollen products worth £50,000 around the world in the 1770s.
An author wrote of Shrewsbury in the 1790s,
By the end of the century, the market in Shrewsbury had almost ceased, and in March 1803 the Company gave up the great room in which the trading had been conducted.
In 1804 report by Mr. Evans of his tour through north Wales said,