The Cotwolds
How wool built the Cotswolds
Source: https://britishheritage.com/travel/wool-cotswolds
When the Romans reached the area known as the Cotswolds, in the southwest of England, they found a region of stunning natural beauty—and months of chilly weather. To keep them warm, they brought sheep to raise for wool, a seemingly small event that would transform the Cotswolds forever.
When the Romans withdrew from Britain, the flocks passed into the hands of local landowners— first the church and then local families. Sheep were put out to graze, fleeces were traded and fortunes were made. The wool, from a million mediaeval sheep on the Cotswolds, was extremely high-quality and profitable European export. Italian merchants, in particular, clamored to buy wool from the Cotswolds. By early medieval times, it was said: “half the wealth of England rides on the back of a sheep.”
Strolling today through villages such as Stow on the Wold, Chipping Campden, and Burford, you walk streets designed to handle sheep. Imagine Stow on the Wold on a medieval market day. Instead of Holly Cottage Antiques or the Cotswold Bakery, you would find 20,000 sheep heading toward the Market Square, counted as they emerged from a network of alleyways known as “tures” that controlled the flocks coming into town.
Over in Burford, sheep were held on the large grass verges, wide grassy areas beside the road. Now the verges remain as well-tended lawns in front of gable-fronted mediaeval houses, with wooden benches under an arch of trees stretching down to the High Street. Whatever towns feature on your itinerary, you will surely spot a Shepherd’s Lane and a Woolley Road, and you’re never far from a Sheep Street.
The most sought-after Cotswolds sheep was known as the Cotswold Lion, with a shaggy mane of tightly curled fleece. Traders sometimes enhanced the creamy color by adding yellow ochre powder, yet this sheep offered a golden fleece in more ways than one.
“The fleeces were really traded like a precious metal,” says Alastair Blant, deputy manager at the Cotswold Farm Park, near the village of Guiting Power. “The sheep were shorn before they went to market, as the fleece was so valuable, leaving just a topknot or forelock of curls as a ‘sample.’”
At the Cotswold Farm Park you come face to face with some of the few remaining Cotswold Lions as well as other rare livestock breeds. Take your place on the hay bales to watch the shearing demonstrations in early summer. These days, a sack of the golden fleece can be yours for just £12.
Wealthy wool merchants developed another key feature of the Cotswold landscape—the “wool churches.” These parish churches were built with wealthy wool merchants on a truly grand scale.
As you are driving through small leafy lanes into Chipping Campden the 120-foot tower of St. James Church is visible for many miles. Like others at Northleach and Cirencester, the church contains brasses set into the floor—the identifying woolmarks put onto the merchants’ woolsacks. St. James has one of the largest brasses in Gloucestershire, depicting William Grevel and his wife. Flamboyant Grevel House, built in the 14th century with gargoyles and such, also proclaimed Grevel’s wealth and status. Across the street sits the Woolstaplers Hall, meeting place of the wool merchants.
At another grand wool church, St. John the Baptist, Cirencester, the huge front porch has recently been cleaned. The newly burnished, bright butter-yellow stone must have appeared striking to the locals then as it does now. Inside, its spacious light interior is reminiscent of a small cathedral, with a beautiful, painted “wine glass” pulpit.
Just around the corner is Cirencester’s Corinium Museum, the name for one of Roman Britain’s most important towns. Well-preserved mosaic floors and walls from local Roman villas are displayed to great effect, along with evidence of spinning and weaving the precious wool.
Eventually, local commerce began to weave the wool rather than simply raising the fleece. Trade guilds developed, weaving, and manufacturing high-quality goods for export. Cotswold cloth was even more sought after than Cotswold wool had been.
Chastleton House was built between 1607 and 1612 and, with its beautiful garden, is a fantastic example and survivor of a bygone age. It is considered one of the finest and perfectly proportioned country houses of the early 17th century and was built as a statement of wealth and power by a prosperous wool merchant, Walter Jones.
“By the 18th century, every gentleman in Europe wore a coat made of West of England cavalry twill,” said Richard Martin, an expert on the local wool trade and owner of Cotswolds Woollen Weavers in the tiny village of Filkins. The story of local weavers, their lives, and their cloth is told with an eclectic mix of looms, weaving artifacts, and photographs in rambling 18th-century buildings. The company still weaves the original high-quality Cotswold cloth, carrying on a local tradition. Beneath the low wooden beams of their store, everything from a woolen trilby hat to a picnic rug is made from Cotswold cloth, carrying a swing tag bearing an old Cotswold poem:
‘In Cotswolds glory days of old,
Good weavers at their looms did sing,
‘While cloth is King, And Sheep is Lion,
Those clothed in wool shall enter Zion.’
The weavers carried out their trade-in cottages with low ceilings, twisting staircases and stone-flagged floors. Many remain the heart of Cotswold villages today. The Lamb Inn in Burford is a maze of staircases. It started as several smaller weavers’ cottages, now brought together in an award-winning hotel. Other hotels housed wealthy wool merchants. And after a busy day in the Cotswolds, try a refreshing link back to its heritage with a pint of Cotswold Lion or Golden Fleece real ale (see below).
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The Cotswold Sheep Society
Source: https://www.cotswoldsheepsociety.co.uk/history-of-the-cotswold-wool/
Cotswold sheep have always been known for their wool.
The origins of Cotswold sheep have been debated for years, and may never be entirely known for sure. As befits an old breed, they are surrounded by legend, and much of their mystery is to do with their wool. It is commonly believed that Cotswolds were introduced into Britain by the Romans, although this is yet to be proven. It is definitely the case, though, that the Romans were great makers and exporters of woollen cloth (the three main exports from the British Isles to the rest of the Roman Empire were tin, hunting dogs and woollen overcoats!) so they would have needed sheep with excellent wool. Later, in the mediaeval period, Cotswold wool was reckoned to be the best in Europe. The popularity of the sheep has dwindled in recent years, but now, with a rise in interest in rare breed farm animals and a renaissance in the development of wool, Cotswold fleece is again of interest to craftspeople all over the world.
Lustrous, long locks make the Cotswold a handsome sheep
Lustrous Wool of the Cotswold Sheep Cotswolds belong to a group of sheep breeds known as the Longwool and Lustre breeds, along with the Lincoln Longwool, Leicester Longwool, Wensleydale, Teeswater and Cornwall and Devon Longwool. Cotswolds are a large, rangy sheep with long legs, completely covered in a lustrous, long fleece which resembles white dreadlocks. To learn more about the Breed Standard (the description of the ideal Cotswold sheep) Click Here. The quality of wool is of paramount importance.
Cotswold Churches Built From Wool!
In their heyday, Cotswold sheep did much to shape the landscape of the Cotswolds. In addition to the grazing of large flocks which has created the distinctive field systems we see in the area, some of the beautiful churches and houses we see also owe their existence to Cotswold sheep, albeit indirectly. Rich wool merchants, their fortunes made in the cloth trade, gave money to build churches in some of the towns and villages of the Cotswolds such as Northleach and Cirencester, and they also built themselves magnificent homes.
Cotswold Wool Declines In Popularity
Cotswold wool was popular for generations, but the coming of the Industrial Revolution changed all this. Historically the long locks (or staple) of Cotswold fleeces were used for worsted spinning, a process which produces a hard-wearing and shiny yarn very suitable for weaving. With the development of spinning machinery in the 1840s, worsted yarns could be spun with shorter staple fleece, and need for the longwool breeds declined sharply. By the twentieth century, the demand for British wool generally had crashed, and the medieval boom was definitely a distant memory.
What Happens To Cotswold Wool Today?
Most wool from British sheep is collected by the British Wool Marketing Board, who promote and sell British wool in bulk. Wool prices worldwide are fluctuating, and vary from year to year. There has been a recent rise in interest, fuelled by the craft movement which has swept Britain and America, and consumers have a hunger for natural materials. Cotswold fleeces are again popular with spinners, and small producers are selling yarn made from the wool of their Cotswold sheep. The Society are very interested in helping to promote the use of Cotswold wool, and run events every year to raise the profile of the breed and its wool.
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The Cotswold has a well-developed forelock (the fringe of wool above their eyes) traditionally left on the sheep after shearing, so anyone purchasing the sheep would know the quality of their fleece.
Cotswold Farm Park
My father, Joe Henson, founded Cotswold Farm Park in 1971 to help protect some of our rare breeds of farm animal. Together with my business partner Duncan and our enthusiastic team, I am proud to continue in his wellington-booted footprints.
We have passion for all we do here and are dedicated to delivering the best of British farming, through a sustainable and authentic approach.
… and if you feel like a beer!
https://www.facebook.com/jon.kemp.144/
Suffolk/LINCOLNSHIRE
Wool churches built on golden fleeces
Wool was once one of the wonders of England, with economic and ecclesiastical benefits in addition to its practical applications
WOOL CHURCHES
A certain wistfulness coloured the claim, in 1612, by Joseph Hall, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, that “there were wont to be reckoned three wonders of England – ecclesia, foemina [sic], lana – churches, women and wool”.
For 200 years, beginning at the end of the 13th century, the wool trade had formed the backbone of England’s economy, a mainstay of national revenues, funding, for example, opening skirmishes of the Hundred Years War. In the dog days of Tudor England royal taxation was among factors that brought about its decline; the same period witnessed completion of the English Reformation and the Church of England’s break from Rome. Although neither development dimmed the wonders of English womanhood, falling wool revenues and new attitudes to church building and decoration contributed to the demise of one of the greatest of late-medieval architectural phenomena, the so-called wool church, constructed or embellished with profits from the trade in wool and woollen cloth.
Four centuries after Hall’s lament, a clutch of wool churches in villages across East Anglia and the Cotswolds bears witness to the pre-eminence of English wool in the marketplaces of medieval Europe. English wool was universally esteemed as the finest in the world. In the Flemish weaving centres of Bruges, Ghent and Ypres, the cloth-making towns of Lombardy and Tuscany, in Florence and Venice, English wool commanded a higher premium than any other. Medieval Spain exported fleeces across the Continent: for the highest-quality cloth, it was considered essential to add English yarn to Spanish.
Some of the wool produced by flocks that grazed the Lincolnshire wolds, the Cotswolds, the Lake District, the Chilterns, the Pennines and the South Downs was woven at home for domestic consumption, but, with the exception of a woad-dyed blue broadcloth produced in Lavenham, known as Lavenham Blue, it was the raw material itself, rather than English woven cloths, that the merchants of Flanders and Italy valued most. Prized above all was the long, pale golden fleece of Cotswold sheep, described in medieval manuscripts as ‘Cottys’ wool, as William Camden recorded as late as 1610: “In these Woulds there feed in great numbers flockes of sheepe long necked and square of bulke and bone, by reason… of the weally and hilly situation of their pasturage; whose wool being so fine is held in passing great account among all nations.” Trade in English wool made farmers, merchants and landowners wealthy. Even Cistercian monks kept sheep on abbey pastures, the open field system of medieval agriculture facilitating the establishment of huge flocks. As well as London, the ports of Southampton, Sandwich, Boston and Calais burgeoned thanks to the export of wool. In a churchgoing age, many of those who benefited bestowed a portion of their profits on the church.
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A 16th century wool merchant’s home
Lincolnshire.
In medieval England wool was big business. There was an enormous demand for it from the weavers in Flanders, and anyone who had land, from the peasants to the Lords of the Manor, raised sheep. The English did make cloth, but it was mainly for domestic use; very little was exported. It was the raw wool, reputed to be the best in the world at that time, which became the driving force of the English economy and the major source of income for the Crown. Even today the Lord High Chancellor sits on a large square bag of wool known as The Woolsack, a reminder that wool used to be the main source of England’s income.
To understand the organisation of the wool trade we must go back to the reign of Edward I who first realised how much revenue he could make from the trade.
Realising how valuable this revenue was Edward III went to war with France partly to protect the trade with Flanders. After Calais was taken in 1347, 26 traders were incorporated into the ‘Company of the Staple of Calais’ and in exchange for its cooperation in payment of taxes, the company was granted a total monopoly of wool exports from England. Flemish and Italian wool merchants were familiar figures in the wool markets of England, ready to buy the bales of wool which were then transported to English ports such as Boston, King’s Lynn and London.
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