Basic HTML Version
14
City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
The English climate and landscape has always suited
sheep farming and traditionally sheep have fed and
clothed the people of this island. Wool production
gathered momentum throughout the 1200s and by the
turn of the century 30,000 sacks of wool were being
exported abroad each year where it was highly valued
for its toughness and the long length of the fibres
which made it easier to spin.
The Black Death of 1349 almost halved England’s
population to 2.5 million in little more than a year and
in consequence landowners needed a less labour-
intensive form of agriculture to the manorial system
that had relied on an endless supply of peasants.
The answer lay in sheep-farming and it had a huge
impact on the English landscape in many areas.
Common land, once open to all, was ditched and
hedged for herds of sheep to graze. Wool production
rose dramatically.
Wool became the principal source
of wealth in the medieval English economy between
the late thirteenth century and late fifteenth century.
Fleeces had to be transported to “staple” towns which
were the only places where they could be legally
traded with foreigners. Flemish and Italian merchants
became familiar figures in the wool markets where
they came to buy wool from lords and peasants alike.
The wool was loaded onto pack-animals for the trek
to the ports at Boston, London, Sandwich and
Southampton for shipping to Antwerp and Genoa.
The staple moved about somewhat but in 1347 Calais
became a British possession and became and re-
mained the staple for the next 160 years until the port
fell to the French.
English monarchs from Edward I onwards taxed the
export of wool to fund military campaigns and even
went to war to protect the lucrative wool trade with
Flanders. When the burghers from the rich Flemish
cloth-towns appealed to Edward I for help against
their French overlord it triggered the Hundred Years’
War, which actually lasted for 116 years until 1453.
Where once we had mostly exported our raw wool
abroad and imported the resulting cloth from Flemish
and Italian merchants the rising taxes on the export
of wool led to the rise of the English weaving trade.
The wool trade came to be described as “the jewel in
the realm’. To this day the Lord High Chancellor in the
House of Lords still sits on a large square bag of wool
called the “woolsack” marking the historic importance
of the wool trade.
East Anglia & The English Wool Trade
John Constable