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It was wool that kicked off the smuggling of goods
out
of the country beginning almost immediately
after Edward I placed the first Customs duty on the
export of wool in the late 13
th
century. In 1614,
the export of wool was made illegal so the only way
English wool could make its way to the continent
now was by illicit means. The smuggling of wool
was known as ‘owling’ (after the owl like noises
made by the smugglers to communicate with each
other in the dead of night).
Flemish weavers fleeing the horrors of war and
French rule were encouraged to set up home in
England, with many settling in Norfolk and Suffolk
and weaving began to flourish in the villages and
towns. Throughout Suffolk weaving families toiled
in their cottages making woollen cloth. The fuller
has to be one of the worst jobs in British history.
The mediaeval wool trade operated in a world with
no machinery. The wool was placed in a barrel of
stale urine and the fuller spent all day, every day,
trampling on the wool to produce a softer cloth.
Next time you are on holiday and the cosy image of
the happy peasant trampling the grape comes up
think of our poor ancestors up to their knees in stale
pee in a cold barn.
In East Anglia the peasants of Suffolk and Norfolk
were spared this unpleasant ordeal. Instead they used
the long, fine wool from the native East Anglian
sheep breeds to produce a type of cloth that didn’t
require fulling. It became known as “worsted” after
the Norfolk village of Worstead where it was first
developed. For four hundred years East Anglia
dominated the worsted trade using skills inherited from
Flemish settlers. To encourage the trade a 16
th
century
English law demanded that all Englishmen (except
nobles) wear a woollen cap to church on Sundays.
Lavenham in Suffolk is widely acknowledged as the
finest example of a mediaeval English wool town.
By Tudor times, despite its small size, it was one of
the wealthiest towns in England with elegant timber
framed buildings and a beautiful church built on the
success of the wool trade. In the heart of this
wool and
weaving country, where the legacy of the great wealth
of the wool trade included the massive wool churches
two artists were painting the landscapes of a world
that would soon change again for ever as the new
inventions of the Industrial Revolution
put an end to
the local weaving trade. Machinery had been resisted
in the past and it was again in the Luddite riots of
1812 when machine equipment was destroyed by
organized bands of workers, who feared they would
lose employment. But time was up for the mostly
domestic weaving trade in East Anglia.
At the tail end of the East Anglian weaving trade
John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough, were born
in Suffolk within 10 miles of each other. Constable
was born at East Bergholt, the son of a prosperous
mill owner in Dedham Vale. Constable’s elder brother,
the first son, was mentally disabled which put a
responsibility on his shoulders that was at odds with
his desire to be a painter. A dutiful son he worked in
the family business and in his spare time he painted his