Shearer

After the cloth had been brushed to raise the nap using handles of teasels, the piece of damp cloth passed to the shearman. This very skilled man was able to shear the cloth by cutting off all the very fine fibres which had been raised by the teasels. He used a huge, heavy set of shears on a table with a curved top. One blade of the shears remained still and the other was pulled towards it by the shearman, helped by a wooden lever. One piece of cloth took many hours to finish. In 1677, the shearman earned 6 shillings a week.

The shears weighed 30 pounds, 14 kg, (shears did come in different weights) and were ground to a fine edge. The first cut was called the kerf after which the cloth was raised again and sheared again until the right finish was obtained. When Arthur P Stancomb started his business in 1841, hand raising and shearing was still common in Trowbridge.

Model of a Shearman at work in Trowbridge Museum

Hand shearers at work

The Shearman's tools