An Introduction to Cloth Making

By 1500, unfinished white broadcloth was an important export from West Wiltshire. Clothiers bought wool which they passed on to be carded, spun and then woven into cloth. This was a cottage industry where the weaver worked at home, helped by his family who did spinning and winding. Some weavers’ houses with large top floor windows still survive in Trowbridge.

Cloth making gradually became mechanised and factory based but the industry declined and the last mill closed in 1982.

Visit Trowbridge Museum, which is in this last mill, to see a range of machines used in the local cloth making industry. The earliest, a wooden spinning jenny from the 1790s, the latest, a Hattersley loom which is demonstrated each Saturday. Cloth is still being made in Trowbridge!

The history of the rise and fall of the West of England woollen cloth trade can be found in Ken Roger’s book, Warp and Weft, (Barracuda Books, 1986).

< View Previous Stage