Our Blog
the archaeology and history of sheep
‘I thank God, and ever shall,
it is the shepe [sheep] hath paid for all …’
(This is a well-known saying by 15th-century wool merchant
John Barton of Holme-by-Newark, Nottinghamshire,
who included it in a stained glass window of his parish church.)
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Today (12th October), Historic England Archaeology posted a Tweet at @HE_Archaeology : In celebration of #WoolWeek find out how bones hold a key to understanding past wool production http://ow.ly/WNgZ3056cIy . (Wool Week is the 10th-16th October and it is held to promote the use of wool.)
The Historic England Archaeology (HEA) Tweet linked to their blog post which is titled ‘The Sheep Project: Helping us understand wool production in the past’. HEA are conducting research to develop new techniques for analysing the evidence provided by animal bones in archaeology. They say:
‘… Research by Historic England Zooarchaeologists is investigating how we can detect evidence for wool production from archaeological sheep bones and teeth. The wool industry was a key driver of the medieval and post-medieval economies in England. Various farming methods have been used to improve the quantity and quality of wool, including sheep breeds, part of the fleece used, and feeding regimes …
In assemblages of archaeological animal bones we see evidence for intensification of wool production from the medieval and early post-medieval periods, through increasing use of adult sheep and high proportions of males …
In addition to the research by HE specialists, many external researchers use our sheep collection. Isotope analysis, analysis of biochemical signatures in animal tissues relating to environment, diet and geographical origin, has been applied to wool and bone samples helping us to understand how and why these signatures vary between and within flocks. This will assist us in studying husbandry and movement of sheep populations as well as production and trade in artefacts of bone, horn and wool …’.
The history and archaeology of sheep in and around Colchester is a large and very interesting subject. The Trust recovers animal bones from many of our sites. Excavated fragments of animal bone don’t look very promising, but they can produce considerable faunal evidence about individual animals and about livestock-management, and the industrial or domestic production, processing and consumption of animal products such as wool and meat (see Colchester Archaeological Report 12: Animal bone from excavations in Colchester, 1971-85). At the Trust, Trust archaeologist Adam Wightman studies animal-bone fragments: he first identifies the species using his own collection of faunal material. Then he identifies the skeletal element and records which side of the skeleton the fragment derives from. The bones are studied for evidence of bone-, horn- or antler-working, butchering or skinning were recorded. Where posssible, the age of the individual at death is assessed as well as any evidence of pathologies such as disease, wear or injury. Counts and weights of bone fragments are recorded for each context. The completeness and parts represented for each specimen are also recorded. All this data can then be interpreted.
The Trust’s archaeological monitoring project in 2012 at the former Stockwell Arms, an urban site in Colchester, produced a large quantity of animal-bone material (863 fragments of animal bones: 739 of these were identified as sheep-bone fragments, including a large number of metapodials). This material derived from medieval and post-medieval/modern contexts. It is interpreted as representing industrial skin-processing waste (‘tawing’: see CAT Report 670). In CAT Report 312, our investigations of a cropmark site on the rural Abbotstone field at Stanway in 1999-2001 produced evidence of sheep-farming for wool in the Middle-Late Iron Age:
‘… Analysis of the animal bone from the site has revealed the use of wild species such as red deer and possibly wild boar and domesticated species such as cattle, sheep/goats, horse and possibly pig. The bones from the wild species all provided evidence of butchering and appear to have been used primarily for their meat; however, the evidence from the domesticated species is quite different. All the cattle and sheep/goat bones were from mature animals, which indicates that these animals were used primarily for other activities such as breeding, milking and for wool (sheep/goat), before being culled for meat. The horses were also mature on death and were probably used primarily as draught animals (unlike the cattle and sheep/goats, they do not appear to have been subsequently butchered for their meat). Analysis of the animal bone from the site also indicates that animals such as cattle and red deer were skinned and may also have been kept/hunted for their hides. Only the pig appeared to have been kept primarily for meat. Evidence for the keeping of animals for milk is also provided by the recovery of cheese presses (for cheese production) from the site, and for wool production and processing by the recovery of loomweights (for textile production) …’. The site included evidence of ditches and enclosures for the manageement of stock, and droveways for the movement of stock animals between enclosures and grazing land and also, possibly, on and off the site…
Evidence for the production of textiles in the settlement is provided by the animal bone, with the evidence that sheep/goats were primarily kept on the site for their wool (and milk), and the high quantity of loomweight fragments recovered from many of the features …’. This textile production seems to have been for domestic use and not industrial purposes.
Sheep-farming has been a major industry in Essex, for centuries, including north-east Essex and at Colchester, both within the town wall and around the town and the district. Wivenhoe’s main medieval industry was, apparently, sheep-farming. The products included wool, leather, meat, and horn and bone artefacts. The Trust uncovers a range of evidence of the wool industry, such as large quantities of bones, as well as spindlewhorls (used in the spinning of wool), loomweights (used in the weaving of cloth), and even some fragments of fabric. Wool would be spun into yarn and this would be used to make thread, which would be woven to produce cloth. Colchester has a long history as a cloth-making town, and its boom times were the 13th-15th and 16th-17th centuries, when it participated in national and international trade. The wool industry is fascinating, and the whole industry was based on sheep…
From Wikipedia: ‘… Each bale of cloth could represent the work of up to fifty people from in and around [medieval] Colchester, including shepherds, wool staplers, carders, wool combers, spinners, dyers, weavers, fullers, roughers, shearers, pressers and merchants. The town was surrounded by watermills used in the fulling process … At its peak, Colchester was exporting 40,000 bales of cloth annually, specialising in grey-brown russet cloth… By 1373 there were two wool fairs in the town, and wool was exported via Colchester’s Hythe port to Zeeland, Flanders, Calais, Saint-Omer, Amiens, the Mediterranean, Sweden, Prussia, Gascony, Spain, and later in the 15th century to the German Hanseatic League, especially Cologne. Colchester’s main trade partner outside England was Bruges …’ .
(See 20 facts about the cloth industry at Colchester below!)
All the Trust’s fieldwork reports are published online at http://cat.essex.ac.uk/ .
The image shows a bone – a scapula – of ovis/capra (sheep/goat, but probably sheep), which was processed today by volunteer Corrie here at the Trust’s HQ, having been excavated yesterday on our site at Middleborough in Colchester. It is stained black because it derives from a water-logged deposit.
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20 facts about the cloth industry at Colchester:
1 There were two fullers in Colchester in the 11th century and the cloth trade developed here in the 12th century. By 1247, there was a fulling mill here.
2 Cloth-industry surnames recorded in Colchester between about 1230 and 1265 include two Chaloners, two Drapers, three Dyers, five Fullers, and three Weavers!
3 The Dutch Bay Hall, the town’s cloth-trading centre, once occupied the upper floor of the Exchange building in the High Street, on the site of the Essex and Suffolk Equitable Insurance Office building.
4 No 35 West Stockwell Street was formerly the Bishop Blaize inn, where the town’s woolcombers met (St Blaize was their patron saint). The After Office Hours wine bar at 128 High Street was formerly The Bay and Say public house and, before that, The Lamb: the facade of the building includes the sculpture of a lamb.
5 The cloth-making industry was boosted here in the late 16th century with the arrival of Dutch or Flemish cloth-workers, and the town flourished.
6 Stalls were set up in the High Street to sell cloth, probably in the upper part near the Exchange/Dutch Bay Hall. (Celia Fiennes in “1698 Tour: London to Bury St Edmunds” writes of Colchester: ‘… There is a … broad streete and near its Length like stalls on purpose to Lay their Bayes when exposed to saile. Great quantetyes are made here and sent in Bales to London that is 44 miles distant. Ye whole town is Employ’d in spinning weaveing, washing drying and dressing their Bayes in wch they seeme very Industrious …’.)
7 Many people, of all ages, would have been employed in cloth-making here, in all its stages, from wool-combing, spinning and weaving, fulling, roughing, etc, to seaming and dyeing.
8 Abbeygate Street was once ‘Clothiers Lane’ (on a map of 1748).
9 A ‘fulling mill’ was used in the cloth-manufacturing process and, in Colchester, the cloth was principally bay or bays (or ‘bay and say’, or baize, a fine cloth), and perpetuanas. Bourne Mill was a cloth mill for weaving, fulling, and finishing bays, run by Peter Devall, until 1833. Cannock mill in Old Heath Road was a fulling mill and the East Mills by East Bridge once included a fulling mill.
10 The cloth-workers were mostly outworkers, ie they worked in their own houses and yards and were paid by the piece, in Colchester and in the surrounding villages.
11 Daniel Defoe in “A tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain” (1724-27) writes: ‘… [Colchester] may be said chiefly to subsist by the trade of making bays, which is known over most of the trading parts of Europe, by the name of Colchester bays, tho’ indeed all the towns round carry on the same trade, namely, Kelvedon, Wittham, Coggshall, Braintree, Bocking, &c. and the whole county, large as it is, may be said to be employ’d, and in part maintain’d, by the spinning of wool for the bay trade of Colchester, and its adjacent towns …’.
12 Tenter frames were used in the cloth-manufacturing process and some of the fields within and around the walled town centre were once used for tenter frames, holding cloth on tenterhooks, eg in what is now Upper Castle Park.
13 No 77 East Hill was originally a bay and say warehouse, according to buildings historian Richard Shackle; its owners lived in the house opposite. Nos 6-7 East Hill was once a woollen cloth factory, according to historian Shani D’Cruze. Nos 83-84 High Street was a house built for baymaker and mayor William Boyes: Charles Hills, another baymaker, lived there in later years and, in 1781, the property was described as including ‘… large lofty warehouses and chambers … lately used in the manufacture of baize …’. Wealthy baymakers also owned many small houses in the town, which their weavers were forced to rent from them to live and work in. Some cloth ‘factories’ were buildings which weavers were forced to work in by renting space from the baymakers.
14 The cloth-workers were exploited and restricted by their employers and by the Dutch Bay Hall, and vulnerable to fluctuations in trade. (In 1725, ‘the Poor distressed Bay Weavers in Colchester’ sent a petition to the King, complaining about the oppression of their Masters ‘the Bay makers that trade to the Dutch bay Hall’, for reducing their wages; it was signed by over 120 bay weavers. In January 1725 there were weavers’ riots in Colchester. Rioters broke into the town gaol and released a rioter, and the ringleader John Curtin was shot dead after resisting arrest. At the request of the baymakers, troops were sent to suppress the rioting.)
15 Cloth merchants (clothiers, baymakers) could acquire great wealth and power from their exploitation of the labour of their cloth-workers, and they paid for the building of some of the best houses in the town. The Minories art gallery and art school on East Hill was originally a fine house, bought by baymaker Isaac Boggis in 1731: the property once included an adjacent bay and say warehouse on the east side of the house. Winsley’s House at the east end of the High Street was the home of wealthy baymaker Arthur Winsley; he founded Winsley’s Almshouses in Old Heath Road and his memorial survives in St James’ Church.
16 There is a gravestone in St Martin’s churchyard for Jacob Ringer Bays Maker, and a brass memorial in St James’ Church to John Maynard, clothier and alderman.
17 In 1806, the castle keep was used as a wool store for the town’s annual wool fair.
18 The cloth trade was, for centuries, the staple industry of Colchester. It went into terminal decline in the 18th century and ended in 1833 when Peter Devall, the last baymaker, sold up.
19 The 19th-century streets of Winsley Road and Winnock Road in New Town are named after wealthy cloth-merchants of Colchester – Arthur Winsley and John Winnock.
20 There is a stained glass Weavers’ memorial window in the Council Chamber of Colchester Town Hall.
(Colchester Historic Buildings Forum web-site; Victoria County History of Essex, 9: the Borough of Colchester.)
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