www.jamesbarton.co.uk |
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Stogumber's Mills: 1,000 years of water power |
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Water Power & Cloth Production c1500 to c1800 |
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The second
part of this presentation deals with the role of fulling mills in
the cloth industry. This is a picture of a man walking, or tucking
/ tooking, or fulling cloth taken from a stained glass window.
Fulling both cleaned cloth and shrunk it making it denser or
thicker.
Fulling
was a manual task performed in this manner until about the 13th century. Fullers
were organised into guilds, a cross between a trade association
and a trade union. Operating in this way enabled their
members to maintain strict control over the numbers who were
engaged in the trade, and so they were able to keep the prices charged for their service high. Fullers and
their guilds operated in towns
The guilds of fullers were very opposed to this as might
be expected, and this is illustrated by this extract from their
rule book from 1346. Historians now believe that the water powered
fulling industry developed in the countryside to avoid the
restrictions imposed by the urban guilds. Towns
such as Bristol were badly hit by the loss of trade which was
occasioned by the move, because as fulling migrated so also did
other associated cloth production processes such as dyeing
Fulling was automated in the 13th century using water power. The process was very simple as this diagram illustrates: the water wheel was used to raise a large hammer which then fell when released onto the cloth
Although a
simple process this was revolutionary as it was the first process in cloth manufacture
to be mechanised – several hundred years before the
invention of the spinning wheel, or the later mechanisation
developed during the industrial revolution. Some have even claimed
that this was the first ever powered industrial process.
Moreover
this invention helped transform the relationship between
town and country since fulling mills were sited in country areas
rather than town
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It is ordained that no man cause to be
taken out of the town any kind of cloth to be fulled on pain of being
fined 40 pence for each cloth, and that no man shall receive cloth
which is fulled in open country on pain of the aforesaid.
In contrast to Bristol, country communities such as Stogumber benefited enormously from the inflow of new industry. Buildings such as the village church, which was progressively, rebuilt, enlarged, endowed and embellished during the early modern period, speak of the substantial wealth which was being generated locally as a result of these change
The countryside was no longer just an area of primary production but was transformed into a value-added economy, contributing to and benefiting from the boom in cloth exports during the 15th and 16th centuries. Wealth no longer was just a function of land holding, and trading and manufacturing families such as the Sweetings of Hartrow , and the Dashwoods of Vellow Wood began to establish themselves Northam Mill was first recorded in 1568 as a fulling mill. The present mill building is of later construction and has no trace of the mill workings or water course
Northam is typical of mill buildings in the parish as it is set into the hillside – this is the rear of the building and on the other, downhill side it is two storeys. Buildings were sited in this way in order to ensure that water was delivered to the top of the millwheel, so that the weight of the water could then be utilised to drive the wheel forward. The streams in the parish are very small and the flow of the water itself would not be sufficient to drive a wheel; it was the use of the water in conjunction with gravity that provided sufficient power to drive the machinery. To this end water had to be stored in mill ponds and then released when needed. The way in which this was done is still evident at Stogumber mill, first recorded in the 14th century. The mill is tucked away by the stream in the bottom left of the photograph below, but it draws its water supply from near the centre of the village about half a mile away.
As the stream drops, the water supply is channeled at a progressively and comparatively higher level until it reaches the mill pond pictured below
.The photograph below shows the sluice from the other side of the dam wall. The area in front is the now infilled wheel pit.
There were at least seven fulling mills in the parish and possibly more. Each would have been associated with nearby wooden racks on which cloth was hung to be stretched and dried after it had been fulled. Much of the economic life of the community would have been centered on the cloth trade and Stogumber would have been more of an industrial or semi-industrial palce than a quiet agricultural backwater.Although they do not provide the only reason, fulling mills were nevertheless a central reason for the location of Britain's premier industry in areas such as Stogumber. The cloth trade and fulling industry declined towards the end of the eighteenth century leading to hardship for many. There is good evidence for this in Stogumber from the accounts which list those in receipt of poor relief. The fourth line down in the document below if for 'Tookmill' which received 4d.
The financial problems experienced by fulling mills were soon also experienced by the parish's corn mills such as the one at Kingswood pictured below. The corn mills difficulties stemmed from the repeal of the corn laws in 1846 which lead to the importation of cheaper corn from the USA. The simultaneous invention of coal-powered, steam driven roller mills led to the construction of new, larger and more efficient corn grinding mills at the ports.
Small country mills became unviable and Stogumber was no exception: Northam had ceased by 1866, Stogumber by 1886 and Kingswood limped on but was redundant by 1914. And so the two principal activities of water milling which had been going on for at least 900 years came to an end. |
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