Woollen industry in Wales

Spinning and weaving of sheep's wool dates to prehistoric times in Wales, but only became an important industry when Cistercian monasteries were established in the 12th century.

When railways reached mid Wales in the 1860s they brought a flood of cheap mass-produced products that destroyed the local industry.

[2] Black Welsh Mountain sheep had mutton that was prized for its quality, and produced valuable Cochddu wool with a staple length of 8 to 10 centimetres (3.1 to 3.9 in).

[3] After sorting, the raw wool would often be soaked in a 50–50 solution of human urine and water, then passed through a willy to untangle it and remove foreign matter.

There is evidence of spinning and weaving in late prehistoric houses throughout Britain, particularly in the later first millennium B.C.. Finds include scraps of fabric, loom-weights, spindle-whorls and bone needles, and the arrangement of post-holes may indicate they supported looms.

[9] Excavations have been made at the Dinas Powys hillfort in Glamorgan of what seems to have been the court of an important ruler in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D.[10] The bones of sheep were found, but there seems to have been little spinning and weaving.

[11] The 6th century writer Gildas, thought by some to have lived in Wales, mentioned "mountains particularly suitable for the alternating pasturage of animals".

[15] Tintern Abbey in the Wye valley was founded for monks of the Cistercian order by Walter FitzRichard, lord of Netherwent and Striguil, on 9 May 1131.

[17] In the century that preceded the Black Death, the monastic landowners and manorial lords built fulling mills in eastern Wales, with up to 80 operating before 1350.

Most Welsh cottages and farmhouses had a spinning wheel, almost always operated by women, and most parishes had carders, spinners, weavers and fullers.

[19] The main centre of the new woollen industry was initially in south east Wales drawing on sheep from the monasteries of Margam, Neath and Tintern, and the flocks of the Bohun family, which produced 18,500 fleeces in 1372.

"[26] The South Carolina "Negro Act" of 1735 commended "white Welsh plains" and outlawed rich or colourful materials that might be discarded by the slave masters.

[28] As trans-Atlantic demand for Welsh cloth grew, growing numbers of people in the rural areas of Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire became dependent on the woollen industry, finding that spinning and weaving gave a larger and more stable income than farming.

[30] An author wrote of Shrewsbury in the 1790s, From very early days this place possessed almost exclusively the trade with Wales in a coarse kind of woollen cloth called Welsh webbs, which were brought from Merioneth and Montgomeryshire to a market held here weekly on Thursdays.

After undergoing the operation of scouring, bleaching, and milling, it is packed up in large bales, and sent to Shrewsbury, Liverpool, and London; and thence exported to Germany, Russia and America.

In Caernarvonshire, they apply themselves somewhat more to spinning and weaving; for, besides supplying themselves with wearing apparel, they annually send several pieces of blue cloth into Meirionyddshire ...

In other parts of Denbighshire, in the south west of Meirionyddshire and Montgomeryshire, the inhabitants have imbibed more of the spirit of industry; and add the profits of manufacture to the value of the raw material...[34] Mill owners were not always men.

A smaller 7 feet (2.1 m) wheel powered a fulling mill, which washed the cloth and kneaded it with wooden hammers to thicken and strengthen it.

[39] Between 1800 and 1830 many spinning and weaving factories were built in mid-Wales in places where water power was available, particularly in the upper Severn Valley in Powys.

When steam power began to be used by the Yorkshire woollen industry the Severn Valley mills were at a disadvantage, since they did not have nearby supplies of coal.

The gazetteer noted that, "the principle of total abstinence from intoxicating liquors has much benefited the weavers in this county : they were formerly notorious for inebriety and improvidence."

The Cambrian Mirror reported that, "There are now more than 40 carding engines, 18 fulling mills, and nearly 35,000 spindles, constantly in operation in the town and neighbourhood, affording considerable employment to a number of men, who weave the flannel at their own dwellings.

[48][50] Welsh tweed manufacture survived at a much reduced level into the 20th century in Montgomery, where the area around Rhayader retained mills in the villages and small towns.

[46] During the Industrial Revolution the Teifi Valley between Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire came to employ thousands of weavers, spinners, dyers, knitters, drapers and tailors.

[52] The river and its tributaries powered dozens of mills, and sheep in the surrounding grassland supplied fleeces to be made into woollen products.

[53] In 1837 a Working Men's Association was established in the south Wales weaving town of Carmarthen in response to the Chartist campaign for democratic rights.

[47] Skilled workers moved from mid-Wales to the Teifi Valley, mainly to the area around Dre-fach Felindre, Pentrecwrt, Henllan and Llandysul.

[59] The woollen mills of the Teifi valley were hard-hit by the drop in purchasing power of miners during the depression in the coal trade of the 1920s.

Small clusters of hand loom weaving survived in places such as Lampeter where there were spinners and fullers, making quality goods.

[61] As of 2013 there were just nine commercial woollen mills still in operation, often run by small families producing traditional Welsh cloth on old looms.