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In 1130 the Liverymen of the Worshipful Company of Weavers was formed in London to control the weaving industry. They had specific standards; for instance the Master Weavers were told how many weavers and apprentices they might employ. An apprentice would serve seven years apprenticeship under a master Weaver who would allocate to him the warp and weft and pay him for weaving. One weaver was allowed to weave cloth three spans wide; wider cloth had to be woven by two weavers, thus making it more expensive and affordable only to the gentry. There were many such regulations – it was a “closed shop”.
Thus it was in Coggeshall. Weaving of cloth was a family concern. The actual weaving was carried out by the men – Master Weavers and apprentices, mainly fathers and sons, whilst the making of the yarn, the spinning, was carried out by the women. It took six spinners to keep one weaver weaving. The making of the warp and the bobbin winding were also done by members of the weaver’s family; otherwise they had to pay someone to do it.The weaving industry gave work to other villagers as tradesmen would make reeds, harnesses and other accoutrements needed for weaving and would tour the district selling them. Carpenters would make looms to sell or hire out. The looms were mainly made from pine and the shuttles from beech, hornbeam or some other relatively hard wood. There were some weavers who travelled around the countryside with their looms and their families looking for work; these were known as “Journeymen Weavers”. They were not popular as they often worked for less money and so took work away from local weavers.The finishing of the cloth, that is, bleaching, dyeing and fulling was mainly done by a specialist who would use lime, dung and urine to soften, cleanse and remove oil from the fabric. If a knap was required the specialist would use teasels to “raise” the fabric. Abbey Mill was a typical fulling mill.
The type of sheep whose fleece was used determined the quality of the yarn, and, hence that of the fabric. In Coggeshall they wove mainly “Bays”, a plain cloth, and “Says”, a twill cloth, but a bleached fabric called “Coggeshall Whites” was also produced. The wool trade was well established in Coggeshall by 1557, but in 1565 Queen Elizabeth allowed immigrant weavers to settle here in East Anglia. These were mainly Flemish and they were very skilled in the textile trade and wove high quality woollen fabrics.
In about 1773, however, the cottage wool-weaving industry in East Anglia began to decline for several reasons. Around this time, a man named John Kay had invented the “flying shuttle”. The common practice of handling the shuttle for each weft thread insertion was speeded up by his invention of a method of “flicking” the shuttle across the loom. This meant that it required one weaver instead of two to produce broadcloth. Weavers resented this as jobs were lost and they and their families experienced hardship. Another reason for the decline of the Coggeshall textile industry was that the Essex and Suffolk farmers found that they could earn a better living from arable farming. Sheep farming was more economic for the moorland farmers of Northern England as their land was unsuitable for cultivation. Thus much of the wool-weaving industry was now more prevalent in the northern counties. Here, also, power looms were being introduced which made handloom weaving uneconomical.
Edmund Cartwright invented the first power loom for weaving cotton in about 1785 and there were woollen power looms by 1840. These, however, were not much more productive than a skilled handloom weaver, working at only 40 weft threads per minute, but one weaver could “mind” more than one loom with less physical effort than was needed to work a handloom. Because the power loom required better warp and weft preparation, it also required higher financial investment. As a result the textile workers began to move from their cottages to larger premises owned by cloth merchants who employed them to produce their cloth. In effect, this was the start of the small textile mills.
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