The 2026 exhibition will cover the story of the importance of the wool industry in Buckfastleigh. The development of industries were based on local resources—water power, wool, and hides. The Hamlyn family played a leading role in shaping industries within the town and they controlled Town Mill, West Mill, and Higher Mill. These mills produced various materials over time, such as blankets, sea boot wool and camouflage nets, and more recently have produced yarn for Axminster carpets. After experiencing a long period of decline in the woollen industry, Hamlyn’s mill was sold to the Cooperative Wholesale Company in 1920. If you’d like to learn more come and see our exhibition that opens at the end of March. Contact us you would like more information: valiantsoldierbuckfastleigh@gmail.com

Part 1 Medieval to 1700

Our story starts in the Middle Ages.

Sheep have roamed the Devon hills for thousands of years, providing food and warmth for local people. In the Stone Age people wore sheepskins. Then a felted material was made from wool. Before the Romans came to Britain, raw wool was being spun and woven. The original breeds of sheep were small, the Romans introduced larger breeds

Buckfast Abbey and the Wool Trade

The 1086 Domesday Book shows that the manor of the Benedictine Abbey of Buckfast was similar in size to today’s Abbey and its lands, but owned other manors all over Devon. The most numerous animals farmed on these land were sheep, 670 in total.

The monastery was taken over by Cistercian monks in 1147. They were a centralised order with their headquarters at Citeaux in France, and they opened up a trade route with the rest of Europe. They were also agricultural innovators, draining boggy areas and ‘making two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before’. In 1236 the Abbot of Buckfast and his monks were admitted to the guild of Totnes merchants. They sent wool to Italy, and in 1340 16 tons of it was exported from Buckfast and Ford Abbey.

Local Merchants

At the same time cloth production increased and became a more important export than raw wool. The King introduced a way of controlling the trade and taxing it called the wool Staple, trading towns like Exeter were called Staple towns and wool traders became known at woolstaplers.

Cloth merchants owned the fulling mills, and they controlled the supply of wool, yarn and cloth, supplying spinners and weavers who worked at home.

There is no knowledge of  cloth merchants Buckfastleigh but there were in Ashburton and they probably controlled the Buckfastleigh cottage industries and tucking mills.

Wool carding and Combing.

The sheep yields its fleece to the shearer’s blades. But fleeces are not all the same. They can be long or short, coarse or fine, depending on the breed of sheep, selected by farmers to thrive in local conditions. So the first step is to sort and grade the wool. We have examples in the exhibition of different types of wool.

Then the fleece is washed, originally in streams and rivers. Next its tangles are dealt with and how this is done depends on its length. Long wool is combed. Short wool is carded. The final products of the short wool are called woollens, those of the long wool are called worsteds. Examples of carders and combs are in the exhibition.

Cottage Industries in the Middle Ages

Spinning

Spinning was usually done by women, at first by hand with a distaff and spindle. The spinning wheel arrived in the 13th century and was soon universally used. The spun wool was wound into skeins. In the exhibition we have a Saxony-type spinning wheel, which had a treadle, allowing both hands to be free to guide the wool.

Dyeing

Natural dyes are colours extracted from insects, minerals or most often from plants. Woad, umber and madder were commonly used in this area. The process of dyeing has essentially stayed the same over time. Typically, the plant material is added to hot water and heated to extract the dye compounds. Many plant dyes require substances called mordants (from Latin mordere ‘to bite’) to bind to textile fibres. Local ones included alum and tin. They could affect the final colour of the dye. We have some skeins of naturally dyed wool in the exhibition, sourced from the Wool Hub.

Weaving

In the early Middle Ages weaving was a one person operation. Vertical lengths of strong yarn, the warp, were fixed onto the loom, held stationary in tension. The horizontal weft attached to a shuttle was drawn through by the weaver. Looms had pedals which alternatively raised one half of the warp, allowing the weft to be passed through, then the other half was raised.

 There is a small model of this type of loom in the exhibition.

Tucking (Fulling)

The woven cloth was then cleansed and processed by people known elsewhere as fullers but in Devon as tuckers. This cleans and shrinks woven cloth to create a thicker, smoother and more waterproof fabric. In early medieval times this was done by treading the cloth in stale urine. The urine was often collected from local inns! As a result the cloth shrank, tightening the weave,  and became felted. It was then stretched and reshaped by hanging it on tenterhooks in a tenterloft, with louvred windows which could be opened to let air in. Examples of these can be seen in Chapel Street in Buckfastleigh. The nap on the cloth was often raised with teasels, a spiky plant, and then shorn to get a silky finish.

Merchants and Mills

There was an increasing number of local merchants who bought fleeces from farmers and took them by packhorse to the markets. British wool was very popular with the skilled weavers in Italy and Flanders. English kings, wanting revenues to finance their wars with France, slapped taxes on it.

During the 14th century there was a new development – water power was used in tucking (fulling) mills where the cloth was pounded with hammers driven by a water wheel. Much of this development was in rural areas, the supply of water for washing and water power was crucial.

Cloth merchants owned the fulling mills, and they controlled the supply of wool, yarn and cloth, supplying spinners and weavers who worked at home.

There is no knowledge of cloth merchants in Buckfastleigh but there were in Ashburton and they probably controlled the Buckfastleigh cottage industries and tucking mills.

The cloth industry continued to be the leading industry under the Tudor monarchs. The wool merchants grew richer and more powerful. The industry became more and more regulated, from laws restricting sales of wool to the cloth industry to insisting that men and boys over the age of 6 had to wear woolly hats on Sundays.

Ashburton’s cloth merchants prospered, building gabled houses, putting money in the bank and buying up farmland. Sir Walter Raleigh had links with Ashburton. He used his influence with Elizabeth I to get a rare export licence for Ashburton merchants to export unfinished white cloth. In the next century he was not so lucky with James I; he was arrested on the Ashburton – Buckfast road, sent to the Tower of London and later executed.

Buckfastleigh was two settlements then, Lower Town, a cluster of dwellings along Fore Street, and Higher Town, along Market Street and including Sun Cross. The only recognisable building which remains from this time is the ruined Holy Trinity Church on the hill.

Serge

17th century England saw the development of new types of cloth, known as the ‘new draperies’. One of these was serge. This can be woven from different types of thread with a distinctive weave that results in a pattern with diagonal ridges, like denim. Long wool staples were needed for combing and spinning into worsted yarn. The Devon serges were tucked (fulled) so the weave was not seen. The industry was boosted by the skills of Flemish immigrants fleeing religious persecution and by a new type of spinning wheel, the Saxony wheel. This had a treadle and a ‘flyer’ which enabled the yarn to be spun and wound at the same time. For the first time it was possible to spin combed wool into a fine yarn.

One of the reasons for the popularity of serges at this time was that they were exempt from export restrictions, so Devon’s industry was less regulated and remote from the control of London merchants. Exeter thrived, both for tucking and finishing, and as trading centre.

Tanning and Fellmongery

Fellmongers deal in hides or skins, particularly sheepskins and sometimes the skins for tanning. Tanning is the process of treating skins and hides of animals to produce leather. They are ancient practices, for millennia people have worn animal skins and leather clothing and footwear. In his report the Reverent Bradford says that most of the trees in Kingswood were oaks. Oak bark was an important material needed for the local tanning industry. The names of tanners crop up in 18^th century legal documents. One is a dispute between a Buckfastleigh tanner, John Hele, and a cordwainer, presumably over leather sold to him for shoemaking.

There were two tanneries in Buckfastleigh, established before the end of the 18th century, both on the banks of the Mardle. One was situated behind Bridge Street and Silver Street, the other on part of the site now occupied by Devonia, further downstream on the Mardle. The first was owned by Samuel Furneaux of Button, the other would be bought by Joseph Hamlyn, both from families which would be of great importance to the Buckfastleigh industries in the next century.