Sourcing the wool

A Cotswold ewe.

Unless he owned his own flock of sheep, there were several sources from which the cloth maker could buy wool: the wool merchant, the 'woolman' or 'brogger' (a middleman between producer and buyer), the fellmonger, or sometimes directly from the sheep farmer.

Wool merchants usually employed broggers to travel around the farms and assess the quality of the wool before buying and collecting it on the merchant's behalf. Broggers might also deal in yarn as well being farmers or sheep owners and often become prosperous in their own right [1].

Some of the wool merchants in the Witney such as the Wenman family area grew to be very wealthy; Richard Wenman became the richest merchant in the town during the 16th century and in 1524 paid 80% of all the tax due in Witney [2].

Fellmongers, like wool merchants and farmers, were also suppliers of raw wool but they specialised in selling 'fell wool', which was recovered from the skins of sheep that had been butchered for meat. The fellmonger would strip the wool from the skin to sell it to the master weavers and then sell the skins on to leather merchants. There were many fellmongers and wool dealers in London in the areas of Southwark, Bermondsey and Leadenhall, who took sheepskins from the meat markets of the City; they sold a considerable amount of their wool to Witney blanket makers. There were also many local fellmongers who would travel from town to town buying skins from the butchers [3]. It was probably more economical for the blanket manufacturers to buy from a travelling fellmonger than to travel around the country attending wool fairs themselves [4].

In the late 17th century Dr Plot noted that the Witney blanket makers used mainly fell wool. He also recorded that the local fellmongers made the stripped sheep skins into breeches and trousers, which they sold at nearby Bampton [5]. The Staple Hall Inn in Witney was known to be a favourite meeting point for fellmongers from Oxfordshire and surrounding areas [6].

Clare Sumner