|
|
For
centuries, the economy of Devon was heavily dependent on the woollen industry.
Daniel Defoe wrote an account of a tour he made of "The Whole
Island of Britain" in 1724. He described what he saw in Devon:
"An infinite number of cottages or small dwellings are found,
in which dwell the workmen who are employed in wool, the women and
children of whom, are always busy carding, spinning etc. so that no
hands being unemployed, all can gain their bread, even from the youngest
to the ancient: anyone above four years old works." |
 |
A hand
card was a block of wood with a handle on one side and angled metal
spikes, set in leather, on the other. Dragging the card through the raw
wool sorted out long fibres from short, producing rolls ( or
"cardings") about a foot long and an inch thick. This work was
usually done by children.
Using a spinning wheel, the mother would turn the cardings into
continuous thread. This thread was then woven into cloth by the father
using a wooden loom.
|
|
Woman spinning
(
1835)
Her hand card
lies on the ground by the stool |
|
Completed lengths of cloth were picked up from the cottages by
merchants called clothiers using pack-horse trains to take the
completed pieces of cloth to wool markets in towns such as Crediton and
Exeter.
|
|
For
centuries, the production of woollen cloth was a thriving home industry.
In Devon, sheep were bred to meet the needs of the local wool trade
which chiefly produced a cloth called serge and so all sides of
the rural economy became totally interdependent. By 1800, there were
known to be at least a quarter of a million hand looms in Britain
and a large proportion of these were in Devon and Yorkshire. |
|
Then along came technological innovations. After Arkwright's invention
of the "Spinning Jenny" came the flying shuttle,
power-loom weaving and the carding machine, all of which not only
hastened weaving processes - they increased productivity beyond the
clothier's wildest dreams.
|
 |
|
The Spinning
Jenny |
|
Almost
overnight, the clothiers turned entrepreneurs. They looked for ample
sources of rapidly-flowing water to provide power to drive steam engines; they
sought out flat plots of land as close as possible to these rivers; they
built factories as quickly as they could get them up and then filled
them with as much machinery as they could afford. One of the places they
found in Devon to be ideally suited to their purpose was Buckfastleigh
and in the early years of the 19th century, the people who were lucky enough to
live there, prospered. But in the villages nearby it was quite a
different story, as a home industry which had stood them in good stead
for centuries simply collapsed.
|
Click here to
continue
|
