Jumping forward around 170 years from when Exmoor Horn wool had probably last been used commercially, to 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, Exmoor Horn Wool decided to revisit weaving, and to make use of its 2/8.5 nm worsted yarn in the manufacture of blankets, now commonly called throws.

To this end a local partnership was formed with Bristol Weaving Mill, from whom three designs were commissioned, using our Heather Purple, Fern Green and Bossington Pebble yarns. With its plain grey centre surrounded by a framework of moorland colours thus uniting seashore and natural vegetation, “Mirror” was the design finally chosen to go into production. It is a bold pattern measuring 200 X 177cm before washing, 10 – 15% less afterwards.

Exmoor Horn Wool throws – Sampling

Sampling involves making a scaled-down example of the pattern on a hand loom using different types of weaving and finishes. Here you can see a 4 4 twill. We chose a washed rather than a washed-and-brushed finish.

 

Weaving April 2022 – the warp

Instructions the the loom are delivered electronically by a chain of instructions on a punched card system which you can see here suspended on a continuous plastic loop to the right of the loom. Holes punched in the plastic direct both warp (vertical)  and weft (horizontal) actions. The loop contains all the information needed for one complete throw. When creating the loop, meticulous work and diligent checking are needed,  though any mistake can easily be taped over or re-punched. You can see the detail in the second picture and the machine that makes the holes in the third.

Weaving – the weft

 Here you can clearly see the heddles, which are the the pieces of wire with a small loop in them through which the warp yarn is threaded, attached to a frame. The frame is progammed to lift according to the pattern so that the weft can pass through, thus a particular design could have many different frames.

The second picure show the weft shuttles which pull the weft thread across. If you look amongst the the warp threads you can see two silvery shuttles which look like two metal “beaks”. The left hand one delivers the weft thread halfway from left to right, then the right hand one takes it over and moves left to right to complete the transverse action. When the left hand shuttle returns to the left, the thread is cut, and this is visible beyond the selvedge.

In the third picture you can see what is called a header strip. This is not part of the pattern, but comes halfway through the weaving and enables the cloth roller to be moved before it gets too heavy to lift, which it would be if it were totally full. The header strip is cut across at mid point and stitched together again (re-joined) later because the finishing processes require all the throws to be in one continuous loop.

The last photo shows part of the throw being held up so that you can just see the start of the grey mirror at the centre.

Weaving one of out throws takes about 20 minutes per throw, but this is the quickest part of the process. Making the punched card takes a long time, and threading the heddles takes many hours.

Weaving – additional machinery

This warp winder, though new to the mill, could have come from a mill 200 years ago. Once commissioned, it will enable the warp winding to be done in-house rather than outsourced.

Two of our cones for the weft are shown on the framework in the last picture.

Devon’s Historic Cloth Trade

Wealth derived from the trade in wool and woollen cloth led to the foundation of prosperous towns with magnificent churches throughout Devon, including those in  Tiverton and Cullompton.

From mediaeval times, spinning was done in the grease in the homesteads and farmhouses of the hinterland of Exeter by women and children, with weaving done in the villages and Exeter itself. In Tudor times, Exeter was the third most important city in England after London and Norwich, and it has the oldest surviving ship canal in England, built in the fifteenth century so that cargoes could be loaded there rather than at Topsham.

Master Craftsmen in Wool

The very skilled job of weaving was controlled by the Guild of Weavers, Fullers and Shearmen whose chapel, now Tuckers Hall in Exeter, was built in 1471. A wooden-framed weaving loom had warp (vertical) threads and weft (horizontal) threads delivered by a shuttle. Before fulling, this would have made an open textured, loose weave cloth, called kersey, perhaps a bit rough, similar to Harris Tweed nowadays. However, the fulling process rendered this a far superior cloth (serge) which was thicker and smoother and thus  brought increased wealth.

Fulling

Exe Island, in the heart of the city, was a bustling place packed with mills, fulling stocks, cloth drying sheds and racks. The fulling mills were water powered using a series of leats. Firstly the cloth was scoured, to remove the sheep’s natural grease, by immersing it in a bath of soap and soda. Next the cloth (in troughs) was pounded beneath large water-driven wooden mallets called fulling stocks, with the process repeated possibly several times with the contents of the troughs changing each time. The first trough usually contained human urine, and another subsequent one might contain fullers earth, a form of dry powdered clay. Together the urine and clay and pounding would clean and thicken the fibres of the cloth, which could then be washed.

Raising the nap

By this time the cloth would have shrunk considerably, so it would be stretched and dried before having its nap raised using an array of teazel heads on a wooden board. It was then the shearer’s incredibly skilled job to trim the nap to make a smooth cloth. The very sharp shears weighed about 31 pounds, and the trimming was done over a curved table surface. The surnames Fuller, Tucker (the West Country word for fulling) and Shearer occur often in rural Devon.

Exeter loses its pre-eminence

By the early eighteenth century Exeter was very prosperous and cloth could easily be loaded at Exeter Quay for export to France, Spain, Holland and Portugal. However, with the coming of the Industrial Revolution in the north, the south west did not have the fuel resources, such as coal, that the new steam driven machinery needed, so Exeter’s pre-eminence declined. Also, mechanised spinning required pre-scoured fleece in order not to become clogged, so the whole process of cloth production changed. Mechanisation speeded the production of everyday items such as blankets.

Weaving and Fox Brothers

Fox Brothers is one of England’s oldest surviving woollen mills, starting as a cottage industry in 1745.

In 1772 Thomas Fox brought together the company’s functions of wool sorting, spinning, dyeing and weaving under one roof in Wellington.

At its most productive, Fox operated nine mills and employed nearly 5,000 workers.

During WW1 it won a War Office contract for producing 852 miles of khaki cloth for military puttees.

The company created flannel used in suit making, and held the trademark for this up to the 1950s.

Amongst the wearers of Fox Brothers luxury cloth are numbered several famous politicians and film stars, dating from an era when leading men were expected to provide their own wardrobe for the films in which they starred.

Nowadays Fox supplies fashion houses such as Gieves & Hawkes with high-end cloth, as well as the traditional Savile Row tailoring houses.

For more fascinating details about Fox Bros in an article by Penny Bayer entitled The Culm Valley Cloth Trade This article is reproduced by kind permission of Exmoor Magazine. It appeared in Issue 73 of the magazine, Winter 2015, which is still available to order here: https://www.exmoormagazine.co.uk/shop/editions/winter-2015/

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