The surprising history of the wool trade in the Cotswolds

Everywhere I look, not only on our farm but further afield, the Cotswolds reveals the evidence of its historic relationship with sheep farming. It’s in the long lines of stone walls and in the impressive Wool Churches with their distinctive towering architecture. However, it is still surprising to learn that the Cotswolds was the epicentre of the British wool trade in the medieval period. Few people have heard of the time sheep paid for a king’s ransom, or when wool became the crucial export for a lethal smuggling ring, or paved the way for modern banking.

Sitting down in front of a screen to write a new book about life on the farm can be quite daunting. It’s not that I don’t want to write, it’s my favourite occupation, but every time I start a new chapter, it seems to take me on a challenging journey.

The Cotswolds have been shaped by and for sheep for thousands of years. Photo: Sue Andrews This time, I probably created that challenge for myself. I decided it was time to share more than the daily highs and lows of rearing pedigree texel sheep in our small corner of the Cotswolds. I wanted to reveal how sheep have helped to create modern Britain from the time of the first farmers, and particularly how the Cotswolds was at the heart of the international sheep trade through the Middle Ages. This meant that the historical research added a further dimension. I’m lucky of course, that being based in the middle of the Cotswolds, history is on my doorstep. I had chance to admire and study firsthand the churches and manor houses found throughout this region, the inscriptions on tombstones and monuments, the mills and wool stores, wool markets and weavers’ cottages, and even retrace the steps of the old packhorse routes which led to London.

At the front of the book, I quote one of my history teachers, because what he said has become so apparent to me when doing my own research. He told us:

Painting by Sue’s mother Norma Waterman of smugglers’ packhorses carrying barrels of brandy back up the beaches after being exchanged for wool ‘I will be teaching you history from acknowledged books written about the period we will cover. None of these books were written by people who witnessed medieval battles, the beheading of Queens or riots during the Industrial Revolution, but all have written with authority on these subjects. Never stop questioning their authenticity!’

This may not be word for word – it was a long time ago – but I soon came to realise the truth in the statement. Often written declarations are found, read and absorbed, only to be denied by other texts – or later historians have questioned and found these so-called facts not to be feasible.

Jason and his team shearing the flock. Photo: Jason and Vicky Cox I found myself facing this very issue when everything I read declared firmly that there was never a nunnery on Minchinhampton common. That may be so, but in 1086 the Domesday Book recorded sheep as the number one agricultural commodity held by large estates and many monasteries and religious orders, and during my research, I found a thread which indicated that William the Conqueror gave land at Minchinhampton in the Cotswolds to his eldest daughter Cecily, the Abbess of Caen in Normandy. Local records, backed up by documents from the Holy Trinity Abbey in Caen, tell us nuns had around 1700 sheep grazing Minchinhampton common in the 12th century – the name Minchin derived from an old word meaning nun.

My next surprise was the discovery that wool was so valuable throughout the Middle Ages that it was worth, quite literally, a king’s ransom. The nation had to pay 150,000 marks, (about £200 million in today’s money) for the release of Richard the Lionheart in the 12th century when he was captured by Duke Leopold of Austria on his return from a crusade. This payment mainly took the form of 50,000 sacks of English wool, probably the entire wool clip from the Cistercian monasteries, who were renowned for breeding sheep with high quality wool. Textile historians have worked out this would have been the clip from between 10 and 13 million sheep!

It’s strange when you start to research something, and suddenly have doubts about the results. Ten to 13 million fleeces seems a huge number, especially when I discovered there were only about five million sheep in England at that time.

Sue checks on her flock. Photo: Crumps Barn Studio I discussed this with our shearers, Jason and Vicky Cox, when they removed this year’s fleeces. They pointed out that, while we only shear the sheep once a year, in the past when wool was at a premium, the animals would probably have been clipped twice a year, the wool quality being better than an annually sheared fleece.

How much has changed. Now we subsidise the shearing cost, which can be many times more than the wool is worth, simply because the animals would struggle to survive without their wool being removed annually.

I find all these details fascinating, and there was inevitably so much more I wanted to find out, it became very easy to bury myself in research. Happily, I have always had the real work of caring for sheep in the present day to bring me back down to earth – usually with a bump.

Sheep for a Reason by Sue Andrews is the fourth book in the If Clouds Were Sheep series, published by Crumps Barn Studio. In bookshops now.