Middle Ages

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Working Life

Guilds

Cloth

The Oracle

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Cloth making

In the middle ages, cloth making became the most important trade in the town of Reading. With wool from the large herds of sheep in Berkshire, Hampshire and the Cotswolds, a ready supply of water for washing and dyeing in the River Kennet, good transport to London along the River Thames and a supply of cheap labour from the continually growing population of the town, Reading was the ideal place for the cloth industry. The wool was brought to Reading and then made into cloth, a task which involved many different jobs. The raw wool had to be washed, carded, spun, woven into lengths of cloth dyed, cleaned and thickened, dried, sheared, smoothed and rolled into bales. A family might take in some wool, and with all the children helping, do most of the first parts of the process in their own home.

• Shearer Clipped wool of sheep
• Carder Untangled the wool
• Spinner Spun the wool into thread
• Weaver Wove the thread into cloth
• Fuller The cloth would be beaten under water to make it shrink, giving it strength and thickness, and cleaned with Fullers earth
• Dyers The cloth would now be dyed another process using water.
• Clothier

The cloth industry was in being by 1220 when there is evidence of a fulling mill and dyeing grounds on the Kennet.

Cloth making was the important industry in the town throughout the Middle Ages and Tudor times. It was controlled by the Guild, which gained another charter in 1487 from Henry VII. The Mayor now had control over the making of cloth in Reading, and checking that it was of good quality. A symbol of the guilds power was that it had its own set of weights used to measure the cloth, which was unusual in the Middle Ages.