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Exmoor
DULVERTON AND THE CLOTH TRADE
It is hard to overestimate the value of sheep in the 16th century as wool and cloth were the
foundations of much of England’s wealth. For upland farmers, such as those of southern
Exmoor, sheep were a valuable commodity. Henry Stote of Almsworthy could put 100 lambs
on the down in 1553. As sheep were valuable for their meat as well as their wool they were
often stolen. A complex pattern of ear cuts and fleece staining was practiced to enable stray or
stolen sheep to be identified. The Joyce family of Dulverton had an elaborate system of
earmarks to identify their animals.1
By the early 16th century wool was being made into cloth locally. They are stray references to
the cloth trade in the Middle Ages. Robert le Fuller and William le Comber of Dulverton
appeared in the Exmoor forest court records of 1270 and a Dulverton fuller in the 1320s.
There is no other record of the industry before the 16th century. In the 1520s white woollen
cloths called ‘Molton whites’ were presumably made from Exmoor wool and in the later 16th
century Tiverton merchants probably handled cloth from southern Exmoor. By 1532
Dulverton church had a chapel dedicated to St Blaise, the patron saint of woolcombers.
Dulverton grew in size and wealth in the 15th and early 16th century but by the mid 16th
century this growth had slowed and the inhabitants of Dulverton claimed it was ‘in great ruin
and decay’. Possibly cloth was being handled by clothiers in neighbouring towns. The local
sheep were mainly short wool breeds and long wool or worsted for better quality cloth would
have had to be imported. Dulverton had 48 taxpayers in 1581 but apart from Humphrey
Sydenham only 8 were assessed at over £5 whereas in east and West Anstey 13 out of 27
1
SRO, Q/SR 11/88, 15/22, 81/129.
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taxpayers were assessed at £5 or more. Prosperous farmers were clearly better off than anyone
else.2
Richard Skinner, a clothier from Dulverton, marketed cloths at St James’s Fair in Bristol. He
sold for £8 eleven dozen kerseys (mediumweight woollen cloth widely made in east Devon
from the late 15th century). William Westhorne bought caps and other merchandise from a
London haberdasher in the 1550s. His son John it seems preferred the brighter lights of
Exeter, and he too could be found in London at the same time on his master’s business with
his pockets full of money.3
There was weaving in Brushford in the early 17th century probably at Exebridge, where
Martin Thomas had a weaver’s shop in 1619. Brushford weaver, William Blackmore left a
loom to his son in 1621 and in 1626 Anthony Tucker of Brushford left two looms, one was in
his hall, to his two sons-in-law. The Sydenham family owned a fulling mill in Dulverton in
1638 and three by 1654, indicating that there was plenty of locally produced cloth to be
fulled, but they were not as valuable as the corn mills.4
It is impossible to determine the size of the cloth industry in the Dulverton area. In the 17th
and 18th centuries at least 15 Dulverton men styled themselves as merchant, mercer or
clothier and eight as woolcombers. A few weavers were recorded. In some areas woolcombers
were wealthy men but in 1689 James Hobs had few creature comforts. He had 730 lb of
worsted wool and yarn, over 200 fleeces, serge worth £13, combs and utensils in his shop,
dyestuffs and a brass dye kettle, and two horses, which accounted for most of the value of his
2
SRO, A/AHT 3; Webb, A.J., Two Tudor Subsidy Assessments (Somerset Record Society 88, 2002), 110,
112—13, 188; Stoate, T L, ed., Devon Taxes 1581—1660 , 24—5; TNA, C 1/466/55; ibid. E 179/169/50;
Weaver, F W, ed., Wells Wills, 73.
3
TNA, C 1/886/25; C 1/1421/8—9.
4
SRO, Q/SR 32/92; ibid. D/D/Ct T55; DD/SF 1/3/43; ibid. A/AHT 1/7; Siraut, M, ed., Somerset Wills
(Somerset Record Society 89, 2003), 35.
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inventory. George Peppin, mercer, was better off and in 1677 purchased Slade farm from
Humphrey Sydenham. Later Peppins were gentlemen and magistrates.5
There were probably too many places producing and trading cloth for the Dulverton industry
to grow. In the mid 18th century it supplied coarse woollen cloth and blanketing to markets at
Tiverton and Crediton but by the 1780s the trade had declined. Many people were still
spinning and combing at Exford but the woollen mills of the west and north of England could
produce cloth more cheaply. In 1796 a visitor saw Dulverton fulling mills in ruins. By 1841
there was only one woolcomber in the area and his family were silk workers.6
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5
SRO, DD/SF 1/3/43, 2/67/38; DD/SP 1680/84; ibid. A/AHT 75, 129; ibid. Q/SR 111/16; Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust RO DR 5/573, cat. on A2A.
6
SRO, A/AQP 37; DD/SF 3112; Census (1801, 1811); Swete, J, Travels in Georgian Devon, ed. T. Gray, III
(Tiverton, 1999), 57; TNA, HO 107/965. For the silk trade see article under Dulverton Laundry and Silk Mill.
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