Picture Library - Wool and Cloth Trades

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Wool and cloth trades

Wool was medieval England's most valuable export. The tax on the wool trade provided the crown with a regular and buoyant income. Brasses to the woolmen - the middlemen in the trade - are found in greatest number in the main wool-growing areas, notably Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire. Good examples are to be seen at Chipping Campden, where William Grevel is described as 'the flower of the wool merchants of all England' and Northleach . Wool merchants are often depicted standing on bags of wool, often showing their merchant's mark, or with a sheep as their footrest. Thomas Bushe's brass at Northleach has in the canopy spandrel the arms of the Staple of Calais on a shield with sheep lying beneath a bush (an obvious rebus) below. By the fifteenth century, much of the wool clip was being made into cloth in England. A good example of a clothier's brass is that of Thomas Horton at Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire.

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