Volume 1

A topographical and historical description of North Wales / [J. Evans].

  • Evans, J. (John), active 1812.
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A topographical and historical description of North Wales / [J. Evans]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    123/518 (page 109)
    Wales, and the following statement extracted from an account drawn up by a person well acquainted with the subject, may serve as a tolerable view of the woollen trade.-56 The different articles of manufacture are webs, flannels, stockings, wigs, gloves, and socks. Webs are distinguished by the trade into two sorts, 1. Strong or high country cloth. 2. Small or low country cloth. 1. Strong cloth is made in Merionethshire, and principally in the neighbourhoods! Dolgellu and Machynlleth: at this iat« ter place a manufactory on a small scale has lately been esta- blished, a circumstance only worthy 'of notice, as forming the commencement of a change in preparing the wool, which will probably soon become general. Almost every little farmer makes webs, and few cottages la these parts are without a loom; all kinds of wool are used in- discriminately, and a considerable quantity of refuse from the wool-staplers and skinners is collected from all quarters for this purpose. During a time of peace much Kentish wool used to be imported. Many farmers however employ wool of their own growth, and this produces by far the best kind of cloth. The standard width of this article is seven-eighths of a yard; the length of a piece, or what is emphatically styled a web, is about 200 yards : this consists of two ends, each 100 yards, thus divided for the conveniency of carriage. The quality is neces- sarily of various degrees. The market for this cloth was Shrewsbury ; but it is now little more than nominally so. A mar- ket however is regularly held every Thursday, in a great room -belonging to the Drapers5 Company, into which none but the members of that corporation are admitted. To this monopoly is to be ascribed the removal of the market from Shrewsbury, as persons not of the fraternity, but who pursued the same trade, intercepted the cloth in its way to the town; so that the drapers themselves, whenever trade is brisk, are obliged to go up into the country, (as the phrase is) and buy goods wherever they can find them; at Dolgellu, Machynlleth, the villages, farm- * Sfee Aik ins's Journal of a Tour, See, ■