Gents Mag 1853 part 1 p.489
|
|
|
|
|
introduction | ||
|
|
list, 3rd qtr 19th century | ||
|
|
previous page
next page |
||
|
Gentleman's Magazine 1853 part 1 p.489
[cele]berrimum. Speed and Camden repeat the same eulogium; and Drayton re-echoes it in the lines, --- where Kendal town doth stand, For making of our cloth scarce match in all the land. Camden adds further that the townsmen of Kendal exercised an extensive merchandise of woollen cloths throughout all England.* It would, perhaps, be as little expected that the principal market of these Westmerland clothiers should have been at Cambridge; yet so it was. A fair annually held in the outskirts of that town, called Sturbridge Fair, proved so convenient as a central point of concourse for the manufacturers and retailers throughout the kingdom, that for some centuries it was the greatest fair in England, and especially for cloth.† So much was the mart indebted to this branch of trade that Fuller, in his History of Cambridge University, relates a story that Sturbridge Fair originated with the clothiers of Kendal, who first exposed there for sale some cloths which had been accidentally wetted on their journey to the South. This anecdote is scouted by a subsequent historian of Sturbridge Fair as having been invented only for the ears of silly rustics: still, if the fair itself was not originated in this way, its great repute for cloth may possibly have arisen from some such circumstance. The staple produce of the Kendal looms was evidently of that coarse quality which was required in large quantities for the lower classes of the community. We know from various passages of old authors that it was consumed especially by foresters and countrymen, being so commonly dyed of a green colour, that the name of the place was ordinarily used to express that colour.‡ Skelton, in his poem |
|||
|
* We find, however, no recognition of the above facts
in Mr. C. Knight's "Pictorial History of England, being a
History of the People, as well as a History of the Kingdom."
In a chapter on the "national industry," Vol.ii. p.192.
edit.1839, it is stated that "When the woollen manfacture
first began to assume importance as the great staple of the
nation, it was chiefly carried on in London and the
immediate neighbourhood, but it soon spread itself into the
adjacent counties of Surrey, Kent, Essex, Berks, Oxford, and
subsequently into Dorset, Wilts, Somerset, Gloucester, and
Worcester. These were the counties which produced the best
wool, and in the imperfect state of the means of
communication, the manufacture naturally became located
within reach of the raw material. The woollen manufacture
had not yet found its way into Yorkshire, though in
Devonshire, the wool of which was of an inferior
description, it had existed long before the present period."
The "period" intended we understand to be that of the kings
of the house of Lancaster, commencing in 1399: some time
before which, in 1336, the weavers of Brabant who had
settled in York are mentioned (Rymer's Foedera, iv. 723). We
may conclude that Anderson and Macpherson, the authorities
relied upon for commercial matters by the compilers of the
Pictorial History, are not very accurate in their details of
the early annals of the woollen manufacture. Nor do we find
on consulting Mr. Bischoff's History of Wool and the Woollen
Manufactures, 1842, 8vo. that either he, or Smith in his
"Memoirs of Wool," has admitted the manufactures of Kendal
to their due place in the subject. There is, however, an
agreeable article on Kendal and its Manufactures in No.86 of
Dickens's Household Words, Nov. 15, 1851: but we apprehend
not fully authenticated in the early historical details.
What is the authority for setting forth John Kemp as the
founder of the Kendal woollen manufacture?
† A spacious square, formed by some of the largest booths, was occupied by woollen-drapers, tailors, and others concerned in the cloth trade; and always retained its ancient appellation of the Duddery, which is mentioned in connection with a house of lepers called the "Fratres de Sterebridge, ubi nunc domus vetus eo loco ubi nunc pars fori lanarii, Angl. the Duddery." (Leland's Collectanea, i. 444, from the Liber Bernwelensis coenobii.) Carter, who published his short account of Cambridgeshire just a hundred years ago (in 1753), after the trade of Sturbridge fair had begun to decline, says that 100,000l. worth of wool had been known to be sold in less than a week's time in the Duddery. ‡ In an old poem on the battle of Flodden Field are these lines:- With him the bows of Kendal stout, With milke-white coats and crosses red; upon which Mr. Cornelius Nicholson, in his Annals of Kendal, 8vo. 1832, p.26, makes |
|||
|
|
next page | ||
|
gazetteer links
|
|||
|
|
-- Kendal | ||
|
|
|||
Lakes Guides menu.