Buckfastleigh Heritage Wool Trail
Timeline
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Maps are available from The Information Centre at the Valiant Soldier in Buckfastleigh, as well as the Wool Hub, or you can download a copy below.
For 2,500 years there has been sheep farming on Dartmoor. The wool was used by farming families to spin and weave clothing and other domestic items.
Until Industrialisation, spinning and weaving were carried out in people’s homes as an activity alongside farming the land.
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Please see the Buckfastleigh Wool Heritage Timeine below. Nowadays, the only remaining wool processing sites are in Devonia and at The Wool Hub.
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Download Heritage Wool Trail Map here:
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To help you further understand Buckfastleigh's Wool Heritage, press the following links:
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The Ghostly Weaver of Dean Combe
Glossary of Wool Processing Words
Working in the Mill, in his own words
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1085 – 86 - Doomsday book records that Buckfast Abbey had 670 sheep – many more than were needed for domestic use.
1147- Cistercian monks arrive at Buckfast Abbey. They farm the sheep and establish wool production and trade
1236 – The Abbot and monks are admitted to the Guild of Totnes Merchants
1286 – First documented evidence of Buckfastleigh. The town probably developed through the employment of local people at the Abbey. Geographically, it is well positioned between two tributaries of the River Dart, the River Mardle and Dean Burn. They provide soft water to wash the wool (and later to power the wool machinery) and a route to Totnes for selling on the finished product. At this time, Florence, in Italy, is a major purchaser of Buckfastleigh wool
1353 – Higher Town and Lower Town are established. At the request of the Abbot of Buckfast Abbey, a charter was granted to Higher Town by King Edward III for a weekly Tuesday Market in Market Street. The market, selling sheep, cattle, wool and wool commodities, continued until the early 19th century
1539 – Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. The Wool trade, once again a cottage industry, involved local families spinning and weaving at home
1800 – Town Mill is built on the site of a tin-stamping mill
1806 – Joseph Hamlyn buys a Tannery and starts wool combing by hand. He and his three sons develop a successful fellmongering business (buying sheepskins and selling on the wool and pelts separately).
1846 – The Town Mill is bought by Joseph Hamlyn. He installs a wool combing machine, putting many of the existing master combers, who oversaw the cottage industry, out of business. Over the next decades, the Hamlyn family are responsible for the industrialisation and expansion of the wool trade in Buckfastleigh.
c.1878 – There are 5 mills in the Buckfastleigh area – 2 in Buckfast (Higher Mill and Berry’s Mill) and 3 in Buckfastleigh (Town / Sage Mill, The West Mill and Churchward’s Mill which burnt down in 1906).
1920 - The Hamlyns sell the town weaving mill, woollen warehouse, tanyard, land and 94 workers’ cottages to the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) for £270,000.
1960s – Wool industry goes into decline in Buckfastleigh.
1975 / 1976 – The Woollen Mill and the Weaving Shed are closed down. Most of the Mill Buildings to the north of Chapel Street, including the iconic mill chimney, are demolished.
1983 – 42 flats are built on the site of the old mill (Hamlyn’s Way).