Wool - bale, sack, pack, sheet. Simply, names of containers of wool. But what do these tell and convey about the role and fortunes, past and present, of the fleece of sheep?
Of the container names, probably the most well-known is that of woolsack. This is because King Edward III had said in the fourteenth century that he wished his Lord Chancellor, while in council, to sit upon a wool bale. This came to be known as The Woolsack. It is a stuffed cushion of red cloth covering. Somewhat awkwardly, it was found in 1938 that The Woolsack was actually stuffed with horsehair: happily, the restuffing was with wool - and from all over the Commonwealth, for symbolising unity. Until 2006, the Lord Chancellor was the presiding officer of the House of Lords and he was associated with The Woolsack in the House of Lords. In 2006, the Lord Speaker function was split from that of the Lord Chancellor, and from then onwards it has been the Lord Speaker who has sat on The Woolsack in the House of Lords.
The Middle Ages was the golden age in relation to sheep and wool, so the action of Edward III in the fourteenth century does not surprise. Much of the prosperity enjoyed by England during the medieval and Tudor periods was attributable to sheep. Wool made some people very well-off.
A major, perhaps the major, sheep area of the time was the Cotswolds. Brasses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the church at Northleach, in the Cotswolds, celebrate local wool merchants and manifest what these persons owed to sheep and trade in their fleece. The feet of the persons memorialised are placed on woolpacks, very conspicuously, and some, for example to William and Agnes Midwinter and to Thomas and Joan Bushe, have sheep featuring equally prominently - alongside. The packs would have been made of canvas and, as is clearly shown, the packages would have been formed by ties at each corner. On the Bushe brass the woolpacks depicted have stitching down their centres. The woolpack of William Midwinter’s brass displays his wool mark. Critical to doing well from wool at the time, and for exporting wool, was to connect to the Staple and its system. From 1363, Calais (under English control) and known as ‘the Staple’ was the port to handle the operation of wool (and leather) exports. For England, Merchants of the Staple ‘from 1363, had been granted the exclusive right to trade raw wool in Calais’. Thomas Bushe was a Merchant of the Staple.
The story of a Carnegie Medal winning children’s novel, The Wool-Pack, written by Cynthia Harnett, is based in the Cotswolds. Harnett, who clearly did thorough research, gives an idea of the whole general process from sheep to export that would have been occurring. Midwinter, the wool dealer who resided at Northleach, is described as having chosen a place to live that was
‘…convenient for his business with the merchants of the Staple and their agents who came from London to buy Cotswold wool. His usual way was to accept their orders for so many sarplers of clipped wool, and so many wool fells, to be delivered to them at the King’s beam weighhouse at the Leadenhall in London. After a price had been agreed and third of it paid to Master Midwinter in cash, he would ride around the wolds, buy the wool from the farmers, have it packed in stout Arras canvas and arrange for drovers and pack-horses to carry it to London. Once handed over at the Leadenhall it became the business of the Staple merchants who had it weighed, paid the taxes, and saw it loaded on to ships to go to Calais. Master Midwinter was always grumbling that it was the big merchants who made the profits, and that he had to wait for the remaining two-thirds of his money until the wool found purchasers abroad, but he seemed to earn a comfortable living for all that. The fine church at Northleach, which was continually being beautified by one or other of its richer parishioners, bore witness to the prosperity of the middlemen in the wool trade.’
Clearly the fleece of sheep was an important and lucrative product in medieval and Tudor times. Overall, the period was one in which sheep were central to life and economy. Now let us turn to looking at how sheep’s fleece is handled and contained in our present time.
For two centuries or so, the UK has been in decline as a wool-producing country, as other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, came to fore in the activity. The British Wool Marketing Board [BWMB] - owners of which were UK sheep farmers - was set up in 1950: its aim was to get the best financial return on wool (see Wool article dated 1st May 2021). It became British Wool. UK sheep farmers own it. British Wool’s role is to ‘collect, grade, market and sell British wool’.
British Wool has a clear system and process for handling fleece from after shearing has been done by sheep farmer or shearer, through gathering in of fleeces to British Wool places, and then for their sorting and grading, and thence to the stages to auction and sale. The start, after shearing, is that fleece must go to a specified drop off/collection place.
Wool Sheet
Photograph: Andrew Capell
So, the outset is that the sheep farmer packs their sheep fleeces, rolled in a prescribed way, into what is called a wool sheet. These are sacks which contain c 20 rolled fleeces. Once it has reached a British Wool depot, the fleece is sorted and graded; then the fleece is packed, pressed down and compressed by a wool press, in a bale which adheres to standard size and weight. And ‘a bale of wool is … the trading unit for wool on the wholesale national and international markets’. The capacity of a bale is said to be equivalent to that of ‘some 5½ wool sheets, a weight of 330 kg (728lb)’.
The distinctions between various wool containers have been described. Maybe the woolpack - a familiar image on pub signs - has come to be seen by non-specialists, as the umbrella- or catch-all- term for a wool container. Collins English Dictionary gives two different meanings to the word: one, ‘the cloth or canvas wrapping used to pack a bale of wool; the second, ‘a bale of wool’. In their brasses in the church at Northleach, the Middle Ages wool merchants are resting their feet on woolpacks.
Perhaps a member of the general public, of nowaday - when sheep and sheep farming are not likely to be of direct relevance to them and are not any longer in life’s mainstream - does not have need to be purist, and so an attitude of ‘a pack is a pack’ can suffice. But in a professional sheep world context, clearly distinctions are very necessary and important: for example, a sheet is a very specific thing; a bale is something different, and also very specific. Of wool containers’ names from the past, the word woolsack still has current-day recognition and refers to something known generally.
Considering the ‘sheep scene’ of the Middle Ages in the UK and making a comparison with the now appearance, the superficial impression might be that, because that erstwhile heyday of the past is gone, the wool containers of today matter less commensurately - by existence or kinds. But the impression would be wrong. The firm and careful stipulations about wool containers from British Wool demonstrate professionalism of the sector: the detailed requirements about wool containers show care and attention, and demonstrate that, still today, importance, relevance and meaning, attach to wool containers and their various types.
22nd July 2021