For as long as sheep have existed in England they have been grazed on the Cotswold Hills, and some woollen products were exported as early as Roman times, the Romans having developed sheep farming around Cirencester, the second largest Roman settlement in Britain after London.
Sheep farming continued to thrive from those early times until, during the 14th Century, two major factors combined to bring the wool trade to even greater prominence. First, there was a serious shortage of labour on which arable farming relied, because various plagues, including the Black Death, had drastically reduced the population of England. Secondly, English wool was being sold to Continental Europe in large quantities, which made trading in wool a very profitable business to be in.
Within this trade boom, the Cotswolds were particularly prominent simply because some of the best wool was produced there, due in large part to a breed of sheep known as the Cotswold Lion. This breed had been developed from other native breeds to produce a sheep that gave a very heavy, long fibred fleece. In addition, a combination of ancient tracks and the good roads left by the Romans facilitated the transport of fleeces to various South Coast ports from where they were shipped to the Continent.
If the Cotswolds in general occupied an important position as regards the wool trade it is no exaggeration to say that Chipping Campden became one of the major towns in which wool was traded. Wool was brought to Campden from as far away as the Welsh Marches to be sold before being sorted, packed and sent for export by pack train.
Some measure of the size of the trade conducted in Campden can be gained from documents of the time. One letter from the son of a Merchant of the Staple at Calais ( the Staple, or licenced market, being the one place through which all English wool had to be traded, giving rise to the term 'woolstapler' for a merchant who traded in wool at that location) tells his father of having packed just over 22 sarplers (which was about 4,000 kilos) 'at Campden'. As the result of another transaction, another local merchant, William Weoley, ended up in the unhappy position of being owed £1,180 by a Florentine company, a sum which would be worth in excess of £500,000 at today's values, and which Weoley had to enlist the help of Henry VI to try to recover.
Campden's importance as a wool town, established during the 13th Century and very important during the 14th Century, began to wane during the second half of the 15th Century, a period which saw a fall in the export of raw wool in favour of a tenfold increase in the export of finished cloth. Eventually the Staple at Calais was replaced by an Inland Staple, the terms of which restricted wool dealing to specific towns in England. A petition raised in 1617 in an attempt to have Campden included as one of those specific towns failed and it was not long thereafter that wool trading in Campden disappeared altogether.
Reminders of the wool trade still exist in Campden, in particular in the form of some of the buildings. William Grevel, the son of a local man, became one of Campden's (and by repute one of England's) most successful wool traders, and in 1380 had a house built at the northern end of the High Street. The house still exists as a private house, one of its most impressive and unusual details being the two storey perpendicular bay window, a feature found on very few houses of that period, although it has been suggested by certain authorities that these windows were a later addition. There is also a memorial brass to William Grevel in the parish church of St James, the church itself having been rebuilt and beautified by the wool and other merchants of the town, as a consequence of which it is today called a "wool church".
Almost opposite Grevel's House is another building with close links to the wool trade, now called Woolstaplers Hall, built for another wool merchant, Robert Calf. Like Grevel's House this is also a private residence, but in this case the link with its original owner is the name - Calf Lane - of the road running behind it, parallel with the High Street.
September '10 Bulletin