INDUSTRIES The industry, therefore, was well established in the town at an early period of its history. The ' fowlling ' or fulling-mill is mentioned in the years 1540 and 1553.* We have seen that the cloth trade fur- nished much industry, not only to the towns, but also to the surrounding villages. Every cottage had its spinning wheel, and every week the clothiers used to send out their men among the villages, their packhorses laden with wool, and every week they returned, their packs laden with yarn ready for the loom. The village of East Hendred was a prosperous clothing centre before the dissolution of monasteries. There is a picturesque field near the church where terraces still remain, which was used for drying cloth, and a piece of land called ' Fulling Mill Meer,' where, according to the statement of Mr. Woodward, rector in 1759, ' ancient people remembered the ruins of a mill in the stream hard by.' 2 This fulling-mill is mentioned in 1547, and was held of the king by John Tyson, alias Eston. In the church are brasses to the memory of Henry and Roger Eldysley, ' mer- catores istius ville,' and of William Whitwey, ' pannarius et lanarius,' both of the fifteenth century. The village had also a flourishing fair, which was held on the Downs, and reached from Scutchamore Knob to Hendred, along a straight green road once known as the Golden Mill. It was abolished by James I. in 1620. All this testified to the industrial importance of the little village in former days, and of the flourishing manufacture of cloth carried on there. We have now entered upon the period of the decline and fall of Berkshire's once great industry. The days of the great clothiers had passed away. They attained to great honour and wealth, and left noble legacies to the towns that gave them birth. One dis- tinguished clothier exclaimed : I thank God, and ever shall ; It was the sheep that paid for all. The times had however changed, and prosperity had deserted the Berkshire looms. Daniel Defoe in his Tour through Great Britain, published in 1724, wrote of New- bury : ' The town of Nubery is an ancient cloathing town, though now little of that part remains to it, but it still retains a manu- facturing genius, and the people are greatly employed in making shalloons, a kind of stuff, which though it be used only for the lineing and insides of men's cloathes, for women use but little of it, nor the men for anything but as above, yet it becomes so greatly worn, both at home and abroad, that it has increased to a manufacture by itself, and is more consider- able than any single manufacture of stuffs in the nation. This employs the town of Nuberry, as also Andover, and abundance of other towns in other centres.' Still the cloth trade lingered on. The wars of the eighteenth century had a dis- astrous effect upon the industry, paralysing trade, and diminishing the numbers of workers, who were reduced to great poverty. In order to revive the industry, the Weavers' Company issued an advertisement in 1792, setting forth that they had agreed to dis- annul their powers and right of settling the price which any person in the trade shall give for making any kinds of goods and giving free liberty for strangers to come into the town and to manufacture silks, muslins, cottons, linen, worsted, etc., without any interference from the Company of Weavers. The announcement concludes with the follow- ing paragraph : ' Newbury is a town well supplied with water, and an extraordinary good market to supply its inhabitants with every accommoda- tion that can make life comfortable, and it is well situated to carry on an extensive trade, having an easy conveyance to and from Lon- don by the River Kennet.' 3 But this action of the Weavers' Company came too late. Not all the attractions of the town, nor the abandonment of an obsolete monopoly, could attract the trade to its former haunts. One Newbury clothier, how- ever, accomplished a task which, as far as we are aware, no other manufacturer ever con- ceived or attempted, and that was to convert wool cut from the sheep's back into cloth and fashion it into a coat between sunrise and sunset on a summer's day. This difficult task was accomplished by Mr. John Coxeter, a cloth manufacturer at Greenham Mills in the early years of the last century. Mr. Money, the historian of Newbury, has told the story of this achievement in his history of the town, and only a brief account need now be given. Mr. Coxeter employed 100 hands in his mill at Greenham, and introduced there the best and more improved machinery. His mill was turned by water, and stood partly on the site of the present lanyard and flour mill. Sir John Throckmorton had such confidence in the man that in the year 1811 he wagered 1,000 guineas that between sunrise and sun- set a coat should be made from wool that had 1 Hist, of Wallingjord, ii. 255, 419. 8 Hundred of Wanting, by W. K. Clarke, p. 132. i 393 3 Money, Hist, of Newbury, pp. 242, 243. 50
