In the 1700s, weavers would be apprenticed to a master before they became a broad loom weaver. Before the invention of the flying shuttle it took two weavers to weave broadcloth.
This inventory lists the possessions of Thomas Wathen a broadloom weaver who died in the 1730s.
'In my grandfather's time the cloth weavers had their looms and did their work in houses. The broad cloth loom had always been adopted, I should say, from the first time weavers began to weave broad woollen cloth. This double handed weaving, as it was called, often brought on disputes between the parties who had to work at looms, for when one person was absent the other was obliged to remain idle, but bye and bye there was a very simple plan adopted, by which one person could work the broad loom much better than two persons before. . . The shuttle was thrown across the loom by the weaver at the left hand side of the loom; so the shuttle in the old fashioned way was continuously thrown from one person to the other. There were at that time many master weavers who were rather respectable men and who kept from 4 to 6 looms in their house - those who had room for them. The master weaver kept journeymen and women, and gave the journeyfolk about 2/3 the price of the work so as to pay himself for the loom room.'
Stroud Journal, 4 July, 1868
[Quoted in Loosley, J., 1993, Stroudwater Riots of 1825, p.12]
Further changes in weaving took place in the early 1800s.
The woven cloth was then taken for fulling.
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From January 2016, this website is managed by Stroud Local
History Society
