Pat Coulter explores the history behind Cotswold Woollen Weavers
This lovely area made its fortune through sheep. Pat Coulter finds out how on a sunny day out.
THE Lion of the Cotswolds” suggests this visitor attraction could be a big game reserve in the West Country. But it’s a much gentler creature I’m in search of – the same that inspired the name Cotswolds, which refers to sheepcotes within open countryside. This “lion”, you could say, is in sheep’s clothing!
Filkins is refreshingly off the trampled tourist track, hidden away from those familiar honeypot Cotswold villages. However, its character is just as beguiling as its more popular bustling neighbours.
Tucked away in the village, amongst a quirky array of handsome 18th-century Cotswold stone buildings, lies the unique and fascinating Cotswold Woollen Weavers.
It’s a celebration and wonderful showcase of an ancient craft still practised to this day on traditional looms.
Quality textiles, beautiful tailored clothes and throws made from the finest British wool are sold to discerning and appreciative customers who flock here from around the world. But it’s so much more than a pop-in rural destination shop.
Owner Richard Martin describes the Cotswold Woollen Weavers as “a museum of textile curiosities, an ‘explorium’ full of delights you thought you’d never see again, let alone buy, a decent coffee shop where you can sit and read the papers, an orchard to laze about in the sun. It really is a special place.”
What makes it even more special, admission is free!
Richard moved to the redundant farmyard buildings here in Filkins back in 1982, after his family’s first successful foray into textiles at an abandoned mill in West Wales during the 1970s.
In the past, the family’s fine cloth was sold wholesale to Burberry and Ralph Lauren. Richard’s eight-strong team at Filkins still design and make a lot of the fine woollen clothing on sale, but most of the actual weaving is now carried out in Yorkshire.
Before learning more, I say hello to Richard’s two resident Cotswold Lion sheep, Andy and Amos. They sport the prized long, thick-set, lustrous wool indicative of the breed with a mane-like topknot which gives them a regal air.
It’s easy to tell the two of them apart, as poor Amos has a distinguishing feature after getting himself into a terrible scrape when he was chased into a stream by a dog. Poor Amos spent a very uncomfortable night there before being rescued. It took three men to lift him out of the water because of the weight of his sodden fleece. Bizarrely, by this time his ears had been nibbled away by crayfish!
I join Richard in the coffee shop as he gives one of his talks on the heritage of Cotswold wool, ever-popular with WI and Probus groups. This time it’s a group all the way from a country which knows a thing or two about sheep – Australia.
Cotswold sheep have roamed the Cotswold Hills for 2,000 years. Their fleece paid for the mellow limestone churches, manor houses and Cotswold villages. It was said “half the wealth of England rides on the back of the sheep”.
The Cotswolds have been famous for many generations, not only for their vast flocks of sheep roaming the hills but also the cloth woven from their wool.
Many a Cotswold village resonated to the “clack” of
the flying shuttles as the diligent, skilful weavers sat at their giant wooden looms.
Mostly they worked for absentee merchants who controlled the trade. It meant the merchants made their fortunes with the workers often poorly paid.
Often, to eke out a living, the weavers would cut the surplus ends of cloth and pass them to their wives who would sew them together, creating patchwork quilts to sell at village fairs.
It’s fascinating to discover that local history is literally woven into some of the beautiful textiles from the softest merino wool baby blankets to caps, headscarfs and lambswool throws.
The Oxfordshire Check is favoured by former Prime Minister and Oxfordshire MP David Cameron. The distinctive colours within the check tell the story of the county in its unique cloth.
The watery blue stripe is indicative of the Thames flowing through the fresh green of the rolling countryside, and then through Oxford, with the dark blue of the university and the Oxford grey of the city streets and ancient alleys.
The traditional shepherd’s blanket has been revived by the Cotswold Woollen Weavers. It was a tough life for shepherds tending their flock in all weathers, lying by night huddled in rough, home-spun woollen blankets.
It was a custom to sew a coin into the edge of these blankets to provide an emergency fund if cut off from home and money had run out.
On sale in the shop you’ll find shepherds’ blankets with a reproduction hammered King Charles I threepence tucked into a little pocket, a courteous nod to a bygone era.
In all, a trip to the Cotswold Woollen Weavers is a “shear” delight! n