Story of Shrewsbury Part 15: Wool Cloth Trade Town

This is the Story of Shrewsbury in the era of the town's Wool Cloth Trade when its location at the top of the navigable River Severn brought great wealth, and is is Part 15 in our sequence of videos.

Watch our video about this event below. Once the video is finished you may enjoy returning and scrolling down this page for a transcript of the video:

Video Transcript:

Part 15 - Shrewsbury - Wool and Cloth Trade Town

From 1485, Shrewsbury enjoyed almost one hundred and sixty years of peace and prosperity.

As in the 1380s, this prosperity was founded upon the importance of the River Severn.

The yellow line on the map below shows the River Severn.

The river was still navigable all the way from Bristol to Shrewsbury, Still, to this day, the lower parts of the River Severn attract many people who enjoy boats and river cruising.

And, the young at heart still try their hands at rowing flat bottomed boats!

The river, and surrounding fertile pastures, made it an important centre of the wool and cloth trade.

Flat-bottomed boats were hauled up-river by hand, and may have been based upon York boats*.

York Boats, a boat type which in Shrewsbury would have been loaded with bales of wool for the journey to Bristol.

The York boat was a usable 28 feet long, and thirty-six from tip to tip, being 8 feet wide in the middle, and 3 or 4 feet deep. It had a crew of 8 men, 6 oarsmen, a bowman and a steersman.

Unable to find any specific reference to the boats which would have traded the river in those days,

they seem likely to have been similar to the image here.

The York boat originated from the boats brought over by the Viking Norsemen to York, about 400 years previously.

The images of York boats here come from replica boats built to the same design, and used by the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada.

On the return journey down river to Bristol, each would be laden with hides, wool and woven cloth, which had been brought into Shrewsbury by farmers from close at hand and far afield, and sold to the Shrewsbury merchants.

Text generally based upon The Story of Shrewsbury, by Richard Graves, Hardwick House, Ellesmere 1993.

*The speculation on the York boat is the author's only, and not backed up by any historical text."

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