The supply of Cotswold wool locally was important for the early development of the industry. However, with specialisation in the production of fine broad cloth, imported Spanish wool had largely superseded local wool by the end of the seventeenth century. Although Cotswold wool was being used for coarse cloth until the middle of the eighteenth century, its use was continually diminishing and when sold at the Tetbury and Cirencester markets, much of it was destined for Yorkshire.

Changes in the metabolism of Cotswold sheep due to cross breeding, caused the bulk of the animal to increase making the wool coarser and by the end of the nineteenth century, suitable only for army blankets. Other English wools used in Gloucestershire included those from Hereford, Ross and Leicester and during the nineteenth century, German, Australian and South African wools were being imported.

Water

The factor which above all determined the location of cloth mills was the existence accessibility of fast flowing streams. These derive locally from springs which emerge between the strata of Cotswold sand and upper lias clay and between middle and lower lias clays. During the thirteenth and fourteenth century, the process of fulling cloth changed by the adapting of water powered wheels used in corn grinding.

From at least the eleventh century, corn mills were sited along local streams to serve the agricultural community. Hence several corn mills became fulling mill sites which became the focus for expansion and factory development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Water powered fulling superseded the method of "walking" a cloth, and indeed, the technological transition was so significant, in terms of the distribution of the cloth industry and the production of cloth, that it has been referred to as "an early industrial revolution". Water was a source of energy, and was also essential for working and dyeing cloth, several mills higher in the Coombe valley became dyeworks, using water that was unpolluted by town waste, and whose temporary hardness could be easily removed by heat.

Fuller's Earth

Fullers' earth is a clay. It was dug locally and used as a detergent in the process of 'scouring' as cleansing a cloth.

Teazels

Teazels are a type of thistle but more refined.
The original method of raising the nap on cloth, generally called rowing, was to damp it and hang it over a bar while a man drew a frame known as a 'handle' set with teazles over it. The choice of teazles needed care for it was easy to ruin a cloth by beginning with new heads which would tear the substance.

The quality and cultivation of teazels was critical and selection required care and experience. Suitable teazels were grown on richer clay soils around Cromhall, Filton and Almondsbury.

Organic Dyes

Several organic dyes were locally available in abundance and were of economic importance until the eighteenth century.

During the eighteenth century these dye stuffers were largely superseded by foreign imports, which in time gave way to coal-based dyes (accidental discovered by Perkins in 1856)

Dyer's Greenwood - Genista tinctoria - native plant of rough clay pastures more likely to find in the valleys- the whole plant was once used for dyeing, making yellow dye - local name dyer's broom.

Dyer's Rocket - Reseda luteola - A yellowish-green - a Cotswold plant though not as common as Reseda lutea, often found growing togther - colour is strong and permanent, with addition of alum, many shades can be obtained.

Woad - Isatis tinctoria

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