Coggeshall's proto-industrial revolution 1570-1610

Coggeshall is a town in north-east Essex. In the late-16th and early-17th centuries it was a major centre for cloth-making. There is good evidence marshalled by a Ph.D.thesis composed at the University of Essex in the 1990s that there were important technical advances in the production of cloth there and that there was a significant increase in its population as a result of inward migration. The additions to what is now the Woolpack Inn at the top of Church Street (and to the rear of houses further down the street) testify to these changes. After c.1610, cloth-making there went into decline, partly as a result of the Cockayne project and the development of greater continental competition and partly due to the outbreak of the 30 Years' War in 1618.

https://coggeshallmuseum.org/app/uploads/2021/04/Woolpack-Ext-Featured.jpg

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