6. A Town Built on Wool

A port grew up at the mouth of the River Humber largely down to the exporting of one simple product: wool.  English wool was in great demand on the continent especially in Flanders, now northern Belgium, where it was made into cloth.  To begin with the port was just a simple haven for mooring ships but as the 13th century wore on it grew into a town with warehouses, jetties, and inns offering accommodation and refreshment.  This town become known as Wyke upon Hull and wool was send there from places situated all along nearby rivers including York, Beverley and Lincoln. 

One of the major users of the port was the monastery at Meaux Abbey.  The monks had whole-heartedly embraced the business opportunities offered by the flourishing wool trade.  Their grange at Myton alone had enough pasture to graze 800 sheep and they had 13 granges in total.  Even during a temporary ban on the export of wool in the 1270s, the Abbot of Meaux managed to sneakily send 129 sacks abroad, showing admirable ingenuity if not the honesty you’d hope for in a man of God.  The monks were canny businessmen, using their position as a major producer to pioneer a system to sort and grade their wool and get the best prices from merchants by selling up to ten years in advance.

Even medieval merchants couldn’t escape regulations and red tape. The king controlled how much could be exported each year through a system of licensing and from 1275 custom duties were regularly collected.  To begin with most merchants trading in wool were Italian with a few from Flanders, so early Hull was probably quite a cosmopolitan place.  One trader, working for a company based in Florence, wrote a manual for his colleagues giving details of the company’s regular wool suppliers.  For wool from Meaux Abbey, he recommended paying between 7 and 15 marks a sack depending on quality.

By 1300 the monks of Meaux Abbey had around 11,000 sheep.  England as a whole was home to an awful lot of ewes, rams and lambs.  There were around 10 million of the woolly creatures frisking and gambling around, which was twice the number of people at the time.  Each year England exported around 35,000 sacks of wool, with each sack containing around 200 to 250 fleeces.  Hull exported at least 3000 sacks of wool a year and often twice that amount.  Only the ports of Boston and London exported more and while London was, unsurprisingly, way out in front, Hull was in touching distance of its regional rival Boston.

Photo:  Looking upstream on the west bank of the river Hull at the site of the medieval quays.