ABSTRACT
Analysis of the animal bones from excavations in Lincoln, has suggested that while mutton only provided about 7 per cent of the city’s meat diet in the mideleventh century, the number of sheep which were slaughtered annually would have required a much larger percentage of the region’s agricultural land for grazing. Furthermore, the usual age at death of medieval Lincoln’s sheep was 4 years, that is, past the prime age for eating.1 These data can only be explained by the value of wool. To find an example of archaeological evidence for the processing of this vital commodity we can do no better than move across the country to Winchester. At the Lower Brook Street site, one of the most striking discoveries was of an open area between two medieval houses where there was a regular pattern of small stone-packed post-holes. Found associated with them and elsewhere on the site were a number of small iron L-shaped hooks (see Figure 6.1).2 The post-holes probably secured the base of tenting frames on which woollen cloth was stretched to dry after fulling-a process which strengthened cloth by soaking it in water and fuller’s earth. The iron hooks-the tenter-hooks —held the cloth in place on the frames.
