26 CONTEXT 187 : MARCH 2026 As part of an exploration of sites on the Heritage at Risk Register1, I have been fortunate to have access to a private building that was once central to the thriving Wessex cloth industry, the Drying House at Willow Vale. This Grade II scheduled monument is a circular stone tower in a garden in Frome, Somerset. It is believed to have been used for the drying of dyed wool, as part of a larger dye works complex, linked to the cloth trade that was so important to the West Country from the 15th to the 19th century.. The town of Frome, taking its name from the River Frome, is situated at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills. It was first recorded in an edict issued by the Pope in 701, with Saxon kings having a palace here. Frome was prominent in the Saxon Kingdom of Wessex and used as a base for hunting in the adjacent Forest of Selwood. It hosted a Witangemot in 934, and a market charter was granted by 1239. The wool trade in Frome was well established by the 15th century, and during the 16th century the three industries of wool, cloth and dyeing contributed to the growth of the town’s post-medieval economy. The rise and fall of the dyeing industry in Frome goes hand in hand with the fortunes of the West Country wool industry. In the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, the revolutionary use of waterpower in the fulling process meant This 1774 map of Frome shows the site of the dyeworks and drying tower (circled in blue) in relation to the river and rack fields (circled in red). 1 As part of PGCert in conservation of the historic environment at Birmingham City University 2 Ponting, K.G. (1971) TheWoollen Industry of South-west England, Adams and Dart, Bath. 3 Griffiths, C. (2017) ‘Woad to This’ and the Cloth Trade of Frome, Frome Society for Local Study, Frome. ELIZA GRAY Remains of the West Country wool industry One of the last remaining unaltered, round drying houses in Somerset and Wiltshire illustrates a period in the industrial history of Frome and the West Country. that the cloth industry moved from within the towns to the rivers in the countryside. This in turn led to the breaking of the stronghold of the guilds in the towns. Consequently the three main areas for wool cloth manufacturing at this time became the West Riding of Yorkshire, the south-west counties of Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire and all of East Anglia. In 1565, cloth made up 78 per cent of all exports, with the Tudor era being the golden age of undyed broadcloth exported to Europe to be finished2. Broadcloth remained the main product of the English wool textile industry for nearly 500 years and was closely connected to this successful period of trade in the West Country. As these trades continued to grow in the West Country during the 17th and 18th centuries, the need for specialist dye houses grew, and Frome was a centre for this expanding process. There are clear references to local clothiers developing their own specialist dyehouses3 and references to the growing of woad, a plant used extensively as a source of blue dye, can be seen in place names in Frome, such as ‘woadground’ in the 17th century. Early dye works were often on the banks of a river so that washing was easier, and adjacent to fields where the cloth could be stretched and dried on racks in a process called ‘tentering’.
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