Leominster has a long wool history thanks to the Herefordshire Ryland Sheep, one of the oldest breeds of sheep in the UK. Ryland produce a short staple, top quality wool, soft and springy. The sheep have wool on their faces and legs which makes them look a bit like teddybears.

Lempster Ore Histories - Leominster gold - Woolly Histories

For thousands of years sheep have been part of Herefordshire & Leominster's economy, landscape, & agriculture, as well as all the related activitites such as wooltrading, cloth making, parchment making, fulling, tanning & dyeing.
Ryeland sheep are so called because they grazed on fields of rye stubble. People used rye to make bread and the 'grass' to thatch rooves. The Leominster Benedictine priory kept large flocks on its granges.
Lemster Ore was a short staple, top quality wool, short, soft and springy.

A King's Ransom. in 1193 Leominster Priory gave over the year's wool to help pay for the release of crusading Richard the Lion Heart.
Leominster Priory Gets Charter from Henry I. Leominster Priory was granted freedom from taxation for wool produced for trading in the UK and beyond. On the strength of this, Leominster set up a Saturday market. Hereford & Worcester became jealous of this success...and in 1266 the market day was changed to Friday which was not so good because of religious restrictions.
The Wool Sack was placed in the House of Lords during the reign of Edward 111, 1327-77, as a reminder of the country's source of economic power.

Ryeland Chic - in the 14th & 15th Centuries. wool and cloth merchants from Florence and Bruges came to Leominster to buy the wool to weave into richly textured & brocaded cloth.

The reign of the Tudors was the Golden Age for Leominster. During the reign of Queen Mary Leominster market was referred to as the greatest in the county. Queen Elizabeth, it is said, was given 'Lemster' wool stockings and liked them so much that henceforth she insisted only on 'Lemster' Ryeland wool. An Elizabethan observer wrote that 'among short-wools, Ryeland has pre-eminence with Leominster as the centre of its trade'.

Lemster ore, is mentioned in poems by Skelton and Ben Johnson.The Stuart king, James I, granted extra fairs to Leominster to increase the sale of wool.

Woolly defences. in Hereford, during the civil war, sacks of wool were used on buildings to cushion the impact of cannon balls.

Fashion trouble. Silk and linen were popular for clothing, and the introduction of light, easily washable cotton imports was very scary for the home wool trade. The West Country broadcloth mills favoured Ryeland until the seventeenth century when merino became popular. The slump in the wool trade caused people in Herefordshire to plant orchards and raise beef cattle.

Fall and Rise of Lempster Ore
Wool Slump 1678. Parliament passed laws to protect the wool market. People had to be 'buried in the woollen' (woollen shroud) or pay a £5 fine.George the III bred merino sheep with little success, but then concentrated on improving the Ryeland breed.
Leominster continued to make & sell cloth, as well as full, dye, tan, felt & make leather goods.
Have a look at the street names, are there others that relate to these trades. eg. Draper's Lane?
Flax for linen was also grown in the area and in 1748 a carding machine was invented in Leominster by Daniel Bourne which led briefly to cotton manufacture - the factory was burnt down in 1754.By the early twentieth century Ryeland sheep had almost died out. A Ryeland Society was established in 1903. Prize winning Ryelands were bred on the Berrington Hall estate in the 1950's. Ryelands were exported to Australia and New Zealand. However by the 1970s the breed was in danger again. This time the Rare Breeds Survival Trust came to the rescue and today Ryelands have minority breed status and can be found around Leominster and beyond.

For a list of local wool-related businesses see Alachig-Woolpack page.

A visual display of Wool history is available from Hereford Records Office.