The production of linen from flax became widespread in Roman times and from the early Middle Ages until c.1800 linen material, along with warmer woollen cloth (see DYA Feb–Aug 2021), was one of the principal woven textiles known to our ancestors.

In Britain, Europe and elsewhere the cultivation of flax and making of linen fabric were major domestic occupations, each household producing enough for its own needs. So useful and valued was linen that tithes and rents might also be paid with bolts of linen cloth. Processing and spinning were female tasks, the drawing, twisting and winding of fibres carried out by hand until the flyer spinning wheel was introduced in the late 1400s. A 17th century innovation was a treadle function, leaving the operator both hands free to guide the fibres. However, equipment varied with the time and place: for example, two-handed flax spinning wheels, devised in the late 1600s chiefly to help the poor to earn a living and worked by girls as young as six or seven years old, were popular in Scotland. Women sometimes undertook weaving too, but traditionally this was a male job and often a journeyman weaver would visit a family annually to make up linen cloth from their homespun yarn.

While linen manufacture began as a subsistence industry, conducted mainly for home use, a ‘putting out’ system also developed in medieval England, in certain port towns and locations at major crossroads with good communications. Norfolk, especially Norwich, was an early producer of finished linen cloth that was sold locally or at regional fairs. However, by the Late Middle Ages, the most famed commercial centres were Flanders, Holland and Northern France, producing luxury linens such as Toile de Reims, cambrics (from Cambrai) and lawns. Linen weavers from the Low Countries and France fleeing religious persecution in the late 1500s also settled in Britain, bringing new equipment and skills that stimulated the trade.

Different grades of linen ranged from strong, stout canvas for outdoor items like tents and sails, to lighter draping linens for bedding and clothes. Domestic uses included luxury hangings and table cloths in affluent households, and coarse sacking in ordinary homes, while most people wore linen clothes. Absorbent and hygienic, it was ideal for men’s shirts and women’s shifts/smocks – washable undergarments that formed a necessary barrier between the skin and outer clothes. Linen upper garments favoured in hot weather included men’s coats, jackets, tunics and breeches and women’s bodices, skirts and gowns. Linen was also used over centuries for many high-fashion and everyday dress accessories: coifs, caps, aprons, kerchiefs/tuckers and neckerchiefs/cravats. In general, as with all woven textiles, quality reflected social status: the wealthy could afford the finest, smoothest linen materials, while the working masses used rougher, coarser linen fabrics.