In the October issue we examined the importance of animal skins to early man and the leather/fur clothes and accessories worn in Anglo-Saxon England. Subsequently the leather-working industry advanced, becoming a key occupation, with leather goods essential to medieval life.

Preparing fresh animal skins for the manufacture of leather products was complex and physically demanding. The art of tanning (preserving and softening skins) using tree bark extracts was practised by the Middle Ages, when large quantities of leather were processed, chiefly for shoe-making and saddle/harness-making. Both trades were crucial to early local economies and tan yards a familiar sight and smell, usually situated by rivers or streams. Initially tanning occurred mainly in villages, nearby farmers supplying cattle hides, while town-based tanners bought from abattoirs or butchers who slaughtered their own animals.

The quality of finished leather goods depended on the hide/skin used and the skills of both tanner and currier. Historically the tanner and currier were separate but complementary trades: when the tanner had finished removing hair, fat, dirt and grease by soaking, steeping in oak tannin and other noxious fermenting solutions – an unpleasant and laborious process that could take at least a year – the currier took over the remaining preparations, stretching and finishing the tanned leather, making it strong and malleable for use by saddler or cobbler. Highly-trained, skilled craftsmen, curriers handled various hides and skins including deer, ox, cow, calf, sheep, goat and pig: they often ran their own business but worked closely with manufacturers who bought the prepared leather. Typically a currier’s product was taken by relatives in the village, for crafting into footwear, belts, gloves, harnesses and saddle parts.

Different skins required particular treatments and were suited to different end products, so medieval tanneries and curriers might specialise in processing certain kinds of leather. Broadly, calf-skin was a fine-grain leather, used for bookbinding, fashionable gloves, bags and pouches; cow hide was tough and durable, used for shoe-making, harnesses, leather bottles and drinking vessels; soft, pliable goat/kid skin was ideal for luxury articles; sheep-skin was a coarser leather used, for instance, for parchment; domestic pig-skin was a unique leather sometimes used for purses and bags. So important was the medieval leather industry in Britain that tanners, curriers and various leather-workers’ trade and craft guilds, including cordwainers (shoe-makers) and glovers, were formed as early as the 1100s and 1200s in London and elsewhere, namely in Oxford, Andover, Bath, Bristol, Leicester, Coventry, Hereford, Chester, York, Dublin and Waterford.