Wool church

Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford, Suffolk, a classic wool church

A wool church is an English church financed primarily by donations from rich merchants and farmers who had benefitted from the mediaeval wool trade, hoping to ensure a place in heaven due to their largesse.^[1]

Wool churches are common in the Cotswolds and in East Anglia, where enormous profits from the wool business spurred construction of ever-grander edifices. A wool church was often built to replace a smaller or less imposing place of worship, in order to reflect the growing prosperity of the community in which it was situated. Many such building projects were undertaken by a small number of families in each village or town, who used the new church building to display their own wealth, status and faith. The building of wool churches largely ended with the English Reformation and the simultaneous decline of the wool trade between 1525 and 1600.

Notable wool churches

Long Melford

The Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford, Suffolk, is widely regarded as one of the finest wool churches in East Anglia. Built largely from 1467–1497 with funding from local cloth merchants,^[2] primarily John Clopton, the structure contains magnificent stained glass from the fifteenth century, the Clopton family chantry chapel and the soaring Lady Chapel, which extends at Holy Trinity's east end.^[3] The Flushwork employed by the builders of Holy Trinity is some of the finest in England. The church stands as testimony to the wool business and its dizzying success in medieval times.^[4]

Roof of St. Edmund's Church, Southwold, Suffolk

Southwold

Another grand Suffolk church is St. Edmunds in Southwold, but it is not a "wool" church which boasts extraordinary painted chancel screens,^[5] although nearly all the medieval stained glass is gone, thanks to zealous Puritans during Cromwell's reign. Ironically, Peter Hobart, who served as assistant vicar of St. Edmunds, later left Suffolk for the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he was instrumental in the building of Old Ship Church in Hingham, Massachusetts, the oldest church in continuous use in the United States. (A more vivid contrast to England's wool churches can hardly be imagined. Old Ship Church is a hand-hewn wooden structure with a modified Hammerbeam roof and not a shard of stained glass in sight.)^[6]

Cawston

St. Agnes' Church at Cawston, Norfolk is also well known as a "wool church." Its fifteenth century nave and western tower were financed by Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, who had grown rich from the wool business.^[7] As is typical of a 'wool church,' St. Agnes's scale is far grander than was required by a modest medieval village. And the Earl of Suffolk spared no expense in embellishing the interior: the de la Pole crest is carved above the entrance; French stone was used for the tower and nave; the roof, although the typical wooden East Anglian style, is an elaborate hammerbeam confection with elaborate angels curving off the beam ends, and a trio of angels on outstretched wings hovering over each clerestory window.^[8]

Clearly in East Anglian medieval times, sheep furnished the currency for architectural atonement.

Worstead

At St. Mary's Church at Worstead, Norfolk, the village which gave its name to the cloth, the village church built by local weavers in the fourteenth-century towers over the small community, its tower jutting strikingly above the landscape. In other East Anglian communities, the wealth from wool poured in: Wymondham, Diss, North Walsham, East Harling, Attleborough, Aylsham. The churches basked in the refracted glory of wool wealth. Even in Norwich, which boasts more medieval churches than anywhere in Europe, it was wool money^[9] that got the stone lifted, the glass stained and the panels carved. Norfolk wool was best suited to heavier cloth, and so Norwich and Norfolk eventually gained almost a complete monopoly on worstead. Those profits fueled an extraordinary ecclesiastical building boom.

Lavenham

St. Peter and St. Paul, Lavenham, Suffolk

At Lavenham, Suffolk, the striking Perpendicular church is one of England's largest parish churches. With its monumental flint and limestone tower, the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, largely rebuilt in the fifteenth century in the prevailing style, dominates the small weaving village. It was financed largely by donations from two families; the Springs and the de Veres.^[10]

References