History of Frome Town

Frome is the fourth largest town in Somerset with a population, that has doubled in the last forty years, to about 27,000. Much of the 'new' growth in housing has been achieved by building estates on the town's outskirts, so the centre is still relatively unaffected and thus much dates from the 1700's.
In the early 1700’s Frome was an important commercial centre, its prosperity built on the wool and cloth trade. At that time the population was some 10,000, four times larger than Bath for example, which gives some indication of the wealth within the town at that time.

It is often stated that Frome is one of those places that although once prosperous has been saved by neglect, by that it is meant that over the last 200 years much of the development has been relatively small with no whole scale change to the basic fabric of the old part of the town. Through lack of development, Frome now has more buildings listed as being of architectural or historic value than any other town of its size in Britain.
The title 'Founder of Frome' has been bestowed on the Anglo-Saxon abbot, Saint Aldhelm (c.639-709), He has been described as the first English scholar, being a popular teacher, song writer, poet, bishop and counsellor, someone who initiated the building of churches and monasteries. The town logo or should one say emblem seen at the head of the page, is depiction of the man himself, St. Aldhelm.

St Aldhelm was related to the King of the West Saxons, from which derives the name Wessex, formerly the name of the kingdom of the West Saxons covered by the English counties of Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire). His early education was undertaken, under the Irish monk, Maeldubh, at Malmesbury Abbey. From Malmesbury, Aldhelm went to the renowned school at Canterbury in Kent where he trained as a Benedictine monk under Saint Adrian, an advisor to the archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore. From Cantererbury he returned to Malmesbury to become the head of the school and then abbot of the monastery from about 675. To spread the faith and improve the education of the Saxon peasantry, Aldhelm, with a group of monks, settled in a clearing by the edge of the great forest of Selwood, on a hillside overlooking a river. Some say that place was simply known by the Saxon word for river but others say it derived from a Celtic word, ffraw meaning fair or brisk, whence Frome. Whatever the root of the name may be, the place was to become the basis of the town today known as Frome.
The settlement of Frome began to grow and became more and more important in the region such that 400 years later it was host to a Witan or Great Council of the Realm and was assessed by the conquering Normans. The Doomsday Book reveals that by 1086 Frome was a thriving town with a market and three mills, with the title to the manor held by the King and the forest of Selwood remaining a Royal hunting forest.
What made Frome the relatively large prosperous medieval town was the wool industry, as at that time the export of wool was the chief source of revenue for all concerned, not least the crown. Many a campaign was fought on the proceeds of wool during the middle ages. From simply being a trade centre for wool, the town progressed into cloth production thus adding to the income and prosperity of the Frome in general. As the towns reputation for good cloth grew, fleeces from further afield, such as Salisbury Plain and the Cotswold Hills, started to come to the area for combing, spinning and weaving. Frome was well place to take advantage of this growth with its readily available energy source, namely the river Frome, that over the centuries has powered many a mill.

The peak of the local woollen industry came in the period from the 1500s to the 1700s, the town growing rapidly to the population of about 10,000. In 1713 Frome had 54 tradesmen busy in the cloth trade, compared with 25 at Bradford in Yorkshire, the later centre of the wool industry, and only 4 in Trowbridge. In addition to those in Frome, the surrounding villages provided work for another 33 businesses based in woollen trade. In 1745, the trade with London amounted to 1000 lengths of cloth dispatched to the metropolis at the rate of one wagon per day. A large proportion of the older buildings in the town date from this period, preserved because the bulk of the industry transferred to the north of the country shortly afterwards and Frome never recovered its former glories. Signs of the old wool business still exist in local names. Cut Hedges where Gould's Ground now is was where the cloth was laid out to dry in the wind and the hedges were cut to allow the air to move freely over the fabric. Similarly, Rack's Close was where the dyed cloth was laid out on racks to dry. A popular dye until the coal tar dyes were brought in as the local industry declined was the blue dye, woad, reputedly the colour used by the ancient Britons who faced up to Caesar. A local area until the Trinity was built was called the Oad Ground (Woad ground) showing that the dye was indeed grown there. During the Napoleonic wars the demand for woollen cloth for uniforms, especially blue cloth, led to a short suspension of Frome's textile decline.
One of the old drying towers used to dry dyed cloth, has recently been converted to house the touest information center.
( Further Details of Drying tower )

As the wool trade declined, Frome began to embrace the new engineering industries. From about 1685 Cockeys had cast church bells in Frome and at the beginning of the nineteenth century it turned to casting iron components for the gas industry. The spin off from this last venture meant that Frome in 1832 had gas lit streets. A Frome watchmaker, John Webb Singer, can be said to epitomize the saying from small acorns might oaks grow, as from a small commission to make a pair of brass candlesticks for a local church, found there was a demand for base casting and finished up with a large foundry. In the 1880s Singers started casting statues, many of which today are famous, though by sight not by association with Frome. The Statue of Justice at the Old Bailey was cast at Singers, as was the statue of Boadicea on London's Embankment, King Alfred at Winchester and the lions of the Rhodes memorial in South Africa.
A similar serendipitous event was the setting up of a small printer's press by a chemist (pharmacist), William Langford, on Bath Street requiring labels for his medicines. From this small nativity was to grow Butler and Tanner, the renowned publishing, printing and bookbinders, which now is now has a factory down by the railway station, but for many years was housed in Byzantine multi-story factory in Trinity area of town. Only this year, 1999, has work began on utilizing this substantial building, after years of neglect, by converting it for housing. Frome was also home to the household name, Cuprinol, the wood based preservative manufacture bur this production has now been relocated to other sites

(Further Details.of Engineering in Frome )

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