Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 1 (2022), pp. 96–116

‘Frome water’, a tributary of the River Avon, flows through a valley of woodland, arable and pasture on the Somerset-Wiltshire border, between the towns of Frome and Bradford-on-Avon. In the early modern era, this rural district was nationally important as a broadcloth-manufacturing centre. At least eleven fulling mills operated along the river, and thousands of men, women and children earned at least part of their income from the cloth trade with London and the continent. Using data drawn from contemporary account books and other surviving documents, this article describes the valuable business built up in the 1620s and 1630s by the clothier John Ashe in and around the small village of Freshford in Somerset, traces his growing wealth through the decades of Civil War and Interregnum, and considers his enduring impact on this rural society. 

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