CFD

Fabrics

From fragments of cloth found attached to metal objects or in water, we can determine the types of fabrics used for clothing in the Dark-Ages.
These are:

Wool
Linen
Silk

Wool

At this period of history the majority of clothing is made of wool. Wool is readily available from sheep, which are kept for it and for milk and eventually meat. Sheep at this time were a variety of colours - brown, grey, white and black, thus giving a fair variety of coloured and patterned fabrics.

These are Soay Sheep, they are a rare ancient breed thought to be very similar to Anglo-Saxon sheep. They are smaller than modern sheep and have coats ranging in colour from cream, brown, grey and black.

In order to fully understand the clothing of the time, I think it helps to have an idea of the work that would have gone into making an outfit - compared with today. The clothes really did 'make the man'. Here are some of the processes involved in making woollen cloth:

the sheep is shorn
the wool is 'picked' to remove any dirt, grit and unmentionable bits
the wool is washed
the wool is combed
the wool is spun
(the thread can be dyed)
the thread is woven into cloth
(if not dyed earlier the cloth can now be dyed)
the cloth is cut
the cloth is sewn into a garment

One lady in America has made herself a woollen dress following many of the processes of the Anglo-Saxon clothing-maker - spinning, dyeing, weaving, cutting and sewing. In total, if all she had done was work solidly on the dress, it would have taken her 2½ months to finish! Visit her website at http://home.insight.rr.com/cains/documentation/index.html.

Weaves

Wool is most commonly found to be of a 2/2 twill weave, where it is woven over 2 under 2 in a moving sequence. 2/2 twill is called a '4-shed' fabric, because 4 sheds (or gaps for the weft to pass through) must be created while the fabric is being woven. A 'shed' is opened by lifting the 'heddle rod' to which the warp threads are attached. So there must be 4 heddle-rods in order to open 4 sheds. To weave a standard 2/2 twill (below left) warps 1, 2, 3, and 4, are each attached to a separate heddle rod. Then the sequence of opening the shed - by lifting the heddle rods would be: 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3 and 4, 4 and 1. After each rod is lifted a weft is passed across to fix the weaving. (I will write a weaving page to clarify this, eventually!)

This is a 2/2 twill with warps in white and wefts in blue. Because of the nature of the weave it gives a pattern of diagonal lines in different colours. This is a very coarse weave - only 5 threads per cm in each system. Most Anglo-Saxon fabrics are much finer than this!

(One small fragment with a thread count of 7warp/5weft was found associated with a shield grip in Grave 41 - a male burial at Westgarth Gardens Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk (5th/6th century).)

Fabric weights are indicated by a thread count, the first figure being the warp, the second the weft. Most Anglo-Saxon fabrics are finer than the one shown below, though they can range from 7/7 per cm to 24/24 per cm. The higher the numbers, the finer the fabric.

This is a 2/2 twill with various natural colours in warp and weft systems. The thread count is 12/8, about average for 5th/6th century fabrics.

Some fabric remains are found that have threads spun in different directions in warp and weft. This is indicated by 'Z/S' where Z is the warp spinning and S is the weft spinning. It relates to the direction in which the spindle is turned when spinning. In the excavation report from Fonaby, Lincolnshire, some of the fibres and fabrics where analysed more closely, and it was put forward that fabrics with mixed spinning were more likely to be decoratively woven, in herringbone and/or diamond twill. The change in direction of spin would make the diagonal lines of the standard 2/2 twill stand out more, without the need for a different colour. Some fibres were found to be pigmented naturally, but no dye could be definately identified on any fibres, except on the tablet braids, which had good colour remaining in them. This has lead to a conclusion that perhaps only the tablet-braids were coloured, while the garments themselves utilised naturally pigmented fibres.

2/2 Twill with Red and Yellow Stripes and Green Chevrons This is a 'herringbone' or 'broken chevron' 2/2 twill. The green threads are the wefts (8 threads per cm) going from side to side; the red and yellow are the warps (10 threads per cm) going up and down.
This pattern repeats after every 16 warp threads (8 red, 8 yellow). 4 threads are attached to each heddle and the lifting sequence is the same as the standard 2/2 twill.

Similar fabrics found:

at end of shield grip (shield had been placed over face) in the grave of an adult male, Westgarth Gardens, Suffolk
on the ring of an iron penannular brooch close to jaws, in the grave of a female, Fonaby, Lincolnshire
on the shaft of a spearhead, in a male grave, Fonaby, Lincolnshire
on bronze annular brooches in a female grave at Fonaby, Lincolnshire
on an iron buckle, 'chatelaine' items and an iron girdle hanger in a mixed grave possibly containing a male, female and child, Fonaby, Lincolnshire
on earth and inside sheath of an iron knife in a female (aged 17-25) grave, Spong Hill, Norfolk
on a bronze annular brooch in an adult female grave, Z/S chevron twill, Spong Hill, Norfolk
on tip and edge of iron spearhead in a grave at Spong Hill, Norfolk
on the metal of an iron ring at the foot of an unsexed grave in the Spong Hill Cemetery, Norfolk - possibly from a fringed cloak.

This is another 'herringbone' or 'broken chevron' 2/2 twill. There are 18 threads per cm in the warp (weft is unmeasured). The warp and weft threads are doubled to help the pattern stand out.
(A Z/Z 2/2 chevron twill fabric (18wa/17we) was found on the front and back of a bronze annular brooch from Spong Hill).

(A 2/1 twill with 8 warp/10 weft threads was found around and at the ends of the pins of a pair of bronze annular brooches. The brooches both came from the left side of a female adult skeleton. One was in the area of the shoulder, the other in the arm-pit. Westgarth Gardens Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.)

Fragment of 2x2 diamond twill in wool from Milk Street, London. The centres of the diamonds are 1.2 cm apart horizontally. Late 9th century.

Image taken from 'Textiles in Archaeology' by John Peter Wild.

It is found in tabby weave (1 under 1 over) but not in such quantity. 2x1 twill is common in the 6th and 7th centuries. Diamond twill and broken diamond twill have also been found - but these would have been very difficult patterns to achieve on the warp-weighted loom used.

Finds

Linen

Clothes could also be made from linen, which comes from the flax plant:

flax plants are gathered
the plants are stripped so that only the stalks remain
the stalks are set in water and left to rot
the stalks are beaten to loosen the fibres
the fibres are collected
the fibres are washed
then combed
then spun
(the thread can be dyed - also a complicated process)
then woven
(if not dyed earlier the cloth can now be dyed)

A field of flax.

As you can see from this list - the production of linen was a lot more complicated than for wool. It is because of this that I believe linen would have been a more costly fabric and therfore not available to everyone, unlike wool. However, if you've tried wearing anything woollen next to your skin you will agree it is not a pleasant experience (they were hardy people). Therefore, those of us who re-enact choose to wear a linen under-garment.

Weaves

Linen is commonest in tabby weave. I expect that this is because it was such a rich fabric, it didn't need further embellishment.

Silk

Silk is known in this period, but in a different context. Not necessarily as fabric for clothing, although it was imported for use in ecclesiastical garments, presented throughout the 7th, 8th and 9th Centuries to the English Church. Theodred, a 10th century Bishop of London bequeathed in his will two silk vestments:

Part of the St. Cuthbert vestment, found among the treasures in the saints coffin in Durham Cathedral when it was opened in 1827.

Image taken from 'The Anglo-Saxons' by Rowena Loverance.

('my white cope . . . and . . . the yellow cope which I bought in Pavia').
King Edgar gave silk to King Kenneth of the Scots in 975 and Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) was shrouded in damask silk from Byzantine.

Silk thread was also imported and used in the finest embroideries, such as the Maaseik embroidery and the St. Cuthbert vestments.

The St. Cuthbert vestments can be dated by the words embroidered on them recording that the needlework was carried out on the orders of Ælflæd, for Bishop Frithestan:

Frithestan was Bishop of Winchester; Ælflæd was step-mother to King Athelstan. The vestments must have been made in southern England about the second decade of the 10th century and probably presented to the saint's shrine by Athelstan on his visit north in 934.

It is possible that very wealthy individuals not associated with the church or royalty had access to silk fabric and thread, but their value must be considered. Speaking about the worth of some textiles Bede remarks that the price of one silk 'would have kept one and a half families for life'. The only real evidence of silk in normal clothing is the small caps found in London, Lincoln and York, thought to be worn by Viking women.

Sources:
'The Anglo-Saxons' by Rowena Loverance.
'Textiles in Archaeology' by John Peter Wild
'Dress in Anglo-Saxon England' by Gale R Owen-Crocker
Archaeo-Botanical Computer Database - http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue1/tomlinson/

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