Cloth production

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Historically, cloth production in England, Wales, and much of Europe was often historically organised under the domestic system, prior to (and also in the early stages of) the introduction of the factory system. The clothier bought the wool (or other fiber) and put it out to spinners (usually mainly women) to spin into yarn. The yarn was then put out to weavers to be woven. After that woollen cloth usually needed to be fulled. Finally it needed to be sheared and to undergo other finishing processes, such as raising the knap. A clothier might undertake some of these processes himself (have them done within his family), but much of the actual manufacture was undertaken by outworkers in their own homes, they being paid a piecework wage, when they had completed their work.

From the Industrial Revolution, production increasingly took place in textile mills, which initially took over spinning and later also weaving.