Fulling

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Fulling or walking ("waulking" in Scotland) is a step in clothmaking which involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to get rid of oils, dirt, and other impurities.

A fuller is the worker who does the job. In the process, fuller's earth was used. (This is a soft earthy material occurring in nature as an impure hydrous aluminium silicate.) The cloth might also be washed. After washing, to prevent shrinkage and wrinkling, the cloth would be stretched on great frames known as tenters and held onto those frames by tenterhooks. It is from this process that we derive the phrase being on tenterhooks as meaning to be held in suspense. The area where the tenters were erected was known as a tenterground.

Originally, this was literally pounding the cloth with the fuller's feet, but from the medieval period it was often carried out in a water mill in which the cloth was beaten with wooden hammers, known as fulling stocks. Such mills were known as fulling mills.

In Roman times, human urine was used instead of fuller's earth, and slaves would stand ankle deep in tubs of urine and clothing. Urine was so important to the fulling business that urine was taxed.