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Visit the Wookey
Hole hand-made papermill
On entering the Victorian
papermill there is the opportunity to pause for a few
minutes to watch a fascinating film about the history
of paper: "Wookey Hole - The Great Paper Trail".
Mankind’s
progress has always depended on our ability to communicate
ideas. First came speech, then the ability to draw -
the earliest crude drawings on sand and cave walls were
a gigantic intellectual step, calling for the invention
of implements and pigments to represent people and animals.
From earliest crude drawings
the great civilisations of China, Egypt and Asia Minor
developed writing - inscribing hieroglyphics on stone,
clay, metal, bark and cloth.
Egypt developed the use
of papyrus, the earliest known manuscripts of which
date from 2200 BC.
It was in China that the
biggest steps were taken. Calligraphy was invented there
in 2700 BC, and in 250 BC the invention of the camel-hair
brush revolutionised the written language.
By 105 AD the Chinese had
invented true paper, a thin felted material formed on
flat, porous moulds from macerated vegetable fibre.
For the next 500 years the Chinese were able to retain
a monopoly on papermaking, but then the skill spread
westwards, and the earliest existing European manuscript
on paper dates from 1109
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In 1476
William Caxton established his mechanical printing
office in Westminster, and this stimulated the rapid
growth of paper mills in England to meet the ever
increasing demand for paper. The rest, as they say,
is history...!
The earliest
mill at Wookey Hole (for grinding corn) was recorded
in the Domesday Book of 1086. By 1610 it was already
a paper mill, and to this day handmade paper is still
made from raw cotton at Wookey Hole Mill, using original
Victorian machinery.
Visitors can
watch the skilled Vatman and his assistant, the Coucher,
making paper in the traditional way. Visitors can
also have a go at making some paper themselves.
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