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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".

Mankinds 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.
See
our Paper Mill - click here
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.
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 Doomsday 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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