Coggeshall - the story of the blanket
Coggeshall is the third blanket in my East Anglian Quintet, taking its name from the beautiful early Saxon Essex town. Coggeshall - or Kockeshale as it was first referenced in 1060 – is listed in the Doomesday book of 1086 as Cogheshala and was comprised of “a mill; about 60 men with ploughs and horses, oxen and sheep; woodland with swine and a swineherd, four stocks of bees and one priest”.
The wealth of the town was largely drawn from its medieval wool trade, and the town boasts a grand wool church in St Peter-ad-Vincula. Coggeshall wool was prized for it’s fine white quality, and much of the woven cloth was exported to Flanders. Here below left you can see the charming town sign, carved in oak to mark the millennium and bearing the image of a weaver with his loom in low relief. And on the right, a lovely example of the ongoing tradition of pargetting - showing a white ram over a door lintel.
Approaching Coggeshall from the south, you cross bridge over the River Blackwater. If you turn left just after the bridge onto West Street you come to Paycockes – an impressive Tudor building near the centre of the town. The oldest part of the building dates to 1420, but much of it was constructed in the reign of Henry VIII by cloth-merchant Thomas Paycocke. Tree-ring analysis of the timbers in the main building confirm dates of 1509-10. Paycocke commissioned the building as a show-room and entertaining suite for his wealthy clientele. Clearly a gifted sales-man, Paycocke coined the term ‘Coggeshall White’ for the fine woven cloth on which his fortune was built. He counted amongst his clients several wealthy Flemish drapers, whom he wined and dined at Paycockes.
The front of the house is in brick and timber. Here below you see the fine striped front elevation, and below this, details of the fine carving and brick-work.
My Coggeshall blanket draws on this palette – a soft chalky ground with a fine stripe in a rusty brick-red.
To the left of the building is an entrance arch for carriages and delivery carts. The original carved oak doors are still in daily use.
I like to imagine that the fine fluted panels are echoed in the scored lines of my blanket.
The same fluted motif appears in much of the interior panelling. Below left you can see the inclusion of a section of the finely carved rood screen, taken from the nearby Cistercian abbey at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. Several of the grand houses of Coggeshall from this era also boast sections of this rood screen.
Above right you see a fireplace at Paycockes, surrounded by a series of beautiful blue patterned Delft tiles – echoed in the baler twine blue stripe on the other face of my blanket.
Paycockes had a long and turbulent history, and gradually fell into disrepair towards the end of the nineteenth century. Bought in 1904 by Lord Noel Buxton, Paycockes underwent a period of extensive restoration over the next two decades. For several years during this time, the house played host to Noel Buxton’s cousin Conrad Noel – the ‘red vicar’ of Thaxted, and in 1923 Gustav Holst and his daughter Imogen – fellow Thaxted luminaries - spent a summer there. So you can see how all the threads interweave.
In 1924 Paycockes was donated to the National Trust – the third property in it’s nascent portfolio preserved for the nation.
