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Farming Today: Farming Today This Week

Farming Today This Week

08/06/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, Farming Today This Week

Robin Markwell explores Stroud, a market town that was shaped by the wool industry.

The latest news about food, farming and the countryside. Robin Markwell explores Stroud, a market town that was shaped by the wool trade and cloth-making industry.

Britain's sheep shearing season is in full swing. Robin Markwell heads to Stroud, a market town that was shaped by the wool trade and cloth-making industry. To get an idea of what the town was like 250-years-ago he visits Dunkirk Mill, which produced some of the finest woollen cloth in the country. Against the noise of the water mill and fulling stocks, Robin chats to Jane Ford about the history of the mill - and finds out why Cotswold wool, shorn just on the doorstep, didn't make the grade.

Robin's journey through Stroud gets noisier with a visit to a thriving, present-day factory which makes billiard cloth and the covering for tennis balls...all out of wool.

And we hear from the sheep shearers gearing up for another busy summer with the clippers and the British Wool Marketing Board which is responsible for grading and auctioning thousands of fleeces.

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