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Description: | Post Medieval four part cloth seal with two pairs of two disks. The disks are adjacent to each other with the smaller disks of each pair attached together by a rivet from one which is pushed through the other and pressed flat. The larger disks were probably joined by a tab opposite the rivetted disks but this is now missing. The small disks appear plain although there is a raised circle on the side where the rivet is squashed, the circle is irregular inside and may have had a desgin or it may simply be the result of flattening the rivet. One larger disk has the inscription *TAVNTON encircling 79 within a pellet border, the other has several fainted lines, probably a 'privy' or 'merchants' mark in the form of a 4 with a cross bar above the top point which splits into three att one end and two at the other and with various other letters or numbers in the field. It is 27.2mm long, 15.8mm wide and 4.9mm thick; it weighs 7.54 grams.This is almost certainly for serge cloth and Taunton seals with similar designs for the town name but other designs on the seals (including the makers name and a crown in a border) are known from the British Museum collections (Egan 1994: 51 and fig 23, no.97 and 98) and from Gloucester, Norfolk, Jamestown, Virginia and Stockholm. It is suggested they are 17th century seals and the full date would read 1679, other dated examples include 1676, 1677 and 1674 (Egan ibid).As cloth seals were discarded where the cloth was used it is unusual to find local seals in an area (other seals from the same parish include a group from Ausburg, Germany). The VCH discussed the extensive cloth industry in Dunster and suggests: "The Dunster cloth industry spread to Carhampton before the end of the 16th century when clothiers, waevers and feltmakers were recorded. Weaver Edward Mills left two pairs of looms in 1635, a Dunster was sent to Carhampton to learn worsted combing in 1690 and a weaver was recorded in 1713 but none thereafter" (Sireut 2010, Vol XII, in progress ). It is possible either that cloth from Taunton was consumed locally as well as exported or that Carhampton did not have its own mark but used the Taunton one and this seal was lost or removed before the cloth was exported.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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