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Woollen cloth order 1747

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Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire

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This is a letter from a London cloth dealer named John Howell to Francis Yerbury, a Bradford on Avon woollen cloth manufacturer, including an order for Bradford-made cloth from the Empress of Russia in 1747. Two samples of dyed cloth are still attached to it.

The letter was for many years in the possession of Kenneth G. Ponting, a historian of the Wiltshire woollen industry and director of the Home Mills factory in Trowbridge from the 1950s to the 1970s. It was offered to Trowbridge Museum, but by agreement of both Trowbridge and Bradford on Avon Museums, it has been passed to the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives as the most suitable repository.