Kendal c.1500-1820 GAZ Kendal

By 1500 Kendal’s textile trade had a national market, its coarse woollen cloth known as ‘Kendal green’ being the fabric worn by the common man.  Kendal was the finishing centre for cloth manufactured across rural southern Cumbria, the town’s ‘shearman-dyers’ dominating the trade.  The town was incorporated by charter in 1576 (confirmed and amplified by further charters of 1636 and 1684), its government being vested in a mayor and 12 aldermen.  By 1600 the town’s population had probably risen to between 2,200 and 2,600.  It suffered, and the population almost certainly fell back, during the mortality crises of the 1590s and 1623; by the end of the 17th century it had not fully recovered: in 1695 the town (excluding Kirkland) had 2,159 inhabitants.  After the slump in the textile trade in the early 17th century, Kendal specialised and diversified: writing in 1671, Sir Daniel Fleming reported that Kendalians ‘seem to be shaped out for trade; improving themselves not only in their old manufacture of cottons, but of late in the makeing of Druggets, Serges, Hats, worsted-stockings &c, whereby many poor are dayly set on work and the town much enriched’.  Thomas Denton, writing in 1688, said: ‘The people are generally all tradesmen, very industrious & provident, which by the help of their cloathing & cotten trade (which they disperse all over England) makes them much richer then their neighbours.  They are a sober, orderly sort of people, and it’s a corporation as regularly govern’d as any, where ever I came; being constituted by the name of maior, aldermen & comminalty.  Their revenue is but small, but well managed.’  The cloth industry dominated the town: tenter grounds (with frames on which to stretch the finished cloth) spread out onto open ground around the town, on the Fellside and Gooseholme.  The town’s motto, Pannus mihi panis (‘cloth is my bread’) had been coined by the early 17th century.

Other industries in 18th-century Kendal included the making of wool cards; tanning and leather working; snuff making (from 1792); and the manufacture of horn combs (established 1794).

The town grew rapidly in the 18th century, particularly from the 1730s: in 1695 its population (excluding Kirkland) stood at 2,159; by the 1801 it had reached c.8,000 (the borough containing c.7,000 inhabitants and Kirkland a further 1,000).  Its growing importance as a regional centre was reflected in its place in newspaper publishing: short-lived titles, The Kendal Weekly Courant and Kendal Weekly Mercury had appeared in 1730s; by 1820 the town boasted two papers, the Westmorland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle (founded 1811; replaced 1834 by the Kendal Mercury) and The Westmorland Gazette (founded 1818).