Hemp and Flax could be used to produce cloth and may have been a cottage industry rather than a commercial undertaking. An alternative crop was nettles.

We have only a few notes regarding hemp and/or flax in Stowupland (See SLHG Archives/ECA/ Suffolk).

Ena Carter’s finding that there was a ‘retting pit to the east of Stowupland’ so possibly in the Saxham Street area is a start.

Retting was a step in preparing the vegetation into cloth and could be done in a river or pit. An act of parliament in Henry VIII’s reign made it unlawful to put ‘any manner of hemp or flax in any river…where beasts use to be watered, but only in the ground or pits’. Bundles of hemp of flax were weighted down under the water by stones or wood for four to six days, and then left to dry – which took around a month. The fibres were then broken down.

In the 1649 Inventory of John Hubbard, late yeoman of Stowupland ‘item certaine hemp  13 -4 (?)

And in 1653 Inventory of William Hubbard, late of Stowupland ‘in the backhouse chamber – 20 pounds wole, 4 stone hemp’ worth £2 2s 0d.