Fulling Mill

A fulling mill, also called a walk mill or tuck mill, is a water-powered installation that mechanizes fulling, the process of cleansing newly woven woolen cloth of oil and dirt and then thickening it by pounding and matting its fibers together. A waterwheel turns a shaft fitted with cams that lift and drop heavy wooden hammers, called fulling stocks, onto cloth soaking in a trough of liquor; falling stocks struck the cloth vertically for scouring, while driving stocks pivoted to strike it at a near-horizontal angle for the heavier work of thickening the weave, and workers periodically pulled the cloth from the trough to unfold it so the whole piece milled evenly. Fulling mills appear in the historical record from the ninth or tenth century, with an early documented example in Normandy around 1086 and a contemporary English mill recorded at Temple Guiting in the Domesday Book, and by the twelfth century they had spread through the wool-producing regions of medieval Europe, giving the woolen cloth trade its first mechanized, water-powered stage of production.