Papermaking

• Paper Mill
• Papermaking
• Types of Paper
• Stationery & Products

It is silent now, the great rag boiler. The benches are empty where the aproned girls chattered and giggled while their nimble fingers shredded the bundles of rags, cutting away buttons and hooks and lengths of whalebone because only pure cotton or linen could go into the boiler.

The wooden trucks they called dollies, each of which bore its owner's name - Mary, Vickie, Hannah - are quiet.

Perhaps the ghost of one of those young girls still drifts through this old female kingdom, recalling when the papermill was a bustling clamour of voices and machines, and 35,000 sheets of paper were turned out every week.

At the turn of this century Wookey Hole Mill was the largest rag-made papermill in Europe. Yet perhaps that ghost takes pleasure in watching the ancient craft still practised in the mill today as it has been for centuries.

Only the rags have gone: cotton now comes in bales straight from the cottonfields of the United States. But the same machinery and processes remain, and the skill of the papermakers.

Nowadays the cotton goes directly to the beaters to be crushed and soaked in water, separating the fibres and turning it into the sodden white porridge called "stuff". Beating is a skilled process and affects the final weight of the paper.

It is under the eye of the Vatman, into whose great vat the stuff eventually trickles. With his assistant, the Coucher, he controls the whole process of which the vat is the centre: there were once 14 vats in operation at Wookey Hole papermill.

It is the Vatman who judges the quality of the stuff, who dips and shakes the mould on which it forms into paper. The mould itself is a rectangular wooden frame supporting a fine wire mesh of phosphor-bronze. When tinned copper wire is sewn on to this mesh, sometimes in extraordinarily intricate designs, it produces the watermarks that can be works of art.

The Coucher (from the French coucher, to lie down) lays down each sheet of paper from the mould on to a thick piece of woollen felt. Two moulds are used together, so that as one is empty it is exchanged for another. Coucher and Vatman work in a steady, unhesitating rhythm, with perfect precision of hand and eye.

Finally the paper is dried on hessian sheets or ropes of cowhair - jute would stain the absorbent sheets. It will be pressed, then glazed or left alone, and it will last for centuries.