History and uses of hemp - The Hempcrete Topic: Designing and Building with Hemp-lime - page 7

cotton, sisal and jute, towards the end of the nineteenth century, hemp and flax were still
widely used for clothing, other textile products, rope and netting. In fact, these two plants
are the only fibre crops that are commercially viable in our temperate maritime climate.
Many towns in the UK have surviving buildings that were originally a part of these im-
portant and widespread industries. The most visible of these are often the 'rope walks' of
Victorian, or earlier, times: long buildings where the hemp and flax fibres were stretched
out and spun into twine and rope.
The Ropewalk, Nottingham. Signs of the hemp industry of earlier centuries remain in its surviving
architecture across the UK.
For those interested in the history of hemp cultivation in the UK, a good place to start is
the quiet coastal towns of Bridport and West Bay in Dorset. The rolling hills of west Dor-
set and south Somerset, with their well-drained, fertile soil and warm climatic conditions,
provide the perfect conditions for cultivating hemp, and the town of Bridport already boas-
ted a thriving hemp- and flax-processing industry by the thirteenth century. The earliest
recorded evidence of this is a “payment for a large quantity of sails and cordage in 1211”,
which was followed by “an order from King John for Bridport rope and cloth to supply
the navy in 1213.” 3 Although the industry suffered during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, owing to competition from other shipyards and local depopulation as a result
of plagues, there was a dramatic revival of the town's hemp and flax production during