Historically the town was known for its textiles, using the abundant local wool, and a notable location for this industry was Carding Mill Valley (). The carding mill there was built in the eighteenth century, and named after a stage in making cloth, the three stages being carding, spinning and weaving. Carding would have been done by children, and involved using a hand-card that removed and untangled short fibres from the mass of raw material. The cards were wooden blocks with handles and covered in metal spikes, which were angled (to make it easier to untangle) and set in leather. When untangled, the material would be spun, and then woven into the final product.