Soapworks

Soap was made by boiling animal fats or oils with lye leached from wood ashes. Bristol was the leading English centre: in the 1190s the monk Richard of Devizes wrote that there was no one in Bristol who was not, or had not been, a soap-boiler, an exaggeration but evidence of a real trade. Bristol later sold soft black soap in pots and grey soap to London. Soap was used for washing cloth and bodies.

Sources: collections.bristolmuseums.org.uk