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. 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. But the same machinery and processes remain, and the skill of the papermakers.
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. 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. Two moulds are used together, so that as one is empty it is exchanged for another.