It's fair to say that the folk of Shepton Mallet have always been prepared to stand up for themselves.

And through the 18th century, the residents of the town took on the landlords, businesses and authorities in a number of dramatic ways throughout the 18th century.

By the early 15th century, merchants and craftsmen from France, Belgium and Holland fleeing religious wars and plagues arrived in the Mendips and bought technical and commercial skills with them. They built woollen mills and taught the locals how to make fine cloth, and before long, West County cloth was considered the best in the country.

Before long, other trades were beginning to pick up pace in the town. Shepton soon became a major producer of knitted stockings, with residents farming the sheep, manufacturing the wool and making stockings, before selling them in Bristol and major cities.

In 1791 there were about 4500 people employed in the cloth industry – both woollen and crape – in the Shepton valley - Darshill, Bowlish, Draycott, Leg Square, Kilver (Jardines) and Charlton.

With their new-found wealth, Sheptonians built the Market Cross, extended the Parish Church and mill owners built several fine manor houses – only a handful of which still stand.

But the West of England woollen workers in the eighteenth century also had a deserved reputation for industrial violence. Riots were frequently their response to changes they felt were not in their best interests.

And while the landowners, mill and quarry owners prospered life was not as good for the working class. They earned a pittance and most of their wages went on rent they had to pay to their employers. Many of the workers in the mills were children, some as young as five years old. They had some of the most awful jobs, including cleaning the wool cloth by trampling it in vats of fuller earth and urine.

Corn Laws helped swell large owners' coffers, while Poor Laws meant employers no longer had to pay a living wage. The Poor Relief – designed to supplement the income of the low-paid – was raised from local taxes, meaning those who did have a job had to work even harder.

And then came the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions – with fewer people needed to do the same amount of work, and once again, it meant more profits for businesses and land-owners, and more local people unemployed and made homeless.

On August 6, 1746, Shepton Mallet workers rioted for the first time.

Just a few months later, on February 12, 1748 they rioted again, and then a year-to-the-day later in 1749.

Things got no better after the Spinning Jenny was invented by James Hargreaves in 1764. It could spin eight threads at once and there were claims that new machines could do the job of twenty workers.

In July 1776, a group of clothiers in Shepton Mallet introduced Spinning Jennies. Wool workers from Shepton and the neighbouring towns marched to protest at the 'trial' that threatened to devastate family incomes. They broke into the workhouse and destroyed the Jennies.

A magistrate ordered the arrest of the ring-leaders and five or six were captured. The crowd counter-attacked and the Riot Act was read. The troops fired on the crowd killing one person and wounding six.

As mill owners worked to put in the new machinery, workers feared losing their livelihood. Once again, they assembled in large bodies and broke out into open riot at Bunker's Hill, where the old Norah Fry hospital now stands.

Mill owners called out the militia in fear of their lives and two of the rioters were killed in the chaos that followed.

Sadly, the riots didn't protect the worker's jobs - they did the opposite.

Local mill owners, dismayed by the resistance to modernisation, simply closed their mills altogether and set up business elsewhere. Key craftsmen packed their bags and followed them, and soon the fine mansions stood empty.

In the space of just a few years, from 1830-1840, the population of Shepton Mallet halved, and the once proud factories and mills were either burned by gangs of disgruntled navvies or were left to crumble into bleak ruins. Shops were shuttered, people lost their homes and hundreds besieged the poorhouse.

The last woollen mill on the Sheppey closed in 1815 when clothiers refused to invest in steam fearing for their lives and property.

The introduction of the manufacture of silk and crepe and velvet, did briefly revive the town's fortunes in Shepton Mallet, silk was a vital successor industry for a while, with four former cloth mills being used.

But sadly, many of the former mill sites in Shepton were far from essential markets in London and the Midlands. Silk, in the face of increasing competition from overseas and the appearance of man-made fibres, shifted away from the area, and the cloth, wool and silk mills of Shepton fell to nothing more than memory and streets named after the mills that once stood there.