Crofters

The word croft  in England usually means an enclosed field  adjacent to a farm or property.  But, in connection with the textile trade it usually refers to the  process of croft-bleaching.  Prior  to dyeing, both yarn and cloth (whether wool, linen and later cotton) had to be  bleached. 
Before the  introduction of chemical bleaching the strong powers of sunlight did the job  cheaply, but the process took several weeks. One of the early advances in the  bleaching of cotton and linen was the process of repeated soakings in a solution  of potash and lime (bowking), then soaking in buttermilk or bran and water and  finally laying out in the sunshine, spread out on the grass and hedges in  enclosed bleach-crofts.  But this  was still a lengthy and expensive process. 
In 1785 a French  chemist, Berthollet recognised the bleaching properties of chlorine, which led  Charles Tennant of Glasgow to patent a bleaching powder, made  from a solid compound of chlorine and lime. This reduced the bleaching process  to a matter of a few hours instead of weeks and gave far superior results.  In 1800 the factory price for the powder  was £140 per ton, but improved techniques reduced the cost to £8.50 per ton by  1870. 
But, this wasn’t  suitable for woollen cloth which still continued to be bleached by age old  methods.  Before being spun, wool  was de-greased of its lanolin content by soaking in a solution of stale urine  and water, and then spread out in the sunlight to lighten sufficiently for  dyeing. Wool for white products had to undergo an additional stoving or  sulphuring, before a final wash, sometimes followed by a dip in a very weak  solution of indigo dye. Bleachers were often called ‘Whitsters’ or  ‘Whitelimers’, and a 1772 Manchester Trade Directory has an alphabetical list of  Crofters and  Whitelimers.