Among the decorative carving that covers the old woodwork of the Market House may be seen rough representations of spoons, skewers, tops, and spindles; allusions to the ancient staple trade of the town in articles of wooden turnery. It is a trade that has long wholly died out, but another old local industry—that of horsehair weaving—is still carried on. This trade was established somewhere about a century ago, and was once a great deal more important than now. One can readily imagine that Wymondham must have been particularly busy in the dreadful era of horsehair upholstery of sofas and chairs. The horsehaired chair or sofa belonged to the period of the cut-glass lustres that used to serve as “chimney ornaments,” and to the era of the “ornaments for yer fire-stoves” once sold in summer-time by itinerant vendors. Horsehair upholstery was very chilly, very sombre and severe, and afforded a particularly slippery and uncomfortable seat. One, happily, rarely sees those tomb-like sofas now, and the chairs are not often met; but when horsehair coverings disappeared from the household they found a lasting favour with railway companies, and still penitentially furnish many a waiting-room. Thus the horsehair weavers at Wymondham even now find in their occupation a living wage. It is a cottage industry, and the old treadle looms may even yet be seen in work by any one curious enough to halt awhile and make due quest. They are cumbersome affairs of heavy wooden framing, rattle and clatter like the pots and pans of a travelling tinker, and give the minimum of output to the maximum of labour, the weavers having to perform the treadling, and at the same time to feed the shuttle with horsehair at every revolution of the machine. The local masters and the hair-cloth dealers of Norwich supply the weavers with the raw materials—so many pounds of hair—and it is brought back as a manufactured article, weighed, and paid for at the rate of 1¼_d._ per yard. The fabric is black and white when it leaves the looms, and is dyed in Norwich. An ancient house, with handsome timbered front, well cared for, and now in private occupation, although said once to have been an inn, is one of the last objects to catch the eye in leaving the town. It bears the inscription, in bold raised letters: “_Nec mihi glis servus, nec hospes hirudo_,” which may be Englished, “I have neither the fat dormouse as a servant, nor the bloodsucker as a guest”: a bold and cheering statement for such travellers of old as could read Latin, and who might feel inclined to test the smartness of the service and the freedom of the bedrooms from fleas and bugs XLVI