During the Middle Ages cloth was produced both in Norwich and in the surrounding countryside. Linen (cloth woven from flax), broadcloth (a thick cloth made from short-stapled fleece finished by fulling )and worsted (cloth made from long-stapled wool, showing the weave and requiring no fulling) were among the types being made. Linen drapers (for linen), drapers (for broadcloth) and mercers (for worsteds) bought cloth from local producers. They then organised its fulling or finishing, and sold the cloth. Some was sold locally, the rest was exported via Yarmouth or went by pack-horse to mercers in London for export. The wealthiest mercers and drapers dominated the civic life of the city.

Norwich developed as an archetypal medieval city, becoming self-governing, and winning privileges for its traders, who were protected by wealth and by walls. However, the city suffered severely from episodes of plague which depleted its numbers, and international politics in the form of the Hundred Years War affected overseas trade. Such factors had a knock–on effect on the textiles industry, which was prone to periods of prosperity and slump.

At this time, England was re-orienting itself from a nation trading wool to the more profitable business of exporting cloth and this gave rise to some casualties. Linen production, which had been significant in Norfolk, declined from the fourteenth century. At the same time woollens and particularly worsteds were increasingly successful. Dornix (a strong cloth made from linen and woollen spun yarn) and coverlids (bed covers) were also significant Norwich products in the 15th century.

In 1444, the Worsted Weavers Guild gained the power to regulate the industry throughout East Anglia. Regulation and control became a distinctive feature of the medieval and early modern industry, by which quality was ensured through training, checking and penalties. Versatility and ingenuity were the hall-marks of the ruling mercantile class, enabling the City to adapt to its economic problems and emerge by the 16th century as England’s second city.