This study uses male occupational data abstracted from the Court of Common Pleas todetermine the location of the English woollen manufacturing industry circa 1500, and fromcounty probate records to track temporal change 1601-1801. It shows that the onset of de-industrialization in textile counties in southern England occurred toward the end of theseventeenth century when the industry began to shift to the West Riding of Yorkshire.Occupations of fathers recorded in Anglican baptism registers 1813-20 indicate that the industryrelocated to a relatively small number of places. This study establishes a clear associationbetween these places and the proximity of water and the coalfields. This relationship concurswith the views of Adam Smith to show that coal was important to the woollen manufacturedecades before the mechanization of spinning and weaving and the use of steam power.