The Story Of The Kendal Mint Co© Green Archer

At Kendal Mint Co. we want to shout loud and proud about our Cumbrian, Kendal roots.
Kendal was built on the textile trade. Sheep for wool, lots of water and bracken for making potash used in the cleaning of wool, made the manufacture of woolen cloth easy and profitable.

The town’s coat of arms feature ‘wool hooks and teasels’ alongside the Latin: ‘Panus Mihi Panus’, ‘Cloth is my Bread.’ A major trade in the town was the: ’Shearman Dyer’.

From as early as the 1500’s Kendal was involved in the nationwide trade of cloth.
In 1575 Elizabeth 1st granted Kendal a ‘Market Charter’ which was a little like a licence to print money. Kendal thrived and Kendal cloth sold far and wide.

William Shakespeare, the Bard, wrote of Kendal’s famous cloth in ‘Henry IV’ part 1.
Falstaff boasts to Prince Hal of his defeat of ‘three misbegotten knaves in Kendal Green’. It is even thought that Robin Hood and his merry men would have worn the Kendal green cloth, not Lincoln green.

So with this, our brand colour became ‘Kendal Green.’

25th October 1415, St. Crispens Day was a pivotal day in England’s history.

Henry V led his troops into Battle at Agincourt in Northern France. Heavily outnumbered by French troops it was the English bowmen that won the day.

In particular, credit was given to the long bows of the ‘Kendalian Archers’, dressed in their ’Kendal Green’ tunics.