I see fleece as a product secondary to meat production. What I mean by that is that sheep are being reared for slaughter in vast numbers, and to throw away the wool would be unacceptable.
It's perhaps important to remember that this is a relatively recent state of affairs. The British Empire (sorry) was built on the back of wool exports. Even as recently as the late 50s, wool was a very important product from sheep (the book Isolation Shepherd, for example, describes how blackface wethers were kept for their wool).
Those days are gone of course, and as I sit here in my polyester "fleece" typing away, it's not difficult to see why!
Absolutely - the birth our wondrous empire
. So in days of yore, meat was the waste product perhaps, only eaten by the poor.
I don't wear exclusively woollen clothing, in spite of promoting it so hard. Just as a treat I'll tell you what I'm wearing today (above my pundies - you don't want to go there
) So, woollen vest, synthetic technical vest, (yes, 2 vests), cashmere jumper, thick cotton shirt, hand spun, hand dyed, hand knit big woolly jumper, and outdoors a technical 4 seasons synthetic coat, fleece lined. Legs, winter lined technical fabric trousers, woolly socks, rubber boots, woolly hat and scarf, leather bike gloves. I apologise to the environment for the cotton shirt, cotton being the worst crop, just after rice, for water and chemical use.