Although ancient methods of bleaching remain unknown, historians have evidence that early civilizations must have known how to bleach fabrics. White cloth was produced by the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews, as well as by the Greeks and Romans. After the Crusades of the 1100s and 1200s, the practice of bleaching fabric spread throughout Europe. In the old days, people simply spread wet cloth on the ground outdoors and left it to dry in the sunlight until it turned white, which could take weeks or even months. This process came to be called crofting, after the Scottish word for a small meadow (croft). As early as 1322, crofting was practiced on bleaching grounds in England near Manchester. In Scotland and Ireland, some people still bleach their cloth on the grass in this way. High-quality linen that was dried on plots of grass became known as lawn.

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