Whoa.... had to add to this when I first saw "Stroud" pop in random nodes containing just the Webster 1913 definition below.
Stroud is a town in the Gloucestershire part of the Cotswolds, (a range of English hills in the south west of the country) where I lived for some years.
Stroud was a wool milling town, which must surely be connected to the derivation Webster gives...Stroud cloth was also used for guardsmen's uniforms, tennis balls, and billiard tables amongst other things.
In common with other centres of skilled clothworkers, Stroud has a (now somewhat hidden or forgotten) history of restive politics and heterodox religion. In recent years it has become somewhat hippified as 'types' moved out of London in the Sixties and Seventies, no doubt drawn by the beauty of these five valleys on the edge of the Cotswold scarp.
Now their sons and daughters are blowing their minds on drugs and cider along with the rest of small town England. The sunset over the River Severn, all silver and shining in the distance with the Black Mountains of Wales beyond, is however still the most mind-blowing experience to be had in the locality to my way of thinking.