The Mixed (Coloured) Cloth Hall, George Walker, 1814.

Writing of Leeds’ White and Mixed Cloth Halls, in 1814, Seacroft man George Walker said:

“They are both open every Tuesday and Saturday morning for one hour; in which very limited time all the business is transacted. The cloth is arranged on low wooden stands; the manufacturer behind it, and the merchant or buyer passes in front. As the bargains are made in a half whisper, strangers are much surprised with the silence which prevails in such a crowd.”

At first, Leeds had just a White Cloth Hall but as other West Riding towns started to vie with it for the trade, it built a bigger and better White Cloth Hall and then a Mixed Cloth Hall, too.

“By 1758, however, the [wool]  trade had outgrown that old‑fashioned mart, and, accordingly, a commodious building, now known as the Mixed Cloth Hall, was set up a little to the west of Trinity Church. This structure, thought preposterously large at the time… formed a quadrangle three hundred and sixty‑four feet long, and a hundred and ninety‑two feet broad, with an inner court measuring three hundred and thirty feet, by ninety‑six. It was accessible by seven doors, was lighted by a hundred and sixty‑seven windows, and was large enough, it was reckoned, to hold 109,200 l.‘s worth of cloth at a time. Within seventeen years from its opening, it was found necessary to build another meeting‑place. The White Cloth Hall, be­tween Briggate and Saint Peter’s Church, was completed in 1775; and within a few years, nine similar structures were opened in all the trading towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire…”

[H. R. Fox Bourne. English Merchants: Memoirs in Illustration of the Progress of English Commerce, 1866, II, 217‑18, 219; in J. T. Ward, ed., The Factory Syste

m, Vol. I, Birth and Growth (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970), pp.37-38].

Leeds’ coat of arms

Yesterday I was in Leeds for the day so thought I’d go on about this important ‘wool’ city and its history.  For some of the day, I was in the Local History Library, researching a Napoleonic mill owner’s diary. For the rest of the day, we visited the Art Gallery, Museum, and Royal Armouries and got some great pics.

Like everyone who grew up in my village in the 1960s, I was born at St James’ Hospital, in Leeds. So technically, am a ‘Loiner’ like my father, grandfather and great grandfather. Even if I only “lived” there til I was ten days old!

Croppers, from ‘Costumes of Yorkshire’, George Walker, 1814

My family, the Listers, were alternately wool weavers/clothiers and croppers right down to my great grandad who broke with tradition and became a printer.

Recently mentioned this to a curator of a West Riding Museum, when we were documenting some Great Wheels in his reserve collection, and he commented “They were the elite of the West Riding wool trade” (the croppers). The croppers  were so skilled at finishing the woven cloth, their work added a great deal of value to the cloth’s price.  My great great grandad, Tom Lister, came to Leeds from Huddersfield. He was a cropper, his father a weaver from Halifax who came to Huddersfield around 1816, just a handful of years after the Luddite croppers had been active in Huddersfield and Halifax.  So far as I can trace, this lot go back and back in Halifax, as wool weavers/croppers. This had been the biggest brick wall in our family history, and we only finally broke through it in December, 2012, so I am still coming to terms with the fact my wool love is in the blood!

Somewhere round about 1971, we had a student teacher come to teach us for part of a term. She came in one day having looked up the meanings of all our names. When she got to me, I was intrigued to hear my first name meant “weaver of cloth” and my surname, by coincidence, “dyer of cloth”.  Lister is a name thought to originate in medieval Leeds, so it seems my West Riding weavers went full circle, returning to Leeds in the mid 19thC.

Decoration from County Arcade

I can do the Leeds  equivalent of “I remember when it was all fields round here” – as the glassed over shopping area in the Victoria Quarter, next to County Arcade, I can remember when that was still a road and can remember being driven down it! I have always loved Leeds’ arcades, and long been fascinated by this particular gilt mosaic on the dome of the County Arcade. All of this along the usual grand civic lines of Industry, Labour, Prosperity, etc.

County Arcade

Leeds must have the most stunning late Victorian and Edwardian civic architecture, in the country. Endless classical and progressive themes explored on various buildings, around Briggate and beyond. And this is just one of many references to the wool industry; romanticised and slightly illogical as it is. The spinner appears to have some kind of distaff but no discernible spindle.  By the time this mosaic was made, hand spindles had fallen out of folk memory, in England and the spinning jenny had enjoyed a good hundred years or so pre-eminence. My own Halifax hand-weavers came to Leeds to work in vast, mechanised mills. That was the way of it.

Nothing to do with spinning whatsoever, but Thornton’s Arcade holds many happy memories, for me. As a child, I would go into Leeds on the bus with my mum and many is the time she’d race across town from the bus station, to get to Thornton’s Arcade as the clock struck the hour. Apparently, it is called ‘The Ivanhoe Clock’ but we always knew it as ‘the Robin Hood Clock’. The clock was made by William Potts and Sons of Leeds and shows Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Frair Tuck (in the skimpiest monk’s habit ever) and someone called, remarkably, Gurth the Swineherd all characters from Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe’. Leeds seems to have had a love affair with Sir Walter, as his head is one of the literary greats depicted in bas relief in the magnificent Tiled Hall, at the Art Gallery.

Another place that holds great memories is Leeds City Market. My grandfather – the one whose grandfather was the cropper – walked into the city centre most days and went to the market. I never go in there but I think of him. Leeds’ symbol is the owl, of course, and also sheep pop up on various coats of arms and insignia around the city, given the city’s proud woollen industry history. But the third most common bit of Leeds iconography is the dragon. The market’s wrought iron dragons are the first thing I think about, when I think about Leeds.

My grandfather was incredibly active and fit for a man in his seventies; and was on his boat on the Ouse near York when he wasn’t walking rapidly through the streets of central Leeds. The time we spent on the river with him, is part of the reason I got interested in the inland ganseys.

Next, we were on to the Royal Armouries, by the Aire and Calder canal’s wharf – another relic of Leeds’ once mighty industry. The canal joins with the Leeds & Liverpool around this point, as well. Those of you awaiting ‘River Ganseys’ should know we have documented a number of gansey motifs from the canals. These boats carried all kinds of freight and were the arterial routes that held the life-blood of the West Riding’s commerce. Now of course, only a handful remain, mainly as pleasure boats of one kind or another.  Of course, canal boats weren’t the only form of transport for the wool packs.

On our travels yesterday, we wandered through Leeds’ new shopping centre, Trinity.

Here we found the stunning fifty foot high, two tonne sculpture, ‘Equus Altus’, (‘high horse’), by artist Andy Scott.  Andy wanted to show Leeds’ wool heritage, and how the pack-horse was “the HGV of its time”.  Another line of my Leeds ancestors came to the city, also mid 19thC, from the Dales, where they had reared working horses; fell ponies and pack horses amongst them.  Yesterday, I passed an hour or two in Leeds Library trancribing parts of the diary of a Bramley mill owner, who wrote, about visiting Leeds Cloth Hall in January 1808:

“5th  January.  John , Josh & Father at Leeds, a soft morning but very slippery. A Bad Market for Cloth but a good many Merchants in the Cloth Hall. One Waggon and four horses might have pulled all the Cloth that has been bought today, or any market day lately…”

Equus Altus, by Andy Scott

Although our wool trade – once the greatest in the world – is long gone, its place in our hearts will never be erased, and ‘Equus Altus’ is keeping our heritage alive in one way, as today’s textile craftsfolk do, in another.

All photos except final one, credit: Nathaniel Hunt

Dad outside home, Harehills, Leeds, 1930s

From Jane Waller and Susan Crawford’s “A Stitch In Time, Vol.1″.

Just a heads-up for this weekend’s riproaring events.

I am doing a talk on Saturday, about wartime knitting.  It’s going to be an interesting day as straight after my 1940s’ talk in my Victory rolls and 1938 “Such Flattering Puffed Sleeves” jumper (see pic left – if only I looked as good as these girls!) I will morph into being a Tudor person at Bolton Castle for the rest of the weekend, with the Great Wheel.

At the Farming Museum, I will be talking about two aspects of 1940s’ knitting: war effort “Knitting for Victory” and also what happened to traditional Fair Isle patterns, in the 1940s, as people saw their potential for using up oddments.

If you fancy the idea of this talk, book on the number below or just turn up. You will be most welcome!  (And bring your knitting).

Time: 1:30 – 3:30.

Place: The Yorkshire Farming Museum, Murton Park, near York

Cost: £4.50 a ticket, which includes 1940s’ themed refreshments

To Book:   01904 489966

More about Murton Park’s Women’s Land Army project, here.

Vivien Leigh

On the day, any donations to the Women’s Land Army Tribute memorial, will be very gratefully received. I have donated my time gratis for this talk, to maximise  the money we can raise.  I have no idea what “1940s’ themed refreshments” are. Hopefully not Spam and gravy browning… I’m hoping for cakes.

Alternatively, if you fancy a trip to the Dales this weekend, I am the Tudor lady in the dubious stays, and red linen petticoat, spinning on a Great Wheel, at Bolton Castle.  You’d be most welcome there, too.

You can find the inestimable Susan Crawford on her website, here. 

You can support the Land Army Tribute Campaign, by buying Susan’s lovely “Wartime Farm Sleeveless Pullover” pattern or kit.

The jumper in the first pic, Susan Crawford’s “Such Flattering Puff Sleeves” can be found here, on Ravelry. ‘A Stitch In Time’ is now available as a download, as well as in hard copy. Links there, on Susan’s Rav page.

1978 Timbertops Lonsdale

This past few days I’ve been playing with my “new” spinning wheel; a Timbertops Lonsdale in oak, bought from a fellow Raveller at the weekend. Timbertops are renowed as the Rolls Royces of spinning wheels. That is so true.  They are now made by Woodland Turnery in Wales, who have just gone into production with this model.  Woodland Turnery will be at Wonderwool Wales, this weekend for anyone who wants to see the current wheels.  My Lonsdale is an original, and the 518th wheel made by Leicestershire Timbertops (year and the number of that wheel are stamped somewhere on the underside).  If you buy or have an old TT, you can find Joan from Woodland Turnery on the Ravelry Timbertops group, and log your wheel’s number with her. 1970s’ wheels like mine are still around!

I’m no stranger to a good Timbertops – in fact this is the third I have owned. When I first saw the little ad for TT wheels in the late 1980s, I wondered how good they might be, as I’d only heard of Ashfords, Haldanes, Wee Peggys and the like, upto that point. The wheels were made by James and Anne Williamson in Thurmaston, Leicestershire. My husband had grown up in the same village, and remembered when Timbertops had just made tables. So I wasn’t sure what the wheels might be like.  Then I saw the brochure (I may have accidentally sent off for it, in the post….)  And the wheel I fell in love with was the little upright, the Lonsdale.

I learned to spin in 1983, on a Haldane Orkney upright and accidentally, like many people learning from books in the 70s and 80s, learned to spin left-handed (left hand at back, holding fibre). So I could only spin on uprights, or, theoretically, Great Wheels. At the time, Great Wheels weren’t that marvellous thing, An Object Of Desire. I liked and kept my Haldane, and was perfectly happy with it.

Somehow, over the next decade, a Great Wheel did become An Object Of Desire - for living history events and also maybe after I saw that  Great Wheel issue of ‘Spin-Off’.   Back issues of the mag are available on CD or download, but I am not sure if that Great Wheel themed issue is yet up there…  Let me know if you remember the issue number/year!

Mr Williamson custom built me a wheel. He had reasonable waiting lists – just a few months – (I recall he was a little sceptical about wheel makers who have waiting lists years long, which was interesting!) and in the time it took him to build the wheel, I saved for it. Later, the Williamsons brought out the two accelerated (two drive wheel) wheels, The Beaver and the Chair wheel. (These pics are from the Woodland Turnery site, so may be their wheels, not the originals. But they look the same – although the original TTs tended to come in either oak or yew; I think Woodland use woods fairly local to their workshop so have a variety of woods available).

I had a Chair wheel, in 1998, also custom built for me. And that became all the wheel I needed.  By that point, I had sold the Haldane and acquired a Jensen Tina when I lived briefly in the US – and the Jensen was a wonderful wheel, but… the day I got the chair wheel, I rarely bothered with it again.  So I later gave that to a friend, who I’d just taught to spin on the Great Wheel.

Between them, the Chair wheel and the Great Wheel did all I wanted.  I bought the Chair wheel with two flyers (have since heard some were supplied with only one – but mine came with a large and a small flyer and 4 whorl sizes).  At last – a wheel that was impossible to outgrow!

Anyone can spin anything they want, from the get-go, on a Timbertops – and never outpace it, even after decades of spinning experience. No need to add Heath Robinson  style contraptions to it, or gadgets and gizmos – it will spin for you, whatever you want to do just how it was, the day you bought it. Any wheel that can’t do whatever you intend to do on it the day you buy it, is probably not fit for purpose. I share Norman Kennedy’s scepticism re. obsessing over ratios – a decent wheel will do what you need it to do; the only limitation being your own skill.  Because I have a small (and crowded) house, I knew I needed wheels that looked good, and that I could live with – forever. Timbertops fulfilled all my criteria.

Later on, I needed a less sophisticated looking Great Wheel, that would do for Living History events from 15thC onwards, so got a fantastic Great Wheel from Jack Greene the Alchemyst and sometime wheelmaker – and reluctantly sold my Timbertops GW last year, as I didn’t have space for two and the Jack Greene wheel is simply more versatile for Living History purposes.

Despite “on paper” being satisfied with the flyer wheel I had… I still had a hankering for that Lonsdale. Which got worse after I gave away the Jensen, so no longer had an upright.  This year, I fettled up the Chair wheel and realising how fast it is, knew I could finally justify buying an upright as I want to teach spinning – finally!  I’m a qualified and experienced teacher/worshop leader after all, so why not put that to good use? But I needed a ‘slower’ wheel for teaching. Putting an absolute beginner on a Chair wheel is a bit like asking a learner driver to take charge of a Lamborghini for their first lesson…

Bottom bobbin; silk caps. Top: merino

So when I got the chance to buy a Lonsdale from a fellow Raveller, I leaped at it.  They are not, strictly speaking, a classical “upright” with a centrally placed flyer – suitable for both left and right handed spinners -  as the flyer assembly is not central, but can be to the left or right. Mr Williamson was one of the first wheel builders in the UK offering wheels with right hand side flyers. Old treadle wheels always have the flyer on the left.  Luckily, this one had the flyer on the right – although I think you can change it, yourself. Not sure. I get backache if I spin with the flyer to the left, for any period of time. Which makes anything other than an upright or right-hand side flyer wheel, a waste of time, for me.

Left-handed spinning has served me well, though as it turns out all Great Wheels are only configured for it, so the left-handed spinner has a decided advantage when learning to use a spindle wheel.

The Lonsdale has lived with us a few days now and already, I’ve spun some random samples of silk caps, a leftover sample of merino and two large bobbins of Wensleydale, spun worsted and plied for stockings for Living History. I have barely left the wheel alone, even though it still has a couple of problemettes to address. I sat down at it “for an hour” the day before yesterday. Six hours later….

The wheel still needs a bit of fettling – once or twice, the metal rod inside the treadle bar has slid out. A wonky leg got fixed on the first day. And a bit of a clunk was solved, too. Nothing madly out of alignment, just a few bits dried out and worked loose, I think. I will take it to Woodland Turnery’s wheel surgery at Woolfest, in June. Just to get its MOT.

Apparently, the wheel was only bought by the previous owner last year but she never got on with it – largely because she has other wheels, including two stunning larger Timbertops – and this one, hailing from the 1970s – was in need of a bit of TLC to get it running smoothly again – and believe me, a smoothly running TT spins like  a hot knife through butter – nothing else like it.

Sometimes, you don’t get on with a wheel that someone else would absolutely love and I think this was the case. She said if it had been her only wheel, she’d have sorted out it’s little problems – for example, finding the tension adjustment a bit fiddly. Oddly, I don’t! There are just lots of indefinable little things that can make a wheel a bad fit for one person; and like coming home, to another.  The lovely Raveller bought it from eBay – from the original owner, who bought it in the late 70s, for his daughter. The whole family had a TT and it looks like this particular daughter maybe didn’t gel with it, either. It looks like it had hardly been spun on – I suspect he had it in the attic for most of those thirty years. The bearings slightly mottled looking. Now they are lathered in gun oil and will work fine.

I have spun on double treadle wheels since 1994 – first the Jensen, then the Chair wheel so I did think I was taking a punt on returning to single treadle. With DT, you’re forced to sit face-on and I don’t mind that but… to my surprise I have enjoyed the single treadle – especially when plying as you can sit in an easy chair, and have the wheel at an angle!

I am finally forcing myself to stop spinning on her today, after plying the Wensleydale – just long enough to strip her down and rebuild her, as the original owner seems to have put paper under the post supporting the mother-of-all.  I think things will be better aligned if I just pull the wheel off the bearings and remove all the removable parts; reverse the 1970s’ owners MacGyvering.  The fellow Raveller had done some work on it already, leaving me with not too much to do.  Have waxed it several times now, as some of its extremities felt a bit dried out – nothing irreversible. The wood grain is beautiful and it has quite a patina, being thirty-five years old, although my younger wheel is fumed oak, I think, and darker, as you can see from the pic below.

Wensleydale. 1998 flyer on left; 1978 flyer on right

I have had my Chair wheel for fifteen years and never got round to naming him, but this wheel is called Betty after my two great x 3 grandmas, one from Halifax, one from Huddersfield – Betty Lister (nee Crabtree), born 1793, and  Betty Smith (nee Dawson), born 1804 – both women married clothiers and were the daughters of clothiers. As my wheel came from Huddersfield in the West Riding, I thought it deserved a West Riding name!

The great thing about getting another TT wheel is that the flyers, although made twenty years apart, are interchangeable. That’s the 1978 flyer, bobbin and whorl on the right. See how Mr Williamson changed over from a mere six cup-hooks, to some nine brass hooks (without the shoulder, to catch the yarn – not that it does!)  The lovely Raveller gave me some spare replacement brass hooks kindly supplied by Joan at Woodland Turnery – but I may stick with the clunky retro hooks, for now!

So I now have a whole new  flyer, two new ratio whorls and three bobbins to switch between wheels.

And the good news is, I’m hoping to offer spinning tuition/work-shops in the very near future, with Betty, at a couple of great venues here in North Yorkshire. If you’re interested in learning to spin, or learning intermediate/more advanced techniques, either in a workshop or individual tuiton -  you can email me, penelopehemingwayATgmail.com for further info.

‘Traditions Today’ email.

I was really excited last week to get my usual ‘Traditions Today’ email from Interweave, because it was trailing my article and  “Mrs Jackson of York“‘s stocking pattern  in the forthcoming  ‘Knitting Traditions, Spring, 2013′.   Available for pre-order now, and should be out at the start of April. I hope those of you who love this nerdy stuff, enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed researching and writing.

In June, 1845, Anne and Emily Bronte went on “our first long Journey by ourselves “;  a three-day long excursion to York.  They probably stayed at the George Inn, on Coney Street.  We know Charlotte and Anne stayed there as a staging post on Anne’s final journey, in 1849 – and the Brontes were creatures of habit.  The George Inn was right opposite Elizabeth Jackson’s  Berlin Rooms. 

York’s other big coaching inn, The Black Swan, was also on Coney St, a few doors down.

I went on the trail of knitters in the Brontes’ novels, was privileged to examine some knitting artefacts at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth; and have recreated the stocking from Elizabeth Jackson’s  “The Practical Companion to the Work-Table”, which was in its second edition just as Emily and Anne were staying on Coney Street.  From the knitting sticks and the gauge of the needles extant in the Parsonage’s Bonnell Collection, it is clear the Bronte sisters could knit a stocking!

To re-create the 1840s’ stocking, I used Rennies’ Supersoft Lambswool;  the hard-wearing yarn of choice used by many re-enactors and living historians to knit stockings. I used the greasy yarn on cones, but ungreasy wool in balls is also available.  Rennies is spun in Scotland, and the company has been going since 1798. The Brontes were huge fans of all things Scottish, so I felt they’d approve. I knitted my version in a screaming version of bright purple and marzipan – mainly because I have read of knitting folk in the Dales dyeing leftover grey wool with logwood, to make purple stockings for their own families. And yellow from weld was a cheap and readily available dye. Also, Emily famously wore a hideous mauve gown with yellow flashes of lightning, so my purple and yellow combo was a tribute to her.  But if you have more restrained taste, do check out the Rennies’ colour range, as there is something there for everyone. These days we can buy online – so much easier but maybe less fun than the stash enhancement done by Miss Murray in Anne Bronte’s “Agnes Grey”, who:

 …Ostensibly… went to get some shades of  Berlin wool, at a tolerably respectable shop that was chiefly supported by the ladies of the vicinity….

I wonder if Anne did the same, in 1845, on Coney Street? We will never know. But it’s fun, speculating.

Coney Street, York. Credit: Nate Hunt

By Gervase Markham (Cavalarice, or the English Horseman) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

And some of the misinformation coming out re. ‘swaving’ is, frankly, a load of old pony.

Let’s see what Dalesfolk – who saw it – said ‘swaving’ was.  Then see if you can find any reliable/accurate demo of it online. I guarantee you – you won’t. No-one is currently doing it, as defined by – well, people who saw it. Or rather; someone may be quietly, modestly swaving away, somewhere but they are not online telling us about it!

Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby saw swaving with their own eyes. ‘Swaving’ is also known as ‘strikin’ t’loop’ (please gods, let no-one appropriate that one) and apparently, in Swaledale, it was known as ‘weaving’. As discussed in a previous post, the etymology is uncertain but it looks to mean “see-sawing” or “rocking”.

Certain would-be ‘swavers’ have decided swaving is all happening out of view,  somewhere at the end of the needle in the socket of the knitting stick. They claim that enthralled bystanders see nothing different, from a distance, when they see them ‘swave’. And right there, you have it.  If the casual bystanders are seeing nothing weird – you are not swaving.  In fact, you’re knitting sedately.

Swaving was a whole upper body, rocking movement.  Hartley and Ingilby noted:

… the secret of the method is the rhythmic up and down movements of the arms performed so that the right needle ‘strikes the loop’ without the least hesitation. The body sways up and down in sympathy with this action which is something like the beating of a drum

[Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales, Hartley & Ingilby, p.18, 1991 edition].

They add:

… It is impossible to do it in slow motion; and the loops fly off quicker than the eye can see….

The fact the very word means “rocking” in dialect, added to the Misses Hartley and Ingilby’s account of it, is compelling evidence.

And brings us back to Howitt’s famous 19thC description of swavers:

….They sit rocking to and fro like so many weird wizards…. this rocking motion is connected with a mode of knitting peculiar to the place, called swaving, which is difficult to describe… Ordinary knitting is performed by  a variety of little motions, but this is a single uniform tossing motion of both the hands at once, and the body often accompanying it with a sort of sympathetic action…

[Howitt, quoted in 'The Old hand-Knitters of the Dales', p. 79]

From this we can conclude: no rocking motion – no swaving.

I have been unable to find video footage (so far) as anyone contemporary or in the archives, swaving. Knitting in a ponderous manner with no see-sawing/rocking motion, or simultaneous movement of both hands – well, you can find that.  It isn’t ‘swaving’. That is absolutely crystal clear from Howitt and the Misses Hartley and Ingilby’s descriptions.  It is unfortunate when dialect terms are being appropriated by folk who don’t even understand them.

No special ‘tools’ are needed. A recent comment on my blog from someone who saw swaving in Pateley Bridge, mentions the fact the lady had no knitting stick.  For the convulsive, simultaneously both arms kind of movement – a stick would be a matter of choice. Neither do you need ‘special’ needles. The needles in various museums are often curved, but  sometimes, not. You can do it with Hiya Hiya small gauge steel needles. Having seen (and handled) needles from various museums across the North of England, it was evident to me that the needles used in the past by commercial or gansey knitters had no special magic.

So I hope no-one spends any money in the quest to swave. Simply read the accounts, and have a go!  Yorkshire folk are known for their directness – but also for our thriftiness. “Owt fer nowt” was one of my dad’s favourite sayings.  If folk out there want to knit in the spirit of the old Dalesfolk – just do it how it pleases thee, and tha’ll be reet. And don’t part wi’ thi brass to do it.

Swaving in the context of ganseys is a load of rubbish too, as the surviving swavers in the mid 19thC told the Misses Hartley and Ingilby that it could only be done for sections of plain stocking stitch. Ganseys of course, rely on purl and plain alternating for their patterning.  Stocking stitch jumpers were knitted in the Dales.  Howitt specifically says it was ‘peculiar’ to the Dales.

Living Historians are going to have to reclaim this one, before its meaning is distorted. Call to arms! (Well, needles). If anyone reading this finds a video of someone swaving (either now or in the past), do give us the link and we can all share it. In the meantime, please be assured no-one alive is doing it. Yet. Or if they are, they are not putting videos up on the internet.

When you swave but the casual onlooker can’t see any difference between that and your usual knitting style – you’re not swaving. You’re just knitting.

“Worsett (worsted) wheel”. Distaff is the clue!

Just a few textile related items from Selby inventories, from the second half of the 17thC.

In amongst this, there are some interesting items. A ‘worsett’ (worsted) wheel would possibly, at these dates, be a sort of intermediate style wheel, somewhere between a great wheel and a smaller wheel. The spinner sat down – instead of walked as at the Great Wheel -  and sometimes there was a handle to turn the wheel itself.  There may or may not have been a flyer – chances were, the spinner would still have to manually stop to wind the yarn onto the spindle, as on a Great Wheel. The Great Wheel remained pre-eminent for spinning woollen from carded wool; but it seems the new, smaller wheels were seen as better for worsted. As in flax spinning, worsted fibre supply was held on a distaff.  In the wood-cut above, the fibre on the distaff is not the characteristic fairytale book conical shape, we associate with flax, so this woman is probably spinning worsted.

A ‘spoile wheel’ was possibly a wheel for winding yarn (spoile = spool).
Selby is close to the East/West Riding border, so the dialect word for worsted, “wassit”, now appropriated by some is, slightly further South, rendered as “worsett”.

The will of Thomas Candler  (1680s)

…In the Presse House, …. 1 loome, £10 3 (shillings) -4 (pence)
In th e worke shope, 5 loomes, .1 warpin mill, 4 worsett wheeles, 4 spoile wheeles £7-1s-6d. In the Combing Roome, 3 pairs combs,1 pair carsay combs £1-4s-3d. In a Closett, some dyeing waires, £1-0s-3d… In the wool chamber, a parcel of yarn £2-10s, i parcell of comb woole  £3-8s-6d,  1 parcell of fleece woole, 3£-3s-9d, i parcell of brooken woole  £2-6s , i ps of baggin  £1-10s….

Carsay = kersey. It’s interesting that they had a different sort of comb. In “17thC Woolen Cloth Specification”, Stuart Peachey, (Stuart Press, 1991), Devonshire Kersies are defined as “…between twelve and thirteen such said Yards… and being well scoured, thicked, milled, and fully dried, shall weigh thirteen Pounds the cloth at the least….”  Yorkshire kersey was notoriously coarser than kersey from more Southerly locations. Kersey was made from combed wool and was woven fairly narrow. It was hard-wearing and comparatively cheap. 

This one has several points of interest. Robert Watson’s occupation was not noted, but the inventory from his shop was fascinating. NB: stocking knitting needles by the lb.  The 2s probably refers to “per dozen”. Note also the use of the word “needles”.  The “incle” is a narrow-ware; a warp-faced braid. There are few references to inkle looms, but the fact the braid was called “incle” is suggestive of the idea that maybe there were ‘inkle’ looms by the 17thC.  The Shorter OED notes the first usage in 1532.

The “blew linnen” may be important. There is some debate as to whether all undershirts were white/undyed, as previously believed, in the 17thC. It is possible that blue shirts were also found in the 17thC. This is slightly backed up by Charles I’s blue, silk knitted shirt, from the 1640s.

The administration of Robert Watson’s estate
Sept 10, 1689

Inventory Nov 8th,  1688
Goods in the Shopp
5 doz of stockins att 7s,  £1-15-;  one doz ditto 13s;  3 doz of childrens stockins att 2s  6;  120 yards of blew linn, 8-17-8,…. 8 pr. of worstet stockings att 2s 6d., £1; 5 pr of womens stockins at 1s 8d., …. 21 lbs of worstet att 2s., £2-2; 4 1/2 of yarne at 18d per lb., 6s 9d…. 59 peices (sic) of small Incle att 8d., £1-19-4… 2 doz. of pinns, 9s…. 4lbs of knitting needles, 2 s; 3 paire of leather stockins, 1 s 6d…. 1 peice of callico,15s….a groze of Incle, 5s; 46 peices of ditto att 10d £1.0.4… A parcel if wash balls, 10s…Total of inventory  £344.2.4
All sorts other things… (three barrels of herring), oil, a huge inventory of spices, and tobacco….

Finally, this yeoman’s will which I found really poignant – showing how much their livestock meant to people. (Not textile related!)

Landscape with cows and Wildfowlers, Peter Paul Rubens [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Feb 20th, 1664 …I Miles Watson of Burne, yeoman give to (sister in law) one cow, couller black, & her name is Finger Paper…

Selby wills edited by Dr F COLLINS for the Yorks Arch Soc Vol XLVII1912

The Retreat. By Gemälde von Carve [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The ‘Terrible Knitter of Dent’ article will be in a forthcoming issue of ‘Knit Edge’.  So I will keep my powder dry and say no more about it here. It’s a gripping story and a rarity to be able to put a name, a description and an entire life story to that usually anonymous body of people; knitters. I hope folk will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.

Whilst researching, I was fascinated by the reasons people were certified and admitted to the asylum. I started collecting some of the reasons people found themselves there. On admission, patients had already been ‘certified’ and these certificates were placed in the Admission records. Question 4 on the certificate, was: “Supposed Cause of the insanity?”

Sometimes, doctors left this blank or said words to the effect “Search me!” A common reason for admission was “Religious melancholy” or simply “Religion”. At the start, most patients were Quakers but as time went on, they admitted on much wider criteria.

Here are just a handful of the most interesting answers, from the 1820s:

“A violent attachment to a female not approved by his friends.”

“Perhaps attending overmuch to business.”

“1st, an accident, which caused a severe contusion of the Brain.
2nd. By fright, caused by a man (unknown) getting into his Lodging room, secreting himself under some Linen in a corner of the room, and after about five weeks after this he was attacked with the first fit…”

“Uncertain; he thinks he has not been as humble as he ought to have been”.

“Hipochondriac [sic]“.

“A tedious confinement with an affected family”.

“Intemperate drinking”.

“Religious melancholy”.

“Suppose a fear of not being able to pay his just debts owing to the depression of the times”. (1826)

“Disappointments from a long attachment to a man” . (28 yr old woman)

“Intemperate use of Opium”.  (A woman of 43 or 4)

“Perhaps anxiety”! (A 29 yr old woman had three kids the youngest 17 Days).

“Suppressed or irregular menstruation”.  (A 33 year old woman).

And finally, my favourite:

“Primarily drinking British Gin”.

Heptonstall gravestone

“If the youngest daughter in a family is married first, the eldest had better unravel one of her garters; knitting the same, mixed with other wool, into something a man can wear. This she must present to the one she has special regard for, and it will most likely incline his heart to her.”

[Yorkshire Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs, Richard Blakeborough, 1898]

Blakeborough wrote how knitted garters were once popular gifts, and often wanted “to work charms and spells with”. He said knitted garters were about an inch wide and a yard long. This is a nice example of how knitting and folklore intertwine.

In 1847, at a murder trial,  Ellen Beresford described what her sweetheart, George Collis, had been wearing when she last saw him. Amongst the articles of clothing, she mentions “…a white knitted garter, and one with a red sort of binding”.   Maybe the red was some kind of love token?

Knitted garters were regarded as the nursery slopes of knitting and often the very first thing a child made, when they learned to knit, so had fond associations with learning at a parent, or grandparent’s knee… In an interview in the 1980s, elderly Dent knitter Clara Sedgwick remarked that she had learrned to knit before she went to school and when she had mastered knitting garters on two needles, she graduated to stocking knitting on four.

Clara’s interviewers looked at Clara’s knitting stick.

We noticed how light were the sticks…and Mrs Sedgwick said that cherry wood was a favourite material with the carvers, many of whom presented their sweethearts with a stick on the day of their betrothal.

Courtesy Hull Maritime Museum

Many ornate sticks were love tokens – tokens of romantic love carved by a suitor but also sometimes, a sign of filial love; a special gift from father to daughter. There are often hearts or heart motifs on knitting sticks – some crudely carved; some, exquisite. The hearts motif is also a popular one on many Yorkshire ganseys. It can be found in Fair Isle knitting, as well. Again, it may have been seen as a sort of protective charm to keep a loved one safe, or remind them they were loved!

Central hearts motif, Bridlington child’s gansey from Rae Compton

Earlier this year we were in the West Riding, up in Heptonstall. Because the old church was abandoned, left standing as a ruin with its gravestones all round it, and a new one built – there are a remarkable number of 18thC gravestones surviving intact. The folk art on some of them was remarkably reminiscent of the carvings on some knitting sticks. The heart and cross combined on the Heptonstall gravestone pictured above, also occur in the knitting stick pictured, from Hull. Brass or tin heart shaped knitting sticks were universal across England, too. Most Yorkshire museums have one or more. There is a notable tin heart at the Bronte Parsonage Museum which may have come all the way up from Cornwall, with Mrs Bronte.

Courtesy Dales Countryside Museum

Manchester Art Galleries, ‘Dales Knitter’ doll. 1830-40

…

“I was too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.”

Stevie Smith, Not Waving But Drowning

So, what is “swaving”?

In the words of the oft-quoted passage from William Howitt’s ‘The Rural Life of England’ (1838):

“…As soon as it becomes dark, and the usual business of the day is over, and the young children are put to bed, they rake or put out the fire; take their cloaks and lanterns, and set out with their knitting to the house of the neighbour where the sitting falls in rotation…The whole troop of neighbours being collected, they sit and knit, singing knitting-songs, and tell knitting stories… All this time their knitting goes on with unremitting speed. They sit rocking to and fro like so many weird wizards. They burn no candle, but knit by the light of the peat fire. And this rocking motion is connected with a mode of knitting peculiar to the place, called swaving, which is difficult to describe. Ordinary knitting is performed by a variety of little motions, but this is a single uniform tossing motion of both the hands at once, and the body often accompanying it with a sort of sympathetic action… They knit with crooked pins called pricks.; and use a knitting-sheath consisting commonly of a hollow piece of wood….”

Howitt’s account is taken by some as Holy Writ simply because it is one of the few accounts in print (or rather, widely circulated), to describe swaving. However, we should not get too OCD about Howitt’s every word. He was not a knitter. This is about as good as it gets, if you want a description, though.

“Swave” is a lost Yorkshire dialect word; so obscure that even the more obscure reaches of the ‘Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society’ couldn’t give us many clues. When I couldn’t find anything cognate in the most definitive Anglo Saxon dictionaries, I knew it was probably a medieval (later) word.

I have looked in all kinds of obscure books and journals on Yorkshire dialect. Including one exquisite little book from 1810, with the catchy title: “Specimens of the Yorkshire Dialect To which is added a GLOSSARY of Such of the Yorkshire words As Are Likely not to be understood by those UNACQUAINTED with the Dialect” (Anon, Published Knaresborough, Price 6d).

Distracted by this glorious book, I did find a gem for the hand-spinners here – in a poem called “T’deeath of Owd Deeasy An Eclogue”, which is a lengthy poem about the tragic death of Georgy’s old mare. Georgy, a practical Yorkshireman, mourns the death of his faithful horse but simultaneously calculates how much value he can get out of her body:

“Thy hide poor lass! Ah’ll hay it tann’d wi’ care,

‘T’ull mak’ a cover to my owd arm-chair.

An pairt – an appron for my wife to wear,

When cardin’ woul, or weshin’ t’parlour fleer….”

In another poem, a girl thinks of her dull and not very wealthy paramour, and hopes at the coming Fair, she can swap him for a rich farmer’s son:

“Why sud Ah nut succeed as weel,

And get a man full out genteel

As awd John Darby’s daughter Nelly;

Ah think mysen as good as she

She can’t mak cheese or spin like me….”

In the poems that make up the book and the glossary – no mention of the verb “to swave”.

However, I finally struck gold in “Yorkshire Words Today. A Glossary of Regional Dialect” David Paynter, Clive Upton & J.D.A Widdowson [Yorkshire Dialect Society, 1997].

Sway-pole  n. see-saw. West Riding.

Sway, various dialects use in Scotland, England…also Lakeland. ‘a see-saw’.

I am taking a leap and betting money that ‘swave’ comes from the late Middle English “sway”, “To cause to move back and forward, side to side” [Shorter OED]. In our context, it means “to rock” like a see-saw.

Howitt described just this kind of motion. What is problematic is when his words are taken so literally, it is pronounced by Authority that ALL swaving used special needles (no – just needles)  and ALL swaving needles were called ‘pricks’ (snigger, but yes that is just a Yorkshire dialect word meaning ‘needle’ generally – not specifically any one kind of needle), and that ALL swaving happened with a special knitting stick. (In Yorkshire dialect it was more often ‘stick’ than ‘sheath’). Don’t waste your time making the more puerile amongst us laugh by insisting your ‘swaving’ needles are now ‘pricks’. That is just the defunct, catch-all word for ‘needles’, and not something arcane or specific to this one technique.

Swaving happened with a stick or wisk – Howitt mentions both and we have no reason to disbelieve him, as both survive as extant artefacts in Yorkshire.  Folk swaved with curved needles.  But there is no reason to believe these are ‘special’ or magically ‘different’ in any way to the usual curved needles. What Howitt described was a group of people all of whom happened to have curved needles.  Some 20thC Dales knitters said they knew people who preferred straight needles, and others who preferred curved; and there were those folk who swapped between the two, depending on mood.  A curved needle would help the knitter ‘strike t’loop’ if held at the right angle.

Researching my forthcoming book ‘River Ganseys’ I took a few other peregrinations into Yorkshire knitting history – ah come on, it’s me. I never stick to the point!  And one thing I researched was… swaving.

Interviewed in the 1970s, Marie Hartley said:

“… We found and saw one person knitting in the old way, Mrs Crabtree of Flintergill, Dent, then in her 79th year. We were told to go and see her, and when we knocked at her door she opened it with her knitting in her hand and a knitting sheath tucked in her apron band.
“We regret that we did not meet her sister, Polly Stephenson, who also used the ‘swaving’ action in knitting…

“…The swift execution in knitting was achieved by the exponent being taught as a child, often by her father. We wish that we had borrowed a cine camera and recorded Mrs Crabtree in action, for this skill is something which has gone, never to be seen again in the Yorkshire Dales…

Had Misses Hartley and Ingilby been able to borrow a cine camera, we’d be in less doubt about the precise nature of swaving, today. I’ve been checking out archive footage for the past couple of years now, in the hope of finding swaving as someone else may have caught it on film, intentionally or not. Still haven’t found it.

Numerous Dales knitters interviewed in the 1950s-70s did remark that swaving could only be practised fast on straightforward sections of stocking stitch – not on ribbing, or lace, or anything else at all. Some said it was faster to use bent needles, others said they preferred straights. Knitters did not routinely ‘swave’ everything in sight, as some would have you believe – because whole sections of work were not suitable for this technique. They’d swave down a plain bit, then revert to their ‘normal’ way of knitting if there were a lot of purls, or swave but swave much slower. I suspect swaving was not much use for two colour knitting either, given the fact they said they couldn’t use it much for Knit and Purl. Swaving would work great for that endless Forth Bridge for 18thC and 19thC knitters – the vanilla plain stocking, in other words.

So far as I know – to date – we only have reference to this as a Yorkshire, inland technique. That may change as other information comes to light.

The misguided would have you believe there is barely a discernible difference for the onlooker,  between swaving and ‘normal’ knitting. Not true. Swaving was a very visible rocking motion of the whole upper body, not a tiny fine motor thing happening at the tip of the needles. No-one was in any doubt when they saw swaving – either Howitt in the 1830s, or Marie Hartley in the 1940s. It looked so different, Marie Hartley wished she’d filmed it. The technique would not be called the dialect word for ‘see-sawing’ if all the see-sawing was happening inside the knitting stick!

Ganseys do not lend themselves to a crafty swave – because so much of them is Purl and Knit relief patterning – a total no-go for swaving, according to those surviving into the mid 20thC who were taught to knit by habitual swavers. We can’t reconstruct everything there is to know about swaving, but there is no reason to believe a special or different stick was used for it – and certainly no special adaptations or attachments would be needed. The movement appears to have been an almost convulsive rocking of the whole (upper?) body thing, not a tiny swivel located somewhere in the knitting stick.

Less often quoted, is Mary Howitt’s novel, ‘Hope On, Hope Ever!’  (1840), which also describes Dales knitters, but not swaving:

… the dales-people have another employment…. this is knitting. Old men and young;  women and children, all knit…. There still is a demand, at Kendal, for their goods – caps, stockings, jackets and shirts; and, though everyone says the trade was better in their father’s time, they still go on knitting, contented in the belief that, while the world stands, stockings and caps will be wanted, and consequently, dales people will always be knitters…

Stockings and caps would of course, be prime swaving material, with all those acres of stocking stitch.

There are several passages in Mary Howitt’s book describing various characters knitting stockings; no doubt this reflects the reality of the vast majority of the Dales people’s work. At one point, a character mentions giving someone a dozen pairs of stockings of her own knitting, as a gift. Swaving would make this work go faster – where purl stitches are only used at the faux seam and, possibly, clocks (patterns) at the ankles.

One 1950s’ source interviewed a Sedburgh woman, who was taught to swave as a child. She said they called it “strikin t’loop”, which is rather more suggestive of the motion – presumably if you hit at the right speed or angle, what you will get is a loop straight on the needle. This lady was taught to knit by her grandma who learned to knit at a knitting school in the Dales – as many, many Yorkshire children learned to knit. Not the romantic ‘at grandma’s knee’ stuff – this was an industrial technique. And again, rather than a ‘fisherman’ thing – the only evidence we have for swaving suggests it was an inland phenomenon. Sedburgh, or ‘Sedbusk’ as it was often called, was known for its fine glove knitting tradition.

Knitting schools were run by farmers or their families. Some coastal towns also had their knitting schools. Sometimes the masters or mistresses even of coastal knitting schools are also traceable to inland farms.  It was at the knitting schools that children learned to swave. This lady remarked that only ‘clever’ knitters could swave a purl stitch but even then, that would work for garter stitch – not alternating purl and knit, as in a gansey. Top speed she called ‘gallopin’. She said you slowed down to canterin’ when it wasn’t just knit stitch.

This puts swaving fairly firmly in the stocking knitter’s armoury of techniques and out of the romantic gansey knitting fisher families, although those children on the coast who attended a Knitting School will quite likely, have learned to swave.  Not what some ‘experts’ want to hear.

If you want sources and references and much more detail about ‘swaving’  or ‘strikin’ t’loop’, – do get on our mailing list at Cooperative Press, and you will be amongst the first to know when my more in-depth look at the art of swaving, is published. I will have much more info there, and everything is referenced for your delectation.  Soon now!