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Page 6 |
Newsletter 92, Spring 2011 © Hampshire Mills Group |
A Hairy Visit to Somerset by
HMG
by
Martin Gregory |
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Haircloth, cloth woven
with animal hair has been around for
centuries, but horsehair cloth made
using linen/flax thread for the warp and
horsehair for the weft came to
prominence in the eighteenth century.
Only hair from the tail is used and so
the width of cloth produced is limited
to about 60 cm.
Proven to be very resistant to wear,
horsehair cloth is strong with a
beautiful lustre, which improves with
wear. |
Thomas Chippendale used it as a covering
for chairs and sofas because it was as
lustrous as silk but much more hard
wearing.
Its popularity grew both here and on the
Continent, including within the Prussian
royal apartments at Potsdam. In the
second half of the nineteenth century it
it found more widespread use as covering
the seats in trains and tramcars. |
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Other diverse uses in the
nineteenth century were in the brewing
industry and in ladies fashions.
Horsehair cloth was spread on the floor
of drying kilns in breweries to prevent
grain being scorched or falling through
the holes in the flooring. Dresses for
the fashionable lady of the time had
large voluminous skirts which used
haircloth as stiffening to make them
stand out. It gave us the English word
‘crinoline’ (first used in 1830) from
the French ‘crinoline’ meaning haircloth
from the Latin
crinis
(hair) and
linum
(flax thread). |
In November last year, we
visited John Boyd Textiles in Castle
Cary, Somerset, where, by 1800, handloom
weavers began to weave a horsehair cloth
using a cotton warp. The horsehair came
from cropping the tails of local live
horses, a fashionable practice at the
time. John Boyd, a travelling textile
merchant from Scotland began weaving
horsehair cloth in Castle Cary in1837.
In 1851 he moved to his own purpose
built factory in North Street to expand
his output. The building is still there
with his name over the entrance.
Prior to the 1870
Education Act which introduced
compulsory primary education, children
were part of the weaving scene. In
Andrew Ure’s Dictionary (1846) we read “The
weft is of hair, and is thrown with a
long hooked shuttle; having a catch at
its end. The length of the shuttle is
about 3 feet; its breadth half an inch
and its thickness one sixth. It is made
of boxwood. ….. The workman passes
this shuttle through the threads of the
warp with one hand when the shed is
opened by the treddles (sic); a child
placed on one side of the loom presents
a hair to the weaver near the selvedge,
who catches it with the hook on his
shuttle, and by drawing it out passes it
through the warp.”
(Figure 5 shows a cross-section of such
a loom in Knight’s Dictionary) The loss
of child labour necessitated the
invention of a mechanical loom.
C. Bradley patented (No.
3066, Nov 29th
1865) a loom for weaving ‘horse-hair
fabrics’ in which ‘single
hairs are selected automatically from a
bunch of prepared hair, and are
presented to a weft inserter which draws
it through the shed.’
The mechanism is complex as it has to
allow for the picker failing to pick up
a single hair. John Boyd took out his
own patent in 1872 for his mechanical
loom. His looms were made in a small
foundry in Bruton, Somerset and are
still in use in the Castle Cary mill!
By 1900, horsehair fabric
was so popular that he employed over 200
people and was one of the main employers
in the town. His fabric was used for
Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Argyle St.
tearoom chairs, and for the Lutyens
designed ‘Napoleon’ chair.
John Boyd died in 1890
but his company lives on. In the 1930s
the company moved to some old flax mills
on the other side of town, buildings
which they occupy today. The new site
had a ropewalk which is now covered in
and used for storage. One mill had a
waterwheel and the site had a central
steam plant, now demolished. John Boyd
Textiles is now one of the last
surviving mechanised horsehair weavers
in the world. Horsehair fabric is now
used for restoration and for upmarket
designer handbags and interior décor. |
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A building used for storage and offices |
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The present weaving mill |
Our tour started in the warping mill
where the cotton warp is wound onto
beams to supply the looms. In the
nineteenth century, the horsehair came
from docking the tails of local horses
but now it is imported from Mongolia
having been processed and sorted in
China. We visited their modern dyeing
plant. In addition to using natural
colours and hair dyed black, they can
now dye horsehair almost any colour for
specific orders. The warping beams and
bundles of dyed horsehair are taken to
the weaving mill. There is a dedicated
team which keeps around twenty of the
old looms operational. Fabric is woven
in 50 metre lengths; the maximum width
of 60 cm is determined by the length of
the individual hairs. The looms are
slow, only producing about 3 m of cloth
per day. They have dobbies fitted so
that simple patterns can be woven: some
dobbies use pegged drums and looked
original to the looms whilst others were
supplied by a well respected Lancashire
maker. After weaving, the cloth is
taken to the top floor of the weaving
mill to be calendered: pressed between
heated metal plates to put a shine on
the cloth. A peep into the stockroom
showed what a wide range of patterns and
finishes is available today.
Our guide, Duncan, was
most knowledgeable and we spent a
fascinating couple of hours in an almost
unique environment; well done John Boyd
Textiles. Our thanks, also, to Andy
Fish for organising the visit and the
transport.
Martin Gregory.
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The ropewalk, now used for storage.
The large water driven mill is behind
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