Dorset Echo - News, Sport, Homes, Jobs, Cars and Local Information in Weymouth, Portland

An industry that was worn out

From the Echo, first published Tuesday 29th Oct 2002.

WHO would have thought that in 1750 Poole was famous for its manufacture of silk stockings or that in the late 16th century woad (which produced a rich blue dye) was extensively grown around Cranborne?

Or that until the mid-19th century 4,000 people in East Dorset, particularly in Lychett Minster, were employed to make buttons? Rachel Worth winkles out such fascinating facts in her new book Discover Dorset - Dress and Textiles.

Although agriculture and fishing were always the chief means of support in Dorset there was also a surprising amount of industrialisation, chiefly in textiles.

Some were made at home and provided additional employment for women and children but many textiles were also made in mills.

Walford Mill at Wimborne was once a fulling mill for the woollen industry, a flax-swingling mill (used in the production of linen underclothes) was built at Burton Bradstock in 1803, a silk-spinning mill could be found at Sherborne in 1755 and three glove-making factories existed in that same town in the mid-19th century.

Gradually, however, people began to wear cotton underwear, gloves were no longer an essential part of a lady's wardrobe and buttons could be made by machine.

Along with this decline of Dorset's labour-intensive textile manufacture Rachel Worth traces the history of the clothing of the workers themselves. The smock frock, for example, was worn by men and children and, although essentially a practical garment, was often beautifully embroidered.

The field bonnet was a picturesque hat worn for protection against the sun by women working in the fields and, together with a wrapper or overall constituted female dress.

These clothes of the rural poor are described fondly and in great detail by Thomas Hardy, in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Far From the Madding Crowd and other novels, as Rachel Worth observes.

The author, who is course director of Fashion Studies at Bournemouth Art Institute and an authority on 19th century working men's clothes, has written a fascinating, well-illustrated study of domestic history that, although it lies on our doorstep, probably has never caused us to stop and think about it before.

Discover Dorset: Dress and Textiles by Rachel Worth, Dovecote Press £4.95 pb

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