Once inside the great wooden door, the clack of the loom-shuttles and an evocative smell of wool oil welcomes you to the lower hall. It is quite cramped, and there is an overwhelming presence of antique-looking, whirling machinery. It looks a bit intimidating, but also very interesting. The half dozen or so weavers are scurrying about with leather skips of yarn, or attending to their shuttles. You seize a printed guide-leaflet and begin to look about you.

"Naturally, It all starts with my fleece..."

Carding:
To your right is the carding & spinning room. The fleece is brought here having been opened, blended and scoured (washed) to remove the 30% or so dirt and natural grease which it contains. It is then thrown into the hopper which feeds the scribbler (which was made in 1862). Here the various wire-tooth covered rollers combine to separate the wool into individual fibres which are drawn off by the fly-comb and passed via the overhead conveyor to the Scotch feed over the apron of the carder.

This machine further refines the web and evens it out both width and length ways before splitting it into 18 separate slivers which are wound side by side as cheeses onto a condenser bobbin. Like other textile machines which have evolved over centuries, carding rollers have splendidly evocative names: swifts, workers, strippers, lickers-in, nippers & fancies!

Spinning:
The condenser bobbins are taken to the spinning frame. A system of rollers running at different speeds draft (stretch) the slivers to the correct thickness and spin them onto long bobbin tubes, using a ring & traveller mechanism very like the flyer on a spinning wheel.

Twisting:
If you cross to the wire screen at the other side of the mill, the machine nearest to you on your right is the twisting frame on which two or more threads can be twisted (plied) to make one thicker thread. The direction and degree of twist can be altered. The action of the machine is rather like that of the spinning frame, but without the drafting.

Coneing:
Right at the end of the mill, in front of the racks of loom spares, is a single head cone winder which is used to wind the spun & twisted yarn off the bobbins onto cones, which are the packages on which the yarn is stored until wanted for weaving.

Up the mill stairs, behind the warping mill, is another coner, an eight head model, which is used to rewind the large storage cones into smaller ones to go on the warping creel.

Hanking:
Some yarn, particularly that used for hand knitting, is wound into hanks on the hank winder by the warping mill.

Warping:
The warping mill & creel are used to prepare the warp, the threads which lie along the length of the cloth. Cones of the various ends (warp threads) to be incorporated into a warp are arranged on the peg creels against the far wall, and drawn off onto the warping balloon in sections. Each section corresponds to one pattern repeat across the width of the cloth, so the warp sections are wound next to each other until the warp is of the right width.

Cloth has traditionally been made in pieces which can be anything from 50 - 100 yards, depending on the weight of the cloth: the idea is that all pieces should have roughly the same bulk. Warps, therefore, are made in multiples of piece lengths, and are called cuts. Thus a two cut warp of 163 yards would weave out as two roughly 80 yard pieces. The warp is wound off the balloon onto a wooden beam which is put into a loom.

Weft winding:
The threads which lie from side to side of the cloth are the weft. This is wound onto various sorts of bobbins which go in the loom shuttles. Downstairs, beyond the twisting frame, are two weft winders: the first is a super-cop winder and beyond it is an automatic pirn winder.

Weaving:
In several places in the mill are weaving looms. On these machines the picks (weft threads) are inserted at right angles between the threads of the warp. The warp, which runs the length of the cloth, is wound slowly off the beam at the back of the loom. Each end (thread) passes through the eye in a heald wire. These wires are arranged in heald frames which can be raised or lowered so forming a shed (gap), between those end which are 'up' and those 'down', through which the shuttles are thrown from side to side. The woven cloth is continuously wound onto a beam under the front of the loom.

The four looms downstairs (two in the main room and two in the small weaving room with the large window) are 90" Dobcross 4x4 box looms. This means that there are four shuttle boxes on each side of the going part (the bit that oscillates backwards and forwards and along which the shuttles run). These boxes can be controlled independently so that there can be a maximum of seven shuttles and thus a maximum of seven weft colours used in making a cloth. The sley which spreads out the warp and beats the weft threads into the fell of the cloth is 90" wide. Generally we weave our cloth 72" wide to finish at 60" wide. Upstairs, though, there is a 130" wide loom on which we can weave very wide cloth, like bedspreads.

The large mechanical 'lump' at the top of each loom is the dobby. This controls the pattern, determined by which threads go over and under which other threads. The simplest pattern is plain weave, in which every thread goes alternatively over and then under every other thread. It's a bit like darning a sock! The dobby also controls which shuttle is shot across, and therefore the weft colourway and order. These actions are controlled by the two chains which hang below the end of the dobby. These chains are made up from lags and spacers as we need them. Regularly used chains are kept on racks adjacent to the loom spares shelves, where there is also a chain bench where the chains are constructed.

Mending & finishing:
After weaving, the pieces are cuttled (loosely folded up), and stacked by the weaving shed door. From there they are taken across the courtyard to the mending table next to the coffee shop. Here the cloth is checked for faults and any knots and broken threads are unpicked and darned back into the cloth. At this stage all woven cloth feels rather like canvas.

It still contains a lot of dirt and oil, and the threads have not bedded together to form a flexible, draping cloth. The pieces must be scoured (washed), milled (shrunk) to give them that unmistakable woollen handle (feel). At this stage, too, the cloth can be cropped to make it smooth, or raised to make it fluffy like a blanket.

Afterwards...
If you visit our large mill-shop, adjacent to the mill, you will see a wide range of woven products, all made here in the mill. There is a small tailoring shop on the premises where many of the garments are made, and the rugs fringed and folded. We hope that you have enjoyed learning something of what goes into making them - a lot of noise, a lot of traditional skill, a lot of care.

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