Image ID: 17227

Frame-Knitters Museum

Courtesy of Reg Baker

Chapel Street
Ruddington
England

The east wing from Caretaker's Residence. Note old Frame Knitters windows. The Ruddington Framework Knitters' Museum is a small independent working museum, established by the efforts of the local community, which saved the site from the bulldozer and in 1971 put it under the control of a charitable Trust. The Museum's site is a unique complex of listed frameshops, cottages, and outbuildings arranged around a garden courtyard, together with a former chapel in which many of the knitters worshipped. The site has been restored to show the working and living conditions of the framework knitters who occupied it throughout the nineteenth century. Stocking making or framework knitting was an industry of considerable size, in and around the Nottingham area. The main areas in the country for this industry were the three Midland county towns of Nottingham Leicester and Derby. The stocking-frame which was a hand operated machine about the size of a small loom or small upright piano was used to knit stockings or hose and other small articles of clothing like hats gloves and scarves or mufflers. Cotton, silk or wool yarn would be used. The frame work knitters worked at home, having either a frame shop or workshop in the garden or a special room often on the top floor of the house with a special extra wide window to let in the maximum light for the stockinger to work. The yarn was supplied to the stockinger by the hosier who employed him. A careful check was kept on the amount of yarn used. The amount of yarn supplied and the finished articles would be weighed and any short fall had to be accounted for. One quarter of an ounce wastage was allowed on every pound of yarn. Stocking frames were expensive. In the years 1780 to 1810 a new frame cost from

Date: 22/07/1977

Organisation Reference: NCCS000082

Organisation: