1700s | Author, Jane Lark's stories

Having been away on holiday last week I have some aside posts I am going to intersperse between Harriette’s continuing story. I can’t wait any longer to share these facts I’ve discovered with you. So look out for more of Harriette’s story on Sunday, but today I am going to talk to you about spinning and weaving cotton…

We went to an amazing Georgian mill on holiday, Quarry Bank Mill. It was built in the late 1700s. I don’t know why, but I was really surprised to discover that the site was the family home, as well as the mill. Foolish really, of course they didn’t have cars to drive into work.

When we walked up the hill beyond the mill we walked into what was obviously a historically planted and sculpted garden, I said to my husband, this is really weird it’s like a proper garden, someone must have turned the mill into a home. But then we started seeing signs talking about what the garden had been like in the 1700’s and there was a large Georgian house to the side, which was I guess a couple of hundred yards up the hill from the mill. This was the family home.

We walked around the mill, and were shown how carding, spinning and weaving worked. Here’s a board showing the process.

But with my author’s brain, not that I’d necessarily include it in a story as I write about the upper class, but it was fascinating to be talked through family life in the early 1700s and before that, when many homes were part of the cloth making industry.

Before the days of factories weavers worked alone at home, and weavers were always men. Women did the carding and the spinning, and it took eight hours to spin what it took one hour to weave, so families wanted to keep their spinning wheel going constantly so it wasn’t just a mother’s task, but the from the age of 4-5 children, including young boys would be taught to card, separating the fibres of wool or cotton, ready for spinning, and then girls would be taught to spin from 7-8 and work on the spinning wheel in shifts to keep their fathers provided with thread for weaving – hence why women who did not marry became known as ‘Spinsters’ because they would then be left at home to keep spinning.

Looms in the home were wide enough for one person sitting at it to throw a shuttle through and be able to catch it the other end (so a stretched out arms width), and generally men would work alone at the loom, and their loom would be passed from father to son, and yes this is another historical origin of a word ‘heirloom’. I know – I love learning all these delicious little facts. It was a fab place. But I’m not done yet…

Did you know why broad cloth is called broad cloth? Well if you don’t you’ll know now. Broad cloth was more valuable because it was wider, which gave it more versatility for use, and it was wider because it was made on a two-man loom, so one person sat one side and threw the shuttle, the other caught it.

But then came the invention of the water powered looms. Which could produce far more cloth at a much greater speed, and this is what was built at Quarry Bank, a huge water powered mill to receive the cotton. I hate talking about the slave trade, it was a vile practice which creeps me out… but it was a fact, it happened, and at the time the mill was built, merchants would sail to Africa to capture slaves, take the slaves to America to farm the cotton, and then bring the cotton back to the Britain to stock the mills, and it was cotton Quarry Bank was built to process.

Of course then mills were in the situation that women could not spin the cotton fast enough to stock the looms, and calls were put out urging someone to invent a spinning machine. The spinning-jenny came into life. Initially it was a small number of spindle’s and some families bought one and still worked at home.

But then giant machines were developed ones that cottage industries couldn’t keep up with and this was the point when poverty began hitting the majority of the working class in the late 1700s.

More on Quarry Bank next week, I’ve a little more to share. And more on Harriette on Sunday…

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

See the side bar for details of Jane’s books, and Jane’s website www.janelark.co.uk to learn more about Jane. Or click ‘like’ on Jane’s Facebook page to see photo’s and learn historical facts from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras, which Jane publishes there. You can also follow Jane on twitter at @janelark

Frances Bankes

This week I want to share something which surprised me about Frances Bankes’s Ball, which I talked about last week and the week before, and seeing as the surprise is about children, and Christmas is a time to make a fuss of children, I thought it fitting to share this the Sunday before Christmas.

Well, I would have thought that at a party on the 19^th December 1791 the children would have been tucked away in their beds in the attic rooms, out of sight and out of mind. But apparently no, not all Georgian parents wanted their children hidden away while they entertained. Some parents treated their children as part of the family exactly as we might today.

It is known, through Frances Bankes’s letters that she followed literary guidance of the time for parents, such as the philosopher John Locke’s, ‘Thoughts Concerning Education’ which was a popular book in lending libraries. She did not go so far as to breastfeed, which was encouraged as being natural, but did frequently keep her children with her in the main reception rooms during the day, employing a nanny, Mrs Hill, to keep them in order when there were visitors. She also took the children on outings to the seaside on Brownsea Island, and to visit their Grandmother in London.

When the children were older Frances and her husband even rented a property, not in the fashionable quarters of London, but near Westminster, where her boys went to school, so they might not have to board but could come home in the evenings and sleep in the family home. What a committed loving family, I did not expect to hear about such a family in the 18^th Century.

So it is no wonder then that Frances let her ‘Five Brats’ come down to the ball, and not only to pay a short visit but to enjoy the entertainment for a long while.

The children had tea at four o’clock, in their upstairs sitting room, and then they were made to sleep for two hours before they dressed up in time for when the guests arrived at eight. Mrs Hill was told to keep them upstairs until their proud Mama rang to call them down and show them off.

They were initially lined up in the ballroom in a row (Sound of Music style).

Frances declared in a letter to her mother-in-law, ‘it was a very pretty sight and they all enjoyed it more than I should have imagined.’

Maria the baby was returned to bed after half-an-hour, as she was scared by so many people. Two of the boys, who were five and six, stayed up for a long while but tired before midnight and were then taken up to bed when Mrs Hill, the nanny/nurse, retired to bed.

But Frances’s daughter, three-year-old Anne, protested that she still had energy and did not wish to retire until the other ladies did, so both Anne and her brother George remained downstairs for even longer until they tired too and Frances herself took them up to bed.

Well, can you imagine four young children at a ball with 130-140 people, I know my own daughter has spent parties gathering Christmas confetti from every table, and collecting all the balloons, or running in circles on the dance floor, brim-full with the charged-up energy of over excitement, until it all has finally caught up with her and then she’s crashed out. Funny I had never imagined such behaviour at a Georgian Christmas ball in the 1700s, my eyes are now opened and my imagination tweaked.

Oh but let me share one more gem recorded from the catalogue of Frances Bankes’s motherly duties in her letters. When her second son, William – who grew up to be a great friend of Lord Byron’s (I’ll share his grown-up stories sometime, he was scandalous too) – was at school in London, one day he was not at all well, so Frances went to collect him from the school. She noted that the room had no chair in it but the one William occupied, (it was considered healthy by the school, to keep children in meagre surroundings). But when she came into the room, William’s friend who’d commandeered an upturned coal-scuttle as a seat, stood and offered it to Frances to sit on… She was charmed. So am I…

A series that will keep you curled up on the sofa in front of the log fire all