This is an analysis of a set of weaver’s heddles used to make huckaback linen in Lopham, Norfolk, probably 1900 – 1930.

Last year I visited Norfolk Museum Services’ storage facility at Gressenhall Farm & Workhouse in search of an old loom from North Lopham. The loom was there, dismantled, the big wooden timbers piled up in a rack along with other artefacts originally from Lopham. Amongst these we found a set of weaver’s ‘gear’ from a smaller loom. Shafts, heddles and reed, still threaded with the end of a warp. The heddles are unusual eyeless or ‘clasped’ heddles. I recently returned to do a full inspection, and this post is a report about my findings. I am grateful to the curators at Gressenhall for help and patience.

Introduction

The photograph above shows a set of heddles and a reed still threaded with a linen warp and a remnant of woven huckaback, recently unearthed in the museum stores at Gressenhall Farm & Workhouse in Norfolk. It is unusual for heddles like this to survive, making this is a valuable find with much to tell about traditional techniques.

Lopham was the last place in England where linen was made professionally on handlooms using skills passed down from generation to generation. Albert Tyler is reputed to have carried on weaving huckaback for a few years after the closure of T. W. & J. Buckenham in 1925, ¹ and to have been the last of the Lopham weavers.² It is possible that this set of heddles and reed belonged to him, in which case these two inches of huckaback might be the last piece of ‘Lopham linen’ ever made.

Unlike modern heddles, which are mass produced from either polyester or wire, these old heddles were made of string and hand-knitted by the weavers themselves. Contemporary handweavers might think of their heddle leaves as permanent fixtures in the loom, never to be removed, but it was once common practice to keep a different set of ‘gear’ for each type of cloth. Upon finishing a length of cloth, the weaver would leave the last bit of warp threaded in the reed and heddles together with a few inches of woven web. This gear would then be bundled up and stored until the next time the same cloth was needed. The weaver would then tie a new warp onto the ends of the old warp and use that to draw the new warp through the heddles and reed, rather than re-threading. The gear effectively ‘remembers’ information about the cloth – the sett, the sleying, the drafting.

.

Inspection

I built a wooden cradle to temporarily support the shafts and reed to facilitate a thorough inspection without damaging the yarn or heddles. I was able to discover information about sett, reed sleying, drafting, and details about the heddle construction.

There are 4 pairs of heddle shafts. The shafts are 94cm long, 12mm thick and 20mm high. Cords remain attached to top and bottom shafts – two single loops towards either end of what I assume to be the top shafts, and a single loop along the bottom shafts to tie to the treadles. I arranged the gear in the cradle accordingly. This suggests the huckaback cloth was woven with warp floats on the top surface, and more ends raised than lowered during weaving.

The steel reed is 78cm long and 11cm high (8cm between baulks).

.

Sett, sleying, and draught

The short length of woven cloth remaining in front of the reed is standard huckaback, with 5 ends and picks in one unit. The reed has 16 dents per inch. The warp is sleyed with 2 ends per dent, giving a sett of 32 ends per inch. There are approximately 500 dents in the reed and 1000 threaded warp ends.

I followed individual warp threads from the cloth remnant through the reed and back to the heddles to determine the draft. Some threads towards the selvages are broken, but I believe this is the entering used at left and right selvages:

Leaves 1 and 4 (outside leaves) are tabby leaves, 2 & 3 are float leaves with fewer heddles.

.

Heddles

The heddles are particularly interesting: they are unusual eyeless or ‘clasped’ heddles, with the warp yarn caught in the intersection between upper and lower loops. These are the only clasped heddles I have ever seen in the UK, although they are mentioned in nineteenth century weaving manuals such as John Duncan’s Practical and Descriptive Essays on the Art of Weaving (1808): “For plain work, clasped heddles are chiefly used”; and in John Murphy’s Treatise on the Art of Weaving (1827): “The clasped heddles are chiefly In use for plain fabrics, or where little mounting is necessary… Should the yarn be weak or soft in the undressed state, the clasps, when drawn together, prevent it, in a considerable degree, from being unequally strained behind the mounting”. ³

The heddles are clearly handmade, and made specifically for this particular cloth, probably by the weaver. The total number of heddles matches the number of warp threads in the cloth (1000, give or take a handful) with 300 on each of the outer pair of leaves and 200 on each of the inner pair. ⁴ Each heddle is tied with a single knot at the top and bottom to cords running along the shafts. The heddles cannot move along the shafts so the sett of the cloth cannot be varied.

The heddles are 24cm long (or 22cm between upper and lower heddle shafts).

The string used to make the heddles appears to be either cotton or linen. I compared the heddles to some thread samples and found them to be a similar weight to 12/9 cotton rug warp and a little thicker than 18/5 linen. The heddles are quite smooth, with no evidence of fraying or abrasion. It is not clear if they have been dressed in some way to make them more resilient. They do not appear to have been varnished.

Clasped heddles are simpler and quicker to make than ‘eyed’ heddles. I hope to make a replica set to find out if they have other advantages.

Notes

1. For more about T. W. & J. Buckenham see my blog Lopham linen ↩︎
2. Eric Pursehouse (1966) Waveney Valley Studies. p. 191. ↩︎
3. The Vermont weaver Justin Squizzero has recently been making clasped heddles and sharing information about the process on instagram @theburroughsgarret. ↩︎
4. I counted 305 heddles on shaft 1 and 195 heddles on shaft 2. ↩︎