A newspaper article about the linen industry of North & South Lopham, by F. J. Higginbottom, from the Eastern Daily Press, 14th April 1936.

I found this article, which is reproduced below, in two pieces – the photographs in one archive and the text in another. The newspaper cutting with photographs of ‘The Old Lopham Loom’ and the weaver Albert Tyler, was amongst the papers of Rita & Percy Beales in the Crafts Study Centre when I visited in 2023, but the article mentioned in the caption was missing. A few weeks ago – and two years later – I paid a visit to the Norfolk County Records Office in Norwich to look through some boxes of papers left by Eric Pursehouse, journalist and historian.¹ Amongst these I found a hand-written transcript of an article which I believe is the one missing from the Crafts Study Centre archive. The full article is included below. I am pleased to say that we recently found the pictured loom, dismantled, in the Norfolk Museums Service storage facility at Gressenhall, along with its two Jacquard heads.

“The Ancient Weaving Trade in Norfolk”

by F. J. Higginbottom

An important centre of linen weaving in the old days was the district represented by the Lophams. For about 150 years before 1925 a successful trade was carried on which was begun at South Lopham by a Scotsman ²and later spread to North Lopham, where it was established in premises in the grounds of “The Limes” early in the last century by John Buckenham whose son Thomas continued it.

After Thomas’ death ⁽¹⁸⁹³⁾ the business was carried on by his widow; she in turn was succeeded by her two sisters Miss E. S. Bale and Miss E. L. Bale, who continued to carry on the factory in the name of Buckenham. The ultimate survivor was Miss Ellen Louise Bale, who although she did not show the same business energy as her sister, kept some 30 weavers constantly employed almost to the time of her death in 1925.

From this factory and from the looms of individual home workers, were turned out quantities of linen fabrics – damasks, sheeting, huckabacks, and other descriptions, all pure linen, for which there was for years constant demand. Patrons of this industry included Queen Victoria and her Royal successors, members of the nobility in all parts of the country, the Clothworkers Company, and other large London consumers like the Travellers’ Club in Pall Mall.

It is a pity that this flourishing factory was not carried on after Miss Bale’s death, for the demand for its products continued until the last: but there was no one left of the Buckenham family to keep up the place and in November 1925 the whole plant and a vast accumulation of manufactured goods was dispensed at auction at “The Limes”, Miss Bale’s residence. All the old handlooms were scattered, some finding their way to Yorkshire, single examples (one of which dated back to the 17^th century) going to the museums of S. Kensington, Norwich Bridewell, Christchurch Mansion at Ipswich.³

The accumulation of manufactured linen though sold cheaply, realized some £1500. One of the old looms still contained a fine specimen of damask tablecloth, unfinished, when it passed under the hammer.

One survivor

With the lapse of time the old weavers were gradually dispersed by death, but there remains at North Lopham one survivor, Albert Tyler, who is still hale and hearty in his retirement⁴, and to him I am indebted for details of the personnel and of the achievements of himself and his devoted fellow artificers. In his possession, also, are some notable examples of their work, which would do credit to the most famous handloom weavers in the country.

In particular delicately figured damask tablecloths as made for the Travellers’ Club, survive, turned out by the Jacquard looms of the factory; and there are artistic huckabacks, in designs known as the “Queen’s pattern” – a device worked in a pattern called cards and diamonds; varieties of honeycomb patterns, diaper and plainer fabrics and fine linen sheetings.

Mr. Tyler has kept records of the work of his old colleagues at “The Buck” factory at “The Limes,” and he recalls with melancholy interest the names of the skillful weavers who have passed away – Robert & Stephen Beales, Coleby G. Cobb (schoolmaster as well as weaver who flourished in the ‘fifties) Jeremiah Beales, John Bowen, Jonas Coats, Thomas Coats, Thomas Gooch, Henry Jolly, George Shaw, Wm Womack, and many another.

Then at South Lopham there were other skilled weavers working singly, including Ephraim & Friday Bowell, John Dove, Richard Downing, Thomas Pitcher, and John Witting.

There was another Thomas Buckenham, a cousin of the first, in business as a weaver at South Lopham, but he, like the other weavers of that place, worked on his own account.

The most prosperous period

As long ago as 1836 White’s directory shows that about 50 looms were employed, the unbleached linens from which were hawked by the makers through Norfolk and Suffolk; and in 1854 the same record gives a larger number of men employed.

The factory of the Buckenhams contained a united community and these combined to make a presentation to their employer, Thomas Buckenham on “Queen Catherine’s Day”, Dec 6^th 1857, of a silver cup engraved with the emblematic representation of their craft. A picture of this piece of plate is extant, described as “a cup presented to Thos. Buckenham N. Lopham by a body of linen weavers, as a token of faithful respect to their kind master and employer.”

This period was, perhaps, about the most prosperous in the weaving history of the Lophams, but the trade went on as I have shown well into the present century, until it was suddenly brought to an end by the death of Miss Bale, its presiding spirit in its declining days.

The story of the Lophams is the story of Norfolk. It is regrettable that it should have to be written thus, at a time when there is a renewed demand for the work of the handicraftsman from an increasingly appreciative public that prizes handmade products in preference to those made by the machine. The possibility of a revival remains, but I fear it is remote.

Notes

1. Eric Pursehouse lived in Diss and wrote extensively about south Norfolk, including several articles about the old Lopham linen industry. Some of this was posthumously collected in “Waveney Valley Studies: Gleanings from Local History”, 1966. ↩︎
2. A weaver called David Strachan was brought to Lopham from Dunfermline by Thomas Buckenham on March 30^th 1851 to set up damask weaving on Jacquard looms. ↩︎
3. The Norwich Bridewell loom survives, dismantled, in a museum storage facility. The others mentioned have disappeared. ↩︎
4. It is the similarity between this line and the caption to the photograph of Albert Tyler that leads me to believe this text and the photographs belong together. ↩︎