The Buckenham Ledger

This post is about a ‘putting-out’ ledger recording work by linen weavers in the employ of T. W. & J. Buckenham in the village of North Lopham, Norfolk, between 1876 and 1911. The ledger is in the collection of Norfolk Museums at Gressenhall Farm & Workhouse / Museum of Norfolk Life (ref GRSRM: 1988.50.1)

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The Buckenham ledger is particularly interesting to me because it provides concrete information about the linen cloth that was being made in the village of North Lopham in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It tells us material facts about the weaves, the yarns and the dimensions. It tells us who was working, how long it took them, and how much they were paid.

Some background

The ledger was given to Norfolk Museums by the grandson of the weaver Thomas Shaw who was born 1842 and is pictured in the 1874 photograph of Lopham linen workers (below). The ledger has 92 pages. The earliest entry is 1876 and the latest is 1911. The handwriting is the same throughout, with the exception of two pages towards the end. The first handwriting was probably that of Georgiana Buckenham. She had taken over the business following the death of her husband Thomas in 1867. The later handwriting probably belonged to Georgiana’s sister Louise Ellen Bale who took over after Georgiana’s death in 1905.1

There was a weaving shed in an old barn at the back of The Limes, the Buckenham family home, where some looms were housed including at least one Jacquard loom, but many of the weavers may have worked at home. They were paid on a piece-work basis, sometimes with part-payment in advance. They may also have worked for other Lopham manufacturers such as Stephen Beales.2

 
What the ledger tells us

The left hand pages of the ledger record the “webs taken”, i.e. the yarn given out to the weavers, including the weaver’s name, the date, the length of the cloth, followed by the type of cloth, the yarn count and the width. The right hand pages record the woven cloth that was returned, usually a week or two later, often with the amount the weavers were paid.

The cloth was woven in lengths of 60, 72, 84, 90, 104, 112 or 120 yards.

Most of this was towelling of some kind. The majority of this was huck (short for huckaback) and we know from the Norfolk Museums’ collection that there were several types of huck, plain and patterned, including one called Queen’s Huck3. Other towelling included Glass Cloth, Cook’s Rubber, and Stable Rubber, presumably for rubbing down horses. There was also Bird’s Eye, Double Diamond, 29 Inch Tea, Plain and Grey. The towelling was made in various widths, usually expressed in fractions of a yard or fractions of an ell (an old unit of measurement equal to 45 inches / one-and-a-quarter yards). Huck was often half-a-yard, half-an-ell, 3/4 yard or 4/4 yards, the widest being two yards (8/4).

Sheeting was also manufactured, 7/4 or 8/4 yards wide, typically from 45NeL yarn. 4

Buckenham’s also manufactured figured damask for napkins and tablecloths, having brought Jacquard looms down from Scotland around 1850, together with a weaver called David Strachan from Dunfermline. Strachan died in 1881 and is not mentioned in the ledger. Only Thomas Shaw and Albert Tyler are listed as weaving damask, including Fine Spider’s Web, Cloth Workers Arms, Merchant Taylors Arms and Travellers Club Cloths.

The following note regarding yarn appears on the first page:

Yarns Order’d of Hives + Co
1879 April 4:
40 Balls          20 lea line
20   “               22 “
40   “               30

Marshall
30 Balls          35
15   “                6 lea tow

I have not been able to find any record of Hives & Co., but perhaps Marshall refers to the famous Marshall’s of Leeds, flax spinners from 1792 – 1886. Locally processed hemp yarn was being woven in Lopham when the Parliamentary Commissioner visited in 1839, but hemp appears to have been entirely replaced by flax by the mid 1800’s.

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Some examples…

Pages 3 & 4 record the work done by Thomas Shaw, the donor’s grandfather, in 1876. On 23rd February he received enough yarn to make 90 yards of “24 3/4 H”. On its own this is rather inscrutable, but from studying the other entries I think the ’24’ refers to the yarn count, i.e. 24 NeL; ‘3/4’ refers to the width, i.e. three-quarters of a yard or 27 inches; and ‘H’ is an abbreviation for Huckaback. On 8th March, just 14 days later, he returned the 90 yards of woven cloth. That is a work rate of 7.5 yards a day, assuming he didn’t work on Sundays. Over the following 9 months he wove an astonishing 1950 yards at over 8 yards per day.

On Christmas Eve 1892, Henery Tyler was given 21 skeins of yarn to make 84 yards of 1/2 Ell Huck, 25. 1/2 Ell is 22.5 inches, a good width for hand-towels or roller-towelling. Huck is short for huckaback. Tyler returned the 84 yards of woven cloth 14 days later on 7th January and was paid 14 shillings, or 2d per yard. 14 shillings is equivalent to about £75 in today’s money, or £7 per day.

An entry for October 28th 1893 tells us that William Payne “Made a web 120 yds, 38 4/4, Queen’s Huck.” On 25th November he was paid £1-16s. I believe Queen’s Huck is the same patterned huckaback that was made for Queen Victoria’s Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. There are some examples of this in the collection of Norfolk Museums, and I have been making a the same cloth in 2025. The yarn count of 38 NeL is somewhat finer that that used in the plain huckaback in the examples above. “4/4” is the width in quarter yards, i.e. one yard wide. Payne’s wages were about 3 1/2 d per yard.

The weavers

The names of 23 weavers are mentioned in the ledger, and listed below. Some of these appear in the photograph above of linen workers outside The Limes in 1874. Thomas Shaw is fourth from the left. I think the old man seated just right of centre is Zachariah Fox, with Coleby Cobb and his wife standing behind.

  • Robert Banham
  • Walter Beales
  • W. Bussey
  • Thomas Chapman
  • W. Chapman
  • C. G. (Coleby George) Cobb
  • William Dove
  • Z. (Zachariah) Fox
  • Henry Gooch Jnr
  • Henry Gooch Snr
  • Sam’l Huggins
  • Walter Keeble (crossed out)
  • James Leeder
  • Chas Ludbrook
  • E (Edward?) Ludbrook
  • Thomas Ludbrook
  • William  Payne
  • John Shaw
  • Thomas Shaw
  • Albert Tyler
  • Henry Tyler
  • James Tyler
  • Thomas Tylor

Also listed is a Mr A E Thurlow, who was perhaps a whitster or otherwise involved in finishing.

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The Buckenham family business

‘Buckenhams’ was the most famous of the Lopham linen manufacturers. The firm of T. W. & J. Buckenham, North Lopham, was granted the Royal Warrant as suppliers of Diaper and Huckaback Table Cloths to Queen Victoria in 1837, had the warrant to King George V in 1913 (according to Grace’s guide), and, as far as I know, until 1925. Jacquard looms for damask weaving were brought down from Scotland, along with a weaver called David Strachan who arrived from Dunfermline in 1851.

Here is a rough approximation of the family chronology:

Brothers Thomas and William established a joint venture around 1800, with Thomas based in North Lopham and William in South Lopham, both living in houses named The Limes. William had a son called Thomas (II) who seems to have run the business until his death in 1862-3 when Thomas (III) succeeded him for a few years until 1867. Thomas (III)’s widow Georgiana then ran the business for 38 years until her death in 1905, when her sisters Elizabeth Susannah and Louise Ellen Bale took over. Elizabeth Susannah died in 1915 and Louise Ellen Bale in 1925, when the business closed.

Notes

  1. Michael Friend Serpell (1980) A History of the Lophams. p. 146. ↩︎
  2. Eric Pursehouse (1966) Waveney Valley Studies. p.190. refers to another putting-out ledger shown to him by Percy Beales, perhaps belonging to PB’s uncle Stephen. ↩︎
  3. see my blog Lopham Linen ↩︎
  4. A puzzle remaining to be solved: the ledger records figures for weights of yarn without giving any units of measure. For example the yarn given to Thomas Shaw on 23rd February 1876 weighed “60”. In my estimation this 90 yards of this cloth ought to weigh in the region of 20 – 30 lbs. The yarn weights in the ledger are consistently about double what I would expect. Was there an old system of yarn weights with a unit equal to about half a pound? ↩︎