THE SONGS OF THE
Lacemakers Honiton is well-known for its major role as a centre for hand-made lace. Thousands of fingers worked painstakingly for many hours to create lace adornments for the clothing of the rich. Margery Hookings talks to folk song collector Amanda Boyd about what she discovered as part of a project which brings together archive film and music for people with dementia.
A
ccording to the Allhallows Museum of Lace and Local Antiquities at Honiton, one square centimetre of lace could take up to five hours to produce. Large pieces like collars or handkerchiefs could take up to 1,000 hours. This bobbin lace, with its scrollwork and designs from nature, made a name for the town in the 17th century. It was a cottage industry, with the majority of lace being made in the homes of the workers, who were often the wives of poorly paid labourers and fishermen. Often these people were controlled by shop owners, who employed teams of workers to produce the lace for sale in London and other markets. It’s made by hand in a miniature weaving process, the ‘loom’ made from pins placed through a pattern on a straw pillow. Very fine threads held on bobbins are woven back and forth to build up the pattern. Variations are created by the use of different stitches within the pattern. But by 1800, handmade Honiton Lace was becoming obsolete with the invention of machine-made net, which was much cheaper to produce. In 1840, however, the fortunes of this skilful craft took an upturn when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840 in a dress trimmed extensively with Honiton Lace. It proved an important
boost to lace making in East Devon. Looking through the Windrose Rural Media Trust archive, Somerset folk singer Amanda Boyd came across a silent film of a lacemaker in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, from the 1960s. She wanted to find out what the woman was doing and find the appropriate song to accompany the film for her series of YouTube songbooks, in which she combines song and archive film to great effect for people with dementia. Ordinarily, she would be visiting memory cafes but, since the coronavirus pandemic, she has been working via Zoom. Amanda’s presentations are now available to the public on YouTube. ‘The lady was sitting outside her house and was filmed whilst she worked with her bobbins, pillow, and thread,’ Amanda explains. ‘I was intrigued by this little film. Knowing nothing about lacemaking, I wondered what the lady was doing. ‘So I contacted Honiton Museum who then put me in contact with an experienced lacemaker who gave me a running commentary when we watched the film together on Zoom.’ Amanda realised that, just like the shanty singers at Portland Quarry and the farmers in the field, women and
