KNUTSFORD Heritage Centre put one of the town’s oldest professions under the spotlight as part of its Heritage Open Days celebrations.
As well as Millennium Tapestry talks and heritage tours, the King Street centre put on a number of spinning demonstrations across the weekend, bringing textile history to life.
Heritage centre director Val Bryant, an expert on textile history, gave demonstrations of flax spinning using an exact replica of Richard Arkwright’s spinning-wheel, made by her husband, David.
She said: “As some of the town’s place names like Silk Mill Street and Cotton Shop Yard tell you, over the seventeenth to nineteenth century period Knutsford had a thriving textile industry, particularly noted for thread.
“Linen fabric was spun and woven from flax grown locally.
“Around 1760 the records show that a large building was erected in the town for doubling and twisting silk thread, chiefly for customers in London.
"The building was subsequently used for spinning cotton.”
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