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Bill Partridge Archive

This section features a number of articles researched and written by local knitting industry historian, Bill Partridge. Bill was born in 1919 in Nuneaton. His mother's family were handframe silk ribbon weavers. At sixteen he joined Atkins Brothers of Hinckley. Apart from a period of war service with the Durham Light Infantry, his entire career was with Atkins where, as well as managing a modern hosiery plant, he learnt the craft of framework knitting and restored what is thought to be one of the oldest surviving knitting frames. Over the years, Bill has assembled and documented what is almost certainly the largest collection of hosiery in private hands, an interest inspired by the thought that future generations, unlike Felkin, the industry's foremost chronicler, should have the benefit of a systematic collection representing the changes in hosiery technology over the past two hundred years.
How did stockings get to customers from the Hinckley factories?
First by the use of pack-horses, often with bells on the harness making music. Hosiers with goods to sell would travel the country on horseback and continue their journey until all goods were sold.
Carriers in 1900
The Hinckley Year Book for 1900 gives: at No. 38, Lower Bond Street (100m from the Hinckley & District Museum at the corner with Trinity Lane) Soloman Edwards, Carrier
A carrier remembers some of his “pick-ups”
Recalled by Tom King of Burbage for Hinckley & District Museum 1999
Local transport firms serving the Hinckley area
E.E.Bees (later Bees Transport), London Road W. Bass & Son, Trinity Lane J.J. Edwards, Regent Street Fray Bros, Trinity Lane
The story of a Barwell carrier
G. W.Woodward, GW to his drivers, started in business in the late 1920's, with two flat lorries from a small wooden garage in High Street, Barwell. There was a daily service to London and Manchester.
Carrying goods between 1900 and 1918
One local carrier operated a 3 day-a-week service between Hinckley and Leicester, and a 2 day-a-week service to Nuneaton, using a 2-horse pole dray. Their depot was the Blue Boar Inn in Southgate Street, Leicester, where people would take to, or collect from, small items such as groceries, medicines, bicycles - even ice for the making of home-made cream!
Companies in the Hinckley area in 1900
Taken from the Hinckley Year Book 1900 and White’s Leicestershire and Rutland Directory 1900
Socks
In the possession of the Victoria and Albert Museum are a pair of Romano-Egyptian socks. These socks were found in the burial grounds of ancient Oxyrhynchus, a Greek monastic centre on the banks of the Nile in Egypt. It is thought that the socks were made about 1500 years ago.
From hand knitting to the start of frame knitting
To watch a length of yarn being converted into a piece of fabric by the manipulation of two, three or four knitting needles is to watch a very practical application of human ingenuity.
The story of wrought-knit i.e. fully fashioned stockings
In the year 1589 a man studied the way that a hand-knitter converted yarn into fabric for stockings, using knitting needles. After close observation he ventured to ask "Why do you only make one stitch at each movement, is it not possible to knit a complete row in one movement, it would be so much quicker?" The lady told him it was not possible. The man was the Rev. William Lee, a curate at Calverton in Nottinghamshire.
Hosiery in wartime and post-war austerity
Throughout the Spring and Summer of 1939 the British public became ever more certain that war was inevitable. Memories of the war that had ended twenty-one years before were still clear, the shortages of everyday essentials particularly so. The prudent housewife began to lay down stocks of those things that would keep a while, e.g. sugar, tea, and tinned foods, despite the extortion "Do not hoard!".
The Hinckley stocking frame
When Queen Elizabeth I made a state visit to Norwich in 1579 children appeared before her and some were spinning worsted yarn and some knitting that yarn into stockings on knitting needles. These were two of the crafts, domestic and commercial, in common use throughout Britain at that time.
The 'Griswold'.
Hinckley and District Museum has two machines of the type that were once widely used throughout the world in homes, in cottage industries and in factories to make socks and stockings. The machines are available for exhibition, for demonstration, for education, and for "hands-on" experience. This type of machine is often referred to as 'The Griswold'.
Joshua Thomas Clarke of Hinckley, Leicestershire, Hosier 1813-1866
This is the story of JOSHUA THOMAS CLARKE born at Hinckley, Leicestershire in the year 1813. Much was happening around that time. Britain was ruled by a madman, King George III, who in 1811 was declared insane, and his son George was made Regent.
A possible source of wire for Willliam Lee’s bearded needles
Accounts of the Rev. William Lee's invention of the hand knitting frame in 1569 leave many questions unanswered and ripe for speculation. Felkin [1], attributing the description to Henson, writes that in perfecting the needles for his machine Lee ‘spoiled much wire’. This prompts a question that has long concerned me, namely ‘from where did Lee obtain the wire to make his bearded knitting needles?’
A very special frame
Natural fibres, wool and cotton, were spun into a continuous thread (at first by distaff and spindle) to weave into cloth on a loom, this is traceable back to the time of Noah and the Ark; but woven cloth lacks the elasticity and extensibility of the knitted-loop structure that was first produced by hand on needles of wood or bone.
 

 

    
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