The History of Lace Making in Turvey

A key aspect of Turvey’s past is the strong presence of the lace making cottage industry in the village. For 300 years intricate lace designs were worked on by villagers, creating lace that would mostly have been used in the clothing and housewares of the richer people in society.

Origins of lace making in Turvey

Lace making probably began in Turvey during the early 1600’s. Flemish Protestant refugees and later French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution had begun settling in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire from the latter decades of the 16th century. They brought with them highly prized lace making skills and over the next two centuries lace making became a significant cottage industry in Turvey.

Whilst early lace makers included men and boys, over time it was women and children who made lace, providing essential income to supplement the meagre wages of agricultural labourers. By 1851 the census recorded 142 women and 36 children working as lace makers in Turvey.

Lace maker working at a lace pillow outside her cottage (copyright Cowper and Newton Museum)

Life as a lace maker

Lace making was a highly skilled craft and lace collars and cuffs would have decorated the clothes of rich men and women, but the women and children who made it received little of the price it could command. Joseph Bell, who was born in Turvey in 1846, and whose mother and sister made lace, later wrote a memoir of his life in which he commented:

For all their labour and contrivance they were very badly paid. They had to work long days to earn a few pence…by the time they had paid for the hire of their parchment and their cotton they had the handling of very little money.

Conditions were hard – working typically twelve hours a day bent over a lace pillow, outside when possible for better light. In winter, fire pots filled with hot ashes were used to keep feet warm in the cold cottages.

Fire pot  (copyright Cowper and Newton Museum)

Lace schools

Things were often worse for children. They commonly started making lace from the age of 5 and at an early age many were sent to lace ‘schools’. Here they were taught the skill but generally nothing else. An enquiry into child employment in 1843 found that even the youngest children worked 5-6 hours a day, ten year olds typically for 10 hours. In Turvey there were three lace schools, one in Newton Lane.

Harsh discipline was used, children being slapped for slow or messy work. In one account a former pupil said that the mistress:

learnt me for an hour, smacked my head six times and rubbed my nose on the pin-heads.

…the child was five at the time.

Decline of lace making in Turvey

Changes in legislation resulting eventually in education becoming compulsory for children up to the age of 10 in 1880 contributed to a gradual ending of child employment in lace making.  Mechanisation, changes in demand and new opportunities for employment for women (helped by the railway coming to Turvey in 1872 and the expansion of domestic work to serve a growing affluent middle class) meant that by 1891 only 26 women, and no children, were recorded in the census as lace makers.

Lace making continued into the 20th century in Turvey and at least into the 1930’s but it was by then largely an occupation for just a few older women.

In the 1980’s a group in Turvey began researching the history of lace making in the village and lace classes were set up in 1981 to teach the craft. Some of the pieces on display in the exhibition were made by people from Turvey who have kept alive the skill of lace making in recent years.

The process of making lace

Turvey lace was a type known as pillow lace or bobbin lace. A pattern, known as a pricking, is attached to a padded cushion – a lace pillow. Pins are then secured in place in the pattern and threads, attached to bobbins, are looped over the pins in various ways according to the design of the pattern.

Lace dealers would sell lace patterns and thread to the lace makers and then collect the finished lace. The lace makers were highly dependent on the dealers who did not always pay them, sometimes requiring them to accept goods in kind such as more patterns and thread or basic foodstuffs.

To see some photographs of Turvey History Society’s lace making display held as part of  the national Heritage Open Day in 2023 follow this link.  The display included a lace maker’s pillow, a pricking, some bobbins and pins and some examples of locally made lace. Different areas had characteristic designs and lace made in Bedfordshire would have had different features from that made in the other local lace districts of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.