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The ropery equipment at its old home at Edenfield.
Click on the photos to see larger images
Watchet Boat Museum has acquired some interesting old rope-making equipment and plans to use it to show the process to the public.
The museum at Watchet in Somerset has acquired the equipment from the former Britannia Rope & Twine Ltd factory in Edenfield in Lancashire, which closed its doors in 2001.
The old factory used to be one of the area’s biggest employers, manufacturing products ranging from skipping ropes to ropes for boxing rings; it even made hangman’s nooses and the rope-pulls for toilets used in Butlin’s Holiday Camps.
Honorary curator John Nash told me that when he first saw rope-making equipment being shown by rope and knot expert Des Pawson, he felt strongly that the Boat Museum would benefit from having some similar equipment, not least because he noticed that demonstrations of the the machinery in use were very popular with the public.
‘We had a machine made at great expense and that worked well,’ he told me, ‘but now we have the real thing, and it’s even better.’
Thanks for the information John!
To visit the museum’s website to learn about the Somerset flatner boats and to buy plans, follow this link: Watchet Boat Museum.
And click here for more intheboatshed.net posts on the on Watchet museum.
Des Pawson’s is available at Amazon.co.uk Des Pawson’s Knot Craft and at Amazon.com Des Pawson’s Knot Craft .
