IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Green Street, KIDDERMINSTER, DY10 1AZ

This is the device that prepares the spools for the spool Axminster loom that is now the only one in the UK. The spool is on the front of the machine to the right and winds in the threads from the creel table to the left. There are 20 separate colours and 189 threads across the 27" width. Each spool is one row in the 288 required for the pattern to repeat. Once the spool has been loaded with thread it goes to a separate machine for threading into the holder that presents the threads to be woven as pile onto the backing cloth formed by the warp and weft. There is a genuine concern that when the yarn on the loom is finally exhausted in some years that there will be a lack of yarn or expertise (or both) to set it up for another run. When the loom was running it would take a bit over a week to run through a full load of yarn but in the museum that is at least 5 years.

A 27" wide Wilton loom built in the late 1800s by Crossley of Halifax and fitted with a 1950s Jacquard attachment. It is weaving a 5 colour carpet with cut pile Wilton. It can also be set for loop pile Brussels weaving. This is a runner and we saw it demonstrated.

This is the last surviving example in the UK and is demonstrated weaving a 27" wide section of carpet. When this runs out of yarn in a few years time that may well be the end of it as a working demonstration due to the amount of yarn required to set it up again and the diminishing pool of specialist skills in Kidderminster. There are 288 spools carrying 20 colours and mounted on an endless chain. Each spool is one row of the pattern and that repeats after 288 rows. Each spool us presented in turn to the plane where the warp and weft of the backing meet. The coloured pile threads are anchored to the backing by the weft (known as shots) and then cut to length by a knife. There are 189 tufts across the width and it weaves 26 rows of tufts per minute. This particular loom was manufactured in 1954 and is called a split shot loom because of the novel split insertion of the weft (shot) by long needles. I have never seen anything like this and the volunteers were very good at describing the processes. It is worth going before it runs out of yarn when it has woven over 300 yards of carpet.

A 27" wide Wilton loom built in the late 1800s by Crossley of Halifax and fitted with a 1950s Jacquard attachment. It is weaving a 5 colour carpet with cut pile Wilton. It can also be set for loop pile Brussels weaving. This is a runner and we saw it demonstrated.

A 27" wide Wilton loom built in the late 1800s by Crossley of Halifax and fitted with a 1950s Jacquard attachment. It is weaving a 5 colour carpet with cut pile Wilton. It can also be set for loop pile Brussels weaving. This is a runner and we saw it demonstrated.

This is a close up of the punched cards that the Jacquard attachment uses to allow the weaving of complex patterns by selecting one of 5 colours for each warp thread. The colour is actually selected by the absence of a hole. This predates punched cards for computers having been invented by the Frenchman Joseph-Marie Jacquard in 1804-05.

Viewed across Green Street. Stour Vale Mill was built in the 1850s for Henry Woodward, who had started his company in 1790. He was joined by Benjamin Grosvenor to operate the first steam-powered carpet mill in Britain here.

The supermarket is on the site of this former carpet factory but the block on the left has been retained and houses the Carpet Museum. The dark section on the back of the older block represents the shape of the north-light roof of the weaving shed.

Set back from the east side of Green Street

Formerly operated by Woodward, Grosvenor. Built 1855 and was still in business in 2000 but now only the frontage remains.