Weaving and Willie Meikle's loom
Another short extract from Listen Closely: an oral history of Kilbarchan 1900-2000.
At one time weaving fine cloth on a handloom was the main source of income for most of the village. It involved entire families, in almost every house. Buildings were designed with weaving shops (workshops) downstairs and families living above. Many had their weaving shop in their garden. The Barholm and Gateside Place still show typical examples. Every available space would have been utilised to accommodate the large looms and the equipment that went with them. Weavers could, and did, employ their families, and whole families worked together. They could set their own working hours. They could be their own boss. It was a distinct and specialised way of life.
Much has been written about Kilbarchan’s weaving past, but by the early twentieth century, handloom weaving was very much on the decline. By mid-century, the handloom, as a main source of income, had virtually disappeared.
On his travels around the country in the 1920s, an amateur filmmaker, Claude Friese-Green, came to the village and captured the sights on camera [Weavers in Kilbarchan, 1926 YouTube]. He used a medium that was ahead of its time, colour film. He produced one of the first ever examples of the use of colour moving film, which has been preserved. Giving the village a quaint look, not yet with audio, and unable to film indoors, the film shows the pride of the weavers showing off their work, smiling and laughing, and children of the village toddling around.
A photograph on page 73 of the book, which featured in the 1951 Festival of Britain Kilbarchan Week brochure, shows the last four Kilbarchan handloom weavers, sitting on the steps at the Steeple. All were well known locally, but Willie Meikle became the most famous of them all. He took part in the Empire Exhibition in 1938 and became known as the King’s kilt maker. He was also, probably the first to be filmed for posterity [National Library of Scotland, Scottish Screen Archive, Weaving of the Kilt (1938) 4 minute video]. He was reputedly quite a character. Visitors flocked to see Willie in his weaving shop in Gateside Place and New Street. He was very proud of his grandfather’s loom, going to the 1949 Toronto Trade Fair in Canada, he and the loom travelling by ship.
In Kilbarchan, weaving was a predominately male profession, with countless women and children supporting them in the background as pirn [Scots: spool] winders, and all of the other essential, detailed processes unseen, unrecorded, and often overlooked.
Census records show, handloom weaving was the work of the head of the family. Here, from 1841, the women are recorded. The unmarried woman, the mother of, the daughter of, and the widow of a weaver, was very often the ‘Head of the Household’. These were workers in their own right, their skilled work equal to that of the men.
Miss Agnes Christie was a weaver, as were her three sisters. As was her widowed mother. Shortly before her death, Agnes was befriended by a woman, very much an incomer to the village, by the name of Mrs. Halifax Crawford who had an interest in history and the decline of the old ways of life. She was aware of the quaintness of Agnes’s house and had an eye for rare objects. She was particularly interested in the architecture of the building. The roof had a cruck structure and she recognised how rare this was in Lowland Scotland.
Following the death of Agnes, the campaign to save Miss Christie’s house at The Cross began in earnest. A committee headed by Mrs. Halifax Crawford was set up to encourage the National Trust for Scotland to open it as a museum.
Much work needed to be carried out to repair the cottage and village joinery firm, Connell and McIntyre, was assigned the task. Miss Christie’s house, Number 1, The Cross, changed from a family home, lived in for generations, to a museum in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. The Weaver’s Cottage, as it became known, opened to visitors in 1954. Since then, it has attracted thousands of visitors to the village and is a village landmark.
Willie Meikle’s loom was brought from his weaving shop and set up in the cottage, to recreate the tartans of the past. Tom Adam and others from the village worked the loom and demonstrated its use to visitors. Jimmy Clark, ‘the last of the Calton Weavers’, a Glasgow weaver of fine cloth, continued the tradition. Several people worked the loom since then. The co-author of the book, Christine MacLeod, began in 1983 and was taught traditional tartan weaving techniques on the original handloom in the cottage by Jimmy Clark.
The staff were helped by local people, a core group of whom volunteered their time for many years, to show visitors, of all ages and nationalities, around the cottage. They shared their expertise, skills and enthusiasm. They helped preserve the cottage and told the stories. They listened to,and helped visitors to understand how lives were once lived.
Promoted as a Visitor Attraction, many came to the Cottage as they discovered that the village was the home of their ancestors. Many were fascinated by, and proud of, their association with its weaving past.