You may not have come across the Red List of Endangered Crafts before. If you haven’t, the latest edition released in May 2023, is well worth checking out 👉🏻here.👈🏻 The crafts at risk might surprise you.
Published by Heritage Crafts, in Association with the Pilgrim Trust, the 2023 edition shows the incredible range of heritage craft skills we have in the UK. It also highlights the very real risk that many of these skills, which have passed through generations, could be lost forever. Some have indeed now gone, with mouth blown sheet glass making disappearing since the last list was produced in 2021, joining others which have previously disappeared, such as cricket ball making (hand stitched).
The list is divided into those crafts now extinct in the UK, those critically endangered and those endangered. On a more positive note there’s also a section covering those currently classed as viable – but it is something not to be complacent about.
The individual craft entries give a wealth of background information, including their historic area of significance, origin in the UK, history, techniques, issues affecting viability, and the number of currently known craftspeople still undertaking the work, with their names or business names (please support them!)
Some of the entries may come as a shock. For example one I would not have thought of was shoe and boot making. But we are talking traditional heritage crafts and craftspeople, rather than mass production.
Many are regional and/or niche, such as sgian dubh making – the hand making of the small, single-edged ‘black knife’ worn as part of traditional Scottish Highland dress. With Yorkshire’s brass band heritage, there’s also brass instrument making.
Some are linked to ways of life, like the waterway trading community with canal boat painting; traveller peoples and their Vardo art; and the fairground art associated with showmen and fairgrounds, with the historic associations to town feasts and feast weeks.
I was particularly drawn to silk weaving, something I have researched and written about in relation to historic child employment, the first part being here (with links to Parts 2-4).
And in my time working on military ceremonial contracts, albeit in the late 1980’s/early 1990s, a heritage craft I dealt with is plume making. In my day the manufacturers were Jaffé (still going), and the seemingly now-gone Appletons, where I believe Louis Chalmers of The Plumery, the other current manufacturer, undertook his training. Examples of this craft will have been seen during King Charles III’s coronation.
Rope making features too. As a frequent visitor to Hawes, I was saddened that Outhwaite & Sons closed last year. Pre-covid it was always part of our visit there, and included a museum where you could learn about, and watch, the process. Our rope bannister was made by them, as was our dog’s lead. On a positive note the company is being continued in some form by both Askrigg Ropes and Kefi Textiles. So I may still be able to get more dog leads for our pooch.
Ropemaking at Hawes, which closed in 2022 – photos by Jane Roberts
More about Outhwaites, its history and closure can be read in the Yorkshire Post article here.
It is important these crafts, handed down over generations, are supported and preserved, and that other business like Outhwaites are not lost in future. The Red List is part of this work.
This is the latest Batley St Mary’s one-place study update, looking at the posts added during April 2023. This update also contains links to all the posts in the study to date.
If you are new to to this one-place study and want to know what it is all about, click here. Otherwise read on to discover all the other posts, new and old, containing a wealth of parish, parishioner and wider local Batley history.
St Mary’s Church as seen from Batley Cemetery – photo by Jane Roberts
April 2023 saw a St Mary’s one-place study milestone – the 38th War Memorial biography was published, marking the halfway point for these. It was one of eight posts added in April, bringing the total number for the study to 236. Three others were updated.
These additions included four weekly newspaper pages for April 1917. I have accordingly updated the surname index to these During This Week newspaper pieces, so you can easily identify newspaper snippets relevant to your family.
Two new War Memorial biographies were added, John Leech and Michael Lydon. The latter was the 38th War Memorial biography. One further biography – that of John Brooks – was updated with some post-war information family information following the death of his mother in 1918.
More men who served and survived have been identified and are included in that section, though no new biographies were added here this month. They will follow in due course.
Reflecting Easter, a new post was added to the Miscellany of Information section. It deals with the food situation in 1917, including the tea-cake debate, and a suggested weekly meal menus for the family at a time of food shortages. It also covers the hot-cross bun crisis which was a concern for many in the run up to Easter.
The final addition this month is a new school log book, covering the Mixed Department in 1913.
Below is the full list of pages to date. I have annotated the *NEW* and *UPDATED* ones, so you can easily pick these out. Click on the link and it will take you straight to the relevant page.
Finally for this month, if you do have any information about, or photos of, parishioners from the period of the First World War please do get in touch. It does not have to be War Memorial men. It could be those who served and survived, or indeed any other men, women and children from the parish.
I would also be interested in information about, and photos of, those parishioners who were killed in World War Two, or others from the parish who undertook any war service and survived. This can be as broad as serving in the military, or work in munitions factories, the Land Army, even taking in refugees. This is an area I’m looking to develop in the future.
Postscript: Finally a big thank you for the donations already received to keep this website going. They really do help.
The website has always been free to use, and I want to continue this policy in the future. However, it does cost me money to operate – from undertaking the research to website hosting costs. In the current difficult economic climate I do have to regularly consider if I can afford to continue running it as a free resource.
If you have enjoyed reading the various pieces, and would like to make a donation towards keeping the website up and running in its current open access format, it would be very much appreciated.
Please click 👉🏻here👈🏻 to be taken to the PayPal donation link. By making a donation you will be helping to keep the website online and freely available for all.
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