August is proving a busy month – preparations for my contribution to Walking the Land‘s #GhostMills exhibition at SVA for the Wool & Water Festival
I became interested in pin-making. Four former cloth mills in the Nailsworth valley became pin-making mills in the later nineteenth century: Lightpill, Frogmarsh, Pitts & Freames (these last two on the Inchbrook which flows into the Nailsworth stream). Pins and water had occupied my thoughts during the last project I was involved in, through their folkloric associations, but these ideas were shelved because it was all getting a bit muddled. When this Ghost Mills project came up it seemed a perfect opportunity.
I walked the path that followed the old railway line from Nailsworth to Stroud which also follows the course of the stream. It’s a lovely walk but as a heritage junky it was Frogmarsh that appealed most. You can see the old bits of the original mill and the various additions can be seen in the walls. It also has a round tower close by which is called the Teasel Tower, where teasels were dried. Teasels were used by fullers to nap the woven woollen cloth. There was a solitary teasel plant growing on the verge by the oldest part of the mill which had a nice circularity.
I had the main building blocks which after a couple of false starts slotted together to form ‘Pinning & Fulling the Valley’. I got hold of woollen cloth made in Stroud and thousands of pins, and after many pricked fingers, the piece is coming together.