The Knitter - UK (2020-04)

THE TRADITION of two-colour glove

knitting in the Dales region of Britain

was written about in the 1951 book by

Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, The Old

Hand-Knitters of the Dales. In the 19th

century, Dales knitters in Yorkshire

produced intricately patterned gloves

as a way to earn much-needed income.

There is an illustration of a particular

glove in The Old Hand-Knitters of the

Dales which was captioned by Miss

Hartley: “Swaledale, S. Hunter c. 1850

Black and Red wool”.

Sadly, these gloves are lost, and no

extant pairs of Dales gloves have been

knitted in red and black wool. I have seen

a pink and white pair of child’s gloves,

however - the pink possibly faded from

red - so it’s possible that Dales gloves

were sometimes brightly dyed, as well as

made from the more familiar contrasting

natural shades of wool.

Miss Hartley recorded that the gloves

were “.. made almost a hundred years ago

at one of the lonely farms at the head of

the dale [Swaledale]. They belong to Miss

H. Banks of Askrigg, and were knitted by

her mother when she was a girl...”.

This might give us the identity of

another Dales glove knitter. For those

interested in British knitting history,

this is exciting, as currently, Mary Allen

(1857-1924) is the only known named

Victorian knitter of Dales gloves. So, I

decided to go in search of Miss H. Banks’

mother, realising that if I could find her,

we would have discovered the name of

another Dales glove knitter.

Rural traditions

Askrigg is a small village in Wensleydale,

North Yorkshire. The only ‘H Banks’ I

could find in Askrigg was Hannah Banks,

born there in 1866. She kept a glass and

china shop in 1911. Her mother was

Sarah Banks, née Hunter, born 1839 in

Hartlakes, Muker. She would have been

aged 12 in 1850, around the time she

knitted the gloves. She is likely to have

learned to knit, as all Dales knitters did,

from a grandparent or parent. Sarah’s

mother was the daughter of a farmer/

lead miner. Her name was Peggy Hunter,

née Cooper. Peggy (Margaret) was born

around 1816, in Muker. Peggy would be

a shoo-in for the typical Dales knitter:

“...The miners and their families all

knitted both stockings for their own use

and for sale. The thrifty ones often

gathered fallen wool, and carded, spun

and knitted it in their own homes...”

[THE OLD HAND-KNITTERS OF THE DALES, p.32]

I knew I had found the right ‘Miss

Banks’ as the name knitted in to the

glove was “S. Hunter” - “NTER” being

visible on Marie Hartley’s original

illustration - and Sarah herself was the

only one in the family with the ‘S’ initial

in the 1851 census.

Dales children learned to knit around

the age of four, and by five or six could

knit more complex items like gloves. The

oldest, extant dated Dales gloves are from

1846, so if (as Marie Hartley was told) this

one had been made around 1850, it would

rival the oldest surviving dated gloves.

It’s likely the Dales two-colour knitting

tradition stretched back further than the

1850s or ’40s, into the late 18th century.

Men and women knitted Dales gloves

professionally. A child like Sarah may

well have made her own, and these,

more personalised ones, are typical of

survivors of the lost tradition. Only a

handful of Dales gloves remain today,

but they were once knitted in the tens

of thousands and sold widely across the

UK and further afield.

Askrigg, where shopkeeper Miss Banks

showed Marie Hartley these gloves, had

been a centre for the stocking trade for

centuries. Some of Miss Banks’ ancestors

and relatives farmed, and many farmers

in this area were also hosiers, or agents

for the hand-knitted stocking industry.

Sarah’s father was a miner farming 20

acres. In the Dales, combining mining

with farming was common - miners’

families often contained some of the

most renowned knitters. The other

pair of gloves I have researched, (with

the name “G Walton, 1846”), belonged

to a lead miner.

Sarah Hunter’s Gloves

Penelope Hemingway explores the story behind a pair of

Dales colourwork gloves from 1850, and explains how

she developed a new knitting pattern from an old sketch

HISTORIC KNITTING ARTEFACTS – PART 4

The gloves were made

in Askrigg, a village

in North Yorkshire

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The Knitter 66 Issue 150 Subscribe now at http://www.gathered.how/theknitter