Searching for clues
The gloves were illustrated by Marie
Hartley around 1949, and I have recreated
them from Miss Hartley’s illustration -
you can find my pattern instructions
on the next pages. Miss Hartley, an artist
trained at the Slade School, would have
borrowed the gloves to illustrate them,
but most likely returned them to Miss
Banks. It is so sad that they were still
around in 1949 and yet no longer are.
Sarah’s gloves used the ‘Shepherd’s
Plaid’ pattern; we know they were
knitted in Muker, by a child from that
village, whose mother had also been
born in that village. But whether the
pattern which appears on those gloves
was typical of Muker, we cannot say.
No other gloves with this pattern are
extant from the Dales. Sanquhar gloves
from Scotland featuring a similar
pattern, however, are still extant.
As Sarah’s daughter, ‘Miss H Banks’,
appears to have kept a shop in Askrigg
in later life. Miss Hartley didn’t have to
go far to find this unusual pair: Misses
Hartley and Ingilby also lived in Askrigg.
No doubt the gloves were thrown out
as worthless ‘old’ woollens, when
Miss Banks died. All the other gloves
illustrated in The Old Hand-Knitters
of the Dales survive to this day in
museums; I have seen, and documented,
a number of them.
It is something, at least, to recreate
Sarah Hunter’s gloves and to have traced
their original knitter. What’s even more
fascinating is that we know the lost
gloves were said to be made around 1850,
which proves my long-held theory that
many items of Dales knitting were
made by children. I first came to this
conclusion, documenting the “G. Walton
1846” gloves, when I noticed the right
and left hand were not identical. Each
had its own characteristic errors, which
led me to believe each hand was knitted
by a different knitter and those knitters
were very likely children.
I was unable to recreate the welt area,
as Miss Hartley’s sketch rendered that
as a series of linear squiggles. And whilst
a figurative motif is not represented in
any surviving Dales gloves, I decided to
go with the clover pattern because it was
a common-enough motif in related
traditions like Fair Isle and Scandinavian
knitting. I doubt the originals had a
figurative pattern, as abstract ones are
all I have seen on surviving gloves.
The gauntlets on my pattern are one
motif deeper than Sarah’s, because older
gloves often had longer gauntlets. It
could easily be omitted, though, by the
clever knitter. All knitters are, of course,
clever by default. So long as you have the
requisite 84 stitches by the time you hit
Chart D, omitting the clover pattern is
down to the knitter’s taste.
The palms aren’t visible in the original
drawing, so I took the unusual step of
running the Shepherd’s Plaid pattern
right a round the glove, on the back of
the hand and palm like a Sanquhar glove
which generally has the same pattern the
whole way round the body of the glove.
Most known extant Dales gloves are
slightly more complex; having one
pattern on the back of the hand and
a second one on the palm. Only around13 Dales gloves are extant, though,
which means we do not know how
representative those pairs are. It could be
that all Dales gloves had a palm pattern
and a back-of-hand pattern. Or it could
be that some were, like the Sanquhar
gloves, running just one single pattern
round the entire hand. I suspect it’s most
likely both types of glove could be found.
Like the other extant old pair of gloves,
the “G. Walton, 1846” gloves at the
Wordsworth Trust in Cumbria, these are
fringed rather than having a ribbed welt.
This seems to be a characteristic of some
older gloves. If you prefer, omit the fringe
and knit a simple K1, P1 ribbed welt -
making the purl stitches dark and the
knit stitches light. I am guessing older
gloves had fringed gauntlets without
ribbing, as they originated as copies of
sewn gloves which also often had long,
not stretchy, gauntlets.
Apart from the famous Mary Allen,
who lived well into the 20th century,
no other specific Dales glove knitter has
been named, identified or linked with
an extant glove - until now. And although
Sarah Hunter’s gloves are now lost, there
was enough information in the Hartley
illustration for me to recreate them with
a reasonable degree of accuracy.FURTHER READING- The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales
by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby
(Cooperative Press reprint, 2013) is
available from http://www.cooperativepress.
com or http://www.amazon.co.uk - Penelope Hemingway’s blog:
http://www.theknittinggenie.com
1 + 2 The (now lost) gloves were examined
and sketched for the 1951 book The Old Hand-
Knitters of the Dales 3 Penelope’s recreation
of the gloves; you can find her pattern overleaf
12
3
Knitting history
The Knitter Issue 150