Penelope Hemingway explores the history of handknitting in Hawes, North Yorkshire, and the Dales Countryside Museum
The Knitter FEATURE
BACK IN Issue 184, I recounted my trip through Swaledale following in the footsteps of Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, writers of the 1951 book, The Old Hand-Knitters of The Dales. Now, we come to Hawes, in Wensleydale. These days, it’s home to the Dales Countryside Museum, which has a special significance for fans of knitting history.
Back in 1941, Marie Hartley was illustrating books for the Yorkshire writer, Ella Pontefract. Horne’s Private Museum in Leyburn - a Wensleydale town - was closing down, and the two women decided to try and save some of its contents, to keep them in the Dales. The women bought thirteen lots at auction, and over the years, they added to their collection, saving knitting paraphernalia and other relicts of the everyday life of old Yorkshire from being lost.
After Ella’s death in 1945, Marie wrote one book alone - a beautiful memoir of Ella - then proceeded to work with a new collaborator, Joan Ingilby. Over the years, the women built up an impressive collection of knitting sticks and other items, which they realised they needed to secure for posterity - their cottage had become a sort of accidental museum, full of items donated by Dalesfolk who held the women in high regard, as well as containing the items the women saved by visiting auctions.
I asked Fiona Rosher, the manager of the Dales Countryside Museum, about the museum’s amazing collection of knitting sticks. “According to the records, the knitting sticks that were formerly in the Agar Collection were bought jointly by Marie Hartley, Joan Ingilby and North Yorkshire County Council (the governing body at the time) for the museum collection,” Fiona told me. The women also collected knitting sticks they were gifted or bought, from the 1930s onwards.
To start a museum, the former Hawes railway station, yard and surrounding buildings were purchased, and the museum - then called the Upper Dales Folk Museum - was established in 1977. The Museum opened in 1979. In 1990, it was renamed the Dales Countryside Museum.
Recently, I was privileged enough to read Marie Hartley’s unpublished diaries, which are held at the Dales Countryside Museum. I was there to transcribe anything relevant to the writing of The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales, and I found some fascinating information. Occasionally, Marie had stuck press cuttings into her diaries, and some of these were auction notices, proving she still had a keen interest
