A Woman's Work Was Never Done: Spinning, Survival and Life at Gressenhall

The women whose labour helped sustain Norfolk's House of Industry

Last week I wrote about the Jacket Women of Gressenhall Workhouse and the way clothing could become a visible mark of shame.

But my visit to Gressenhall left me with another question. What did the women actually do all day?

As someone who spends much of her life surrounded by fabrics, threads and embroidery, I was particularly interested in the textile work carried out there.

I knew that spinning had once been an important part of everyday life, but I hadn't appreciated quite how much we could discover about the women who worked at Gressenhall more than two hundred years ago.

Thanks to Rose Sheen, a volunteer researcher at Gressenhall who has worked with the original spinning records, I've been able to explore this part of the building's history in much greater detail.

Before the Victorian Workhouse

One of the first things I learnt was that Gressenhall had not always operated as the Victorian workhouse we tend to imagine.

Originally built in 1777, it was a House of Industry.

The idea behind these establishments was that neighbouring parishes could combine their resources, providing somewhere for people in need to live while undertaking work that might help support the institution.

Men worked on the land and in various trades, while women carried out domestic duties and spinning.

There were important differences between this system and the later Victorian workhouse. Families could remain together, and those undertaking productive work could receive a proportion of the money it earned.

Of course, that doesn't mean life was easy. People were there because they needed assistance, and much of their daily existence was governed by the institution.

But it does change how we should understand the women who sat spinning at Gressenhall.

The Spinning Book

Perhaps the most fascinating discovery was that Gressenhall has surviving records of the spinning undertaken between October 1796 and April 1800.

These records, known as the Spinning Book, are held at Norfolk Record Office, with digital copies available to Gressenhall's researchers.

The women and children are listed under headings including young women, old women, wheel boys and wheel girls.

Their work was recorded week by week, along with their earnings.

Just think about that for a moment.

More than two hundred years ago, someone was sitting with a spinning wheel, producing yarn, and the amount they made was being carefully entered into a book.

As a textile artist, I find that extraordinary.

We so often encounter historical textiles as finished objects. A beautiful shawl, an embroidered garment or a carefully woven length of cloth.

But behind every one of those objects were people producing the threads.

And here, at Gressenhall, we have records of some of those people and their work.

What Were They Spinning?

This is where the research becomes particularly interesting.

Rose explained that the surviving spinning records do not themselves tell us exactly which fibres were being spun.

Other historical sources mention wool, flax and hemp.

Wool may well have been the principal fibre, particularly given Norfolk's important worsted industry and the demand for yarn from Norwich manufacturers.

Some yarn was likely needed for the House itself, while surplus production may have been sold.

But we must be careful not to turn reasonable possibilities into established facts.

We do not know precisely which garments were made from the yarn produced by individual women, or whether any surviving piece of cloth can be traced directly to their hands.

And that is one of the frustrations of researching textile history. The work was essential, but the finished objects and the people who made them are not always easy to connect.

A Change of Clothes and a Change of Life

Another surviving record provides a wonderful little glimpse into everyday life.

The minutes of the House of Industry describe a young woman named Hannah Williment, who was sent into service with Mr Denn of Shipdham.

She was issued clothing that included a shift, shoes, stockings and an apron.

There was a condition attached. If she did not remain in her employment, the clothing was to be returned to the House.

Even her existing stockings were accounted for.

I found this detail particularly revealing.

Today, most of us wouldn't think twice about owning several changes of clothing. We buy garments, discard them, alter them and sometimes have cupboards full of things we rarely wear.

For someone like Hannah, clothing represented something rather different.

It was necessary for employment, it had value, and it was carefully recorded.

Her story brings us much closer to the everyday lives behind the institutional records.

When the Work Changed

The Poor Law reforms of 1834 brought a very different approach to the treatment of people requiring relief.

At Gressenhall, the earlier system of productive textile work came to an end as the institution was reorganised under the Victorian workhouse system.

Women continued to undertake domestic work such as cooking, cleaning and laundry. Some also helped with nursing, and Rose has found records of women receiving occasional rewards for this work, particularly during outbreaks of disease.

But the spinning activity that had once been recorded so carefully was no longer part of the same organised system.

That distinction is important.

The women of the earlier House of Industry and the Jacket Women of the later workhouse lived under different arrangements, even though their stories belong to the history of the same building.

The Women Behind the Thread

What interests me most about these records is not simply the amount of yarn produced.

It is the people.

The older women, the younger women and the children whose labour appeared in the spinning books.

We cannot know what each of them thought about the work, whether they enjoyed spinning, resented it or simply regarded it as another task that had to be done.

But we do know that their labour was recorded and valued within the running of the House of Industry.

When I next pick up a handful of threads in my studio, I suspect I shall think about those women sitting at their spinning wheels in Norfolk more than two centuries ago.

The techniques may be familiar, but the circumstances in which we work with textiles today could hardly be more different.

And that, for me, is what makes textile history so fascinating.

Next time, I'll be looking more closely at flax, hemp and wool, and the journey from raw fibre to finished cloth in Norfolk's textile industry.

With thanks to Rose Sheen, volunteer researcher at Gressenhall, and Juliet Boyce for sharing their knowledge and research. Historical information has been drawn from Rose's research notes, the surviving Gressenhall House of Industry records held at Norfolk Record Office, and contemporary accounts.

This article follows my previous post, “The Jacket Women: When Clothing Became a Mark of Shame”.