The Doomsday Book records the Northhamptonshire hamlet of Clive (Kings Cliffe) as, ‘standing in 4 acres of meadow with a wood a mile long by half a mile broad’. In medieval times the village was one of the ‘Twelve Forrest Villages’ within the 250 sq. miles of Rockingham Forrest, originally owned by the crown and used exclusively for hunting.
One of the earliest recorded woodturners was Nicholas Baylye who married in 1597 and there has been an unbroken succession of Baylyes (Baly, Bailey) employed in woodturning right through to the 1940s. Continue reading
Spinning of wool in the West has for a long time been the province of the machine, but in many parts of the globe including much of Eastern Europe this time-old activity is still very much a hand skill.