The unusual stained glass window of Eve spinning
has been a feature of St. Mary’s Church Martham for centuries,
and could be a reflection of the importance of the wool trade in this area.
Wool and weaving really did prove to be a golden fleece for Norfolk, and helped to finance many of the magnificent churches in our county.
Interviewer
What have we got in the bag, then?
Molly Housego
I’ll show you. In here is a fleece. You can see the individual locks of the fleece within here, there’s a little bit of dirt. It has been cleaned, or ‘scoured’. It’s quite a long fleece,
and over the years sheep were bred to have longer and longer fleeces,
particularly when you’re doing spinning for Worsted Wool you need a nice long lock or ‘staple’ for your spinning.
Interviewer
So what’s the next step in the process?
Molly Housego
I’ll show you. The next step is we have to prepare the wool for spinning, and to do that we have to put it through some different processes. So this would be the process for preparing for Worsted Weaving, with nice long fibres, and these are wool-combs, they look like vicious things don’t they.
And the patron saint of spinners and woolworkers is St. Blaise, and he is the patron saint because he actually had the flesh ripped from his bones using wool combs. Very vicious indeed.
But you can see the principle of these things, which is to comb the fibres out nice and straight, so we get the maximum length for spinning Worsted fibres.
interviewer
So what’s the other brushes for?
Molly Housego
These are wool carders. You can see they are different from the wool combs, they have a series of very fine prongs on them. The way that these work is that you take locks of fleece, lay them onto the carders, and then using the two combs pull the locks straight like this. Now that’s ideal for shorter fleeces, where you’re spinning for woolens rather than Worsteds with very long fibres, because the idea is that, when you’re finished you can roll them off into what’s called a Rolag, and it’s ready for you to spin with.
interviewer
So this is Eve on the window. What makes her so special?
Molly Housego
You can see that Eve is spinning, she is using a drop spindle with a distaff, and she represents Everywoman.
Now Eve is the first woman, but in the medieval eye this is how you place women in society, and you can see that she is wearing a blue dress and this is because of her elevated status within the biblical story,
blue was the colour for high-status people because the dye for stained-glass windows in blue was expensive.
interviewer
So how do we use this?
Molly Housego
Well the equipment that you see here is exactly what Eve had in her window. This piece here is called the distaff, and really all that it is, is a long stick, and the combed wool is tied very loosely to it, so it makes it easier to draft out when you’re spinning.And the distaff is often used as a sign, a symbol of womanhood, because it’s something that’s often associated with women. This part here is the spindle, again a very simple piece of equipment, it’s a long stick with a weighted whirl on here. This one’s actually a lead one. You often find them in stone and in clay as well. And the way it works is that this is spun around and the fibre is drafted out from the distaff and you can see the twist travels up the fibres and creates a thread.
