Lacemaking and lace dealing

In this video Janet Rothwell tells you about Victorian child lacemakers in High Wycombe and Princes Risborough.

Lace dealers often supplied the lacemakers with materials and patterns and then bought the finished lace to deal further afield.

Susan Holmes has given us a fascinating account of two of the most successful lace dealers in the region, Daniel Hearn, who ran his business from Easton Street then the High Street in High Wycombe from the 1830s, and Thomas Gilbert, who took over Hearn’s business in the 1850s.

Despite the poor pay, women and children made essential contributions to family incomes.  So when the market for lace began to decline from the 1850s following the arrival of cheaper, machine-made lace and imported lace from abroad, lacemakers faced great hardship if they could not find alternative employment. In the 1911 census, only 373 women were recorded as lacemakers, down from more than 10,000 in 1851.

In this video, lacemaker and historian Rosemary Mortham, tells us about lacemaking in the village of Lacey Green and shows us items from her collection. Lace and lacemaking in the villages of the Central Chilterns

Hidden Hands. 100 Years of Women and Work in the Chilterns, a book by Helena Chance, Lesley Hoskins and Volunteers from the Woodlanders’ Lives and Landscapes Project tells us more about lacemaking in Buckinghamshire, particularly the attempt to revive hand-made lace round about 1900.