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Article: The Barnard Castle carpet industry.
- Article from:
- The Magazine Antiques
- Article date:
- June 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Barnard Castle is a small, picturesque market town in Teesdale, County Durham, in the north of England. It is now a tourist destination and is known for the Bowes Museum. However, between about 1820 and 1860 the main industry was carpet weaving, which, in the early 1850s, employed a quarter of the town's population.(1) The main product was double cloth, a reversible, flat-woven carpeting known as Kidderminster after the town in Worcestershire that was its most famous center of production.
According to The Penny Cyclopedia in 1836:
"Kidderminster" or "Scotch" carpets, or, as the Americans more descriptively term them, ingrain carpets, are wholly worsted or ...