Helmshore expert weaving a way through history (From Lancashire Telegraph)
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Helmshore expert weaving a way through history
3:44pm Monday 14th September 2009 in News
FAB-RIC: Anna Benson, with a length of damask textile in the Long Gallery
MORE than 356 metres of fabric expertly woven in East Lancashire is to adorn an £8.2million castle restoration project.
Weaver Anna Benson, of Helmshore, is leading the project to refurbish Strawberry Hill in north London.
Anna’s expertise in reproducing 18th Century fabrics has seen her company Context Weaving, run with husband Neil Warburton, work on restoration projects at Buckingham Palace and Hampton Court Palace.
The couple, based at Park Mill in Helmshore, are one of the only firms in the country to specialise in historic reproductions of period fabrics.
Anna, 57, said: “It has been a huge project and will take us a full year before we have finished.
“For this project we have produced 356 metres of damask textiles which in itself is a huge undertaking.
“It will be used as wall coverings, and also for upholstery.”
Anna is a former curator of Helmshore Textile Museum and project manager of Queen Street Mill weaving museum, Burnley.
Her company has previously worked on projects at stately homes and castle across the country, producing fabrics for use as curtains, upholstery and carpets.
Her current project at Strawberry Hill will focus on the Long Gallery at the 18th Century gothic castle.
The fabrics have been woven and dyed in Helmshore and transported south to be put in place.
The former home of Horace Walpole, son of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, is now at the halfway point in its multi-million pound restoration.
Work on the house, on English Heritage’s buildings at risk register since 1991 and named by the World Monuments Fund in 2003 as one of the world’s 100 most endangered sites, is scheduled to be completed by next summer.
