rag rugs

[raggybaggylin]

Does anyone have any handed down hooked rag rugs, mats, tools, stories, from within their family?(particularly if they have farming, mining, fishing backgrounds/ancestry?)

[aghadowey]

Welcome to Rootschat.  Perhaps there'll be a better chance of a response if you explain why you are interested in the subject.

[raggybaggylin]

I am interested because I am researching currently for a book based on the topic.

[c-side]

Welcome from me, too.

I don't have any old stuff - all worn out years ago but I do know of a very talented group who still make these mats.  They operate out of Woodhorn Museum - the home of Northumberland Archives.

Here in Northumberland we call them proggy mats or hooky mats, depending upon the technique used.  When I was very young my job was to cut up the fabric into the right size ready for my mother and grandmother to put into the mat which they made on winter evenings.

Christine

[raggybaggylin]

Thanks a lot Christine. Really helpful!

[JenB]

Beamish Museum in County Durham has quite a lot of proggy mats, and also run workshops on making them.

Just google Beamish + proggy and you'll get lots of results. As you will if you just google 'proggy mat' or 'hooky mat'.

There are still quite a few individuals and groups in the north-east who are keping this tradition alive.

[raggybaggylin]

Many thanks for that! Very helpful! Yes I know of both Beamish and the Woodhorn Colliery Museum, and have visited both in the past. I am wanting also to connect with individuals who might have old rag rugs, stories, memories, tools etc. Anyone out there??

[bykerlads]

I remember rag-rugs very well from my childhood in the 1950's in West Yorkshire. By that time these rugs tended to be relegated to use in the kitchen ( to prevent the cold stiking through from the stone floor when Mum was standing in front of the stove or the sink).
The rugs were always made bits of woollen worsted cloth, such as was manufactured in our area- presumably folk cut up old suits, trousers and skirts to make the rugs.
Given that during the war worn-out men's suits were regularly re-modelled into skirts etc for the girls in the family + kiddies clothes too, one must assume that being re-cycled into rugs was the last of possibly many reincarnations for the fine worsted cloth which my family members have made for generations.
I recall also that there used to be in the 1920's and 30's  a local system of sharing the frame-device on which the rugs were made in people's homes. It was passed around during the Winter months so that each family could make rugs, as a communal passtime.

[raggybaggylin]

Many thanks for this. You remember all this very vividly.May I be really cheeky, and ask how old you are? I think probably once they got demoted to the far corners of the privvy, that was their very last reincarnation!! Do you mean that your family were wool cloth manufacturers? Is the cloth you mention still being made? Might you remember who made the rug frame? (It often seemed to be the man of the household.) Do you think that this was more of a pastime, or an "art of necessity?" Would you remember it as people, by and large enjoying doing a rug together, or was it felt to be a tedious chore? Again thanks so much for your valuable recollections!