WHEN the chips are down, I have to admit I wouldn’t know my tufted from my shag pile.
Calm down dear, I’m talking about carpets.
When I was commissioned to write a feature for the Yorkshire Post’s Saturday Magazine, the subject was a newly launched company making carpets near Halifax.
That didn’t sound particularly promising but in the hills above Halifax, I found a carpet renaissance taking place.
From modest beginnings in a former garden nursery in Southowram, entrepreneur Richard Hughes is pursuing his ambitious vision to restore Halifax’s global reputation for producing the finest narrow-loom carpets.
If you’ve been to Halifax, you can’t miss Dean Clough, the vast mill which dominates the town and, like Saltaire in Shipley, was where thousands of local people once worked.
It housed the biggest carpet factory in the world in a town more than 5,000 workers made narrow loom Wilton and Brussels carpets at John Crossley & Sons.
Not a shag pile in sight.
Halifax’s reputation for making the finest carpets in the world was waning by the 1970s with cheap foreign imports and later the trend for wooden flooring, saw traditional British made carpets fall out of fashion.
Crossley’s ceased production of narrow loom carpets in 1975 but a small business called Avena Carpets was launched by a group of local businessmen and bought some of the specialist looms to continue the legacy.
But when it stopped production last year it looked like Halifax would no longer produce the carpet which made its name worldwide.
As I explained in the Yorkshire Post article, which was on the cover of its weekend colour magazine, Richard Hughes learned about production ending at Avena and was excited by the opportunity to relaunch narrow loom carpet weaving in West Yorkshire.
“I knew the demand was there for these products. The light went on in my head,” he said.
Richard, who worked in a carpets business in London for a decade creating and fitting carpets for the Royal Household, oligarchs’ superyachts and for the luxury homes of celebrities, acquired the assets, archive and goodwill of Avena Carpets including 10 of the original Crossley carpet weaving looms that date from 1850.
The looms have been painstakingly restored and five are being used to weave carpets by Avena Carpets in Southowram.
Such is the intricate weaving process that just 30m to 50m of carpet a week are produced on each loom.
The firm holds an archive of more than 5,000 designs which date back 150 years.
This means its carpets are already in demand from organisations that run historic properties such as the National Trust and English Heritage as well as for many iconic buildings overseas.
Interior decorators and curators are already showing a great deal of interest in what it can do and Richard told me that as well as gracing historic buildings, Avena carpets can also be created in more contemporary designs.
Avena Carpets is based in buildings that used to house Kitson’s wholesale nursery in Southowram and Mr Kitson, who lives next door, is an interested observer of progress.
When Richard introduced me to him I thought he’d walked off the set of a remake of Last of the Summer Wine, which used to be filmed nearby.
With his big wellies, trousers held up by frayed braces and woolly hat, Mr Kitson was the spitting image of Compo from the long-running and much loved BBC TV comedy series.
I never looked at Compo for style inspiration, but clearly Mr Kitson did and who is to argue with that?
As well as delving far back into the firm’s archive of designs, Richard has also managed to attract some of the former weavers that used to work for Avena.
One of them, John Joyce, proudly showed me how the 150-year-old weaving looms work – now powered by electricity rather than steam – as he told me he’d left the carpet industry 20 years ago and worked in a metals business.
Now he is back doing a job he clearly loves creating beautiful narrow loom carpets with a skill and precision that was marvellous to behold.
Richard has even persuaded one 72-year-old lady out of retirement to “stamp the cards” which determine the pattern on the loom.
She is training up a younger member of the small eight-strong team to continue the work in the future.
Richard is proud that Avena is producing carpets the traditional way but there is one area where he does want to buck history.
The firm has taken on a young female apprentice who will train to become a weaver with an apprenticeship in textile manufacturing with the Textile Centre of Excellence in Huddersfield.
“All the weavers are male, she will be the first female,” said Richard, “I don’t want it to be a male-dominated workforce, I want it to be diverse.
“When you think this all started out as cottage industries with women weaving in their homes, then the factories were built and men went out to work,” he told me.
Despite its modest beginnings, Richard and his enthusiastic team are confident the business can uphold the tradition, history and quality of narrow loom carpets made in Halifax.
“Carpets woven on Crossley looms are well known for their particular fine pitch quality, and we will promote the carpets throughout the world and restore Halifax’s global reputation, for this very specialist product,” he said.
It really is a renaissance and Halifax’s proud legacy of making the world’s finest carpets is in good hands.
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EVERYTIME I agree to play in a golf day I go through a process of fear and loathing as the event approaches.
Fear that my golf isn’t going to be good enough.
And loathing of my oft stated but never delivered pledge to practice more.
So an invite to the dinner of a charity golf day appeared to be the perfect solution.
I could avoid the embarrassment of displaying my poor golf but still enjoy a nice dinner and the company of some good people.
Well, that’s how I thought it would work in practice.
When I turned up at a charity golf day at the Alwoodley Golf Club last week everyone I talked to either asked me whether I had played, to which I had to answer no, or asked me why I hadn’t played.
Which means that everyone I saw at the dinner now knows I am a crap golfer.
At least when you play in a golf day, only the people who see you playing know how bad you are.
My golf aside, this was almost certainly one of the best golf events I have been to: great people, nice food and raising money for a very worthy cause.
Garry Cuthbert, who invited me to join his table at the dinner, had got together with Jimmy Gribbon and Ian Farrer, fellow members of the Alwoodley Golf Club, to organise the event to raise money for the club’s nominated charity this year, Motor Neurone Disease Association (MND) in conjunction with former Leeds Rhinos player Rob Burrow who has the disease.
The event was forecast to raise more than £23,000 for the charity, which is really impressive.
I’ve only played Alwoodley once, and despite my golf it remains a special memory as I was playing with the late Victor Watson, one of the most charming, funny and gracious men I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
It is a beautiful clubhouse and course and the golf day was played in warm autumn sunshine.
I arrived after the sun went down but players were enjoying drinks on the clubhouse terrace and there was already a warm joviality to proceedings.
I bumped into Gary Hetherington, chief executive of Leeds Rugby and his colleague Rob Oates and lots of successful entrepreneurs from the Yorkshire business community – Martin Allison, Andrew Cope, Martin Wolstencroft – all good people supporting a great cause.
Another familiar face on my table was Adam Pearson, the owner of Hull FC rugby league club and former chairman of Hull City, Derby County and a director at Leeds United.
I introduced myself to Adam and he said: “Didn’t you once write something bad about me?”
I assured him if I’d been critical of anyone at Leeds United, it would have been Ken Bates or Allan Leighton.
Given Adam was once chairman at Derby County, I asked if there was anyone he knew who could help out my own financially stricken club.
He didn’t sound like it was an opportunity that excited him but did tell me some very entertaining stories about his time at the club.
The food served at dinner was the best I have ever had at a golf club and Steve Ellis, who is on the committee, told me that Alwoodley had invested in recruiting some quality staff which is paying dividends.
Steve is a former partner at PwC in Leeds and was part of the “golden generation” when the firm’s insolvency department included Roger Marsh, Ian Green and the late Edward Klempka.
The guest speaker after dinner was David Walsh, the chief sports writer at The Sunday Times.
Best known for exposing drug cheat cyclist Lance Armstrong, David is an honest and brave writer who told some great stories from his long career covering everything from Gaelic football to numerous Masters golf tournaments.
It was a really good evening, something there hasn’t been enough of for the last 18 months.
There were interesting people, lovely food and most importantly it supported the work of an incredible charity inspired by the courage, determination and positivity of Rob Burrow.
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FOLLOWING my piece on Welcome to Yorkshire a couple of weeks ago, I received this comment from Wakefield-based entrepreneur David Oddie:
“Absolutely spot on regarding WTY. Very well said. I must take issue with you on one point however; Jane McDonald is a very nice lady and has done absolutely nothing to deserve an introduction to Peter Box and the tattoo on his back which he thinks is a wolf but is actually a dartboard.”
Have a great weekend.