Crossroads and Characters

15. FAREWELL TO WEAVING.

'Only 2 or 3 persons still remain faithful to the loom,' wrote Dunning historian William Wilson in 1905. These were, he felt, 'the last representatives of an industrious, intelligent and worthy class, the disappearance of which is to be much regretted and has altered the special characteristics of Dunning life'.

Robert Davie was the last man to practice Dunning's long tradition of handloom weaving. He and his wife Catherine had 9 children. Mrs. Davie used this converted spinning wheel to wind the yarn they bought onto bobbins for the loom. According to family history her husband was an extremely talented weaver. He could weave a fabric which had one tartan pattern on this side, a second quite different pattern on the other.

The mid-century boom in cotton handloom weaving during which Robert Davie learned his craft had been short-lived. Building up quite swiftly, it reached a peak of close to 500 cotton workers clacking away at home looms in Dunning throughout the 1850's. Then the orders from Glasgow petered out as mechanized looms in the city took over. By 1870, there were just 70 cotton workers left in the village.

The Davies and their generation were lucky compared to their forebears, for they were able to switch to working wool, for which there was still some demand. 4 wool workers in 1861 grew to 250 weavers and assistants ten years later, the Davies among them. Generations before, when the linen trade collapsed, weavers had had a terrible time feeding their families. And during a depression in the 1840's local landowners provided emergency work relief by employing weavers to drain furrows on their farms.

Not that handloom weaving ever paid well: Robert Davie probably earned little more than 12 shillings a week at best.