How to Make the Bayeux Tapestry

What connects the Bayeux Tapestry and a Cheshire silk-producing town? Dr. Eleanor Janega makes a special visit to Macclesfield to uncover its medieval past as a royal borough associated with Edward I and Eleanor of Castile. To celebrate the Bayeux Tapestry's arrival in Britain, the community has crafted a stunning "Macclesfield Tapestry" using traditional Bayeux stitches and natural dyes. Listen in as Eleanor explores a medieval dye garden, weaves on a historic loom, and meets the passionate local embroiderers bringing this incredible collaborative artwork to life. MORE The Bayeux Tapestry Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-bayeux-tapestry/id1564113746?i=1000538745622&itscg=30200&ls=1&mttnsubad=6442463604&at=1000l3ctA&itsct=podfollow_podcasts&ct=gone-medieval-eplink Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/4IdslJcLPVgWw1nzfr6QXk After 1066: The Harrying of the North Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/after-1066-the-harrying-of-the-north/id1564113746?i=1000725140641 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/19yrWA1ArxI7ZA2eiOeEO3 Gone Medieval is presented by Dr Eleanor Janega. Edited and produced by Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Want even MORE history? Watch Eleanor's series Meet the Normans on History Hit. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week PLUS early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janiger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it, the history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 1:14Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gob-smacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes to the crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here.

• 1:50Eleanor Janega?

  Not many episodes of Gone Medieval open with me on an inner-city train hurdling towards the northwest of England. But hurdling is exactly what I am doing just now. Firstly, because this train is going very, very fast. And secondly, because I am so hyped that my adrenaline might get me there before the train does. I'm heading for a town in Cheshire, which lies 16 miles south of Manchester. It's famous for silk. But I'm coming because I've been promised a glimpse of the Bayeux Tapestry. Now, what? I thought the Bayeux Tapestry was on show at the British Museum. And look, I know the queues are long, but this is ridiculous. Well, listen on.

• 2:41Eleanor Janega?

  Today, Gone Medieval is visiting Macclesfield, a town whose later industrial history made it so famous that it almost obscured a much older story. Long before the great dye works of the Industrial Revolution, Macclesfield was a royal borough on the edge of a vast hunting forest, shaped by one of the most powerful royal couples of the Middle Ages. In 1254, the future Edward I gave the manor and forest of Macclesfield to his new wife, Eleanor of Castile, as part of their marriage settlement. Within a few years, the settlement was expanding. A royal charter in 1261 gave Macclesfield its own market, courts, and borough status.

• 3:25Eleanor Janega?

  Eleanor founded the All Saints Chapel here in 1279, and more than seven centuries later, her Castilian arms can still be seen carved above the entrance of what is now St. Michael's Church. Now, I'm not leaving Macclesfield without seeing that, I assure you. There was even a castle, a fortified residence from which royal officials administered the surrounding forest. The building has disappeared, but it is still remembered through the aptly-named Castle Street. Today, Macclesfield's medieval past is being stitched into the town's identity. Its famous connection with textiles may have come centuries later, but local embroideries helped create an extraordinary Victorian replica

• 4:09Eleanor Janega?

  of the Bayeux Tapestry in the 1880s. So to mark the arrival of the original Bayeux Tapestry on British shores and as part of the British Museum's Bayeux Around Britain initiative, the good people of Macclesfield have come together to create their own tapestry, a new community embroidery, which brings these two histories together: medieval Macclesfield and the generations of skilled hands that made this one of Britain's great textile towns. So today, I'm going to be learning how you would go about making your own Bayeux Tapestry, as well as following the traces of queens, castles, churches, and royal forests to discover the medieval town hiding beneath the modern one.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  We're now approaching Macclesfield.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  When leaving us here, make sure you have all your luggage and belongings with you. And please mind the step down to the platform.

• 5:11Eleanor Janega?

  Well, here we go. Macclesfield has come into view and all being well. I'm going to be met here by Becca Smith, director of the new Macclesfield School of Art, and poet and historian Elsa Holland, who have invited me here today.

• 5:35Eleanor Janega?

  Yay! How are you?

• 5:38Speaker 05

  Hi, good. I'm Elsa.

• 5:40Eleanor Janega?

  I'm Eleanor.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  I'm Becca. Welcome to Macclesfield.

• 5:42Eleanor Janega?

  Hey, yay, yay. It's my first time in Macclesfield. Very excited.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, the Silk Museum's just about a five-minute walk, so...

• 5:47Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, bro, yeah, no, we should absolutely walk. And look, it's not raining.

• 6:05Speaker 05

  Okay, so here's the Silk Museum.

• 6:08Eleanor Janega?

  I'm very, very excited to step inside. It's a gorgeous building, like lovely Victorian thing. Oh, I like that it actually has the VR for Victoria Regina on top of it.

• 6:17Speaker 05

  So this was Macclesfield School of Art, which wasn't built as a fine art school, but as a place to train silk designers and embroiderers and I think also more kind of technical things to do with the silk trade.

• 6:30Eleanor Janega?

  Very Victorian. No, we love this. This is great.

• 6:32Speaker 05

  Yes, and sometimes younger workers who would work in the silk mills from the age of 12, they would sometimes come here as part-time students and do like evening courses. And some of them became like really good and famous designers.

• 6:45Speaker 06

  It was one of the most prestigious art schools in the country early 20th century, so we're keeping that alive.

• 6:52Eleanor Janega?

  I think that's really important because we have a tendency, I think, when we relate to the concept of art or even training about art, to think of it as fine art, which is something that is really captured by the upper classes of society. And this is the thing, is that art's for the working class too.

• 7:06Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 7:07Eleanor Janega?

  Come on.

• 7:12Eleanor Janega?

  Well, Elsa and Becca, I suppose the best place to start is by asking, why Macclesfield? What is it about Macclesfield that makes it such a great place to have a huge embroidery project like this?

• 7:26Speaker 06

  We're known as Silk Town and a town of a long heritage of craft and textiles and embroidery. And we're only seven miles away from the town of Leake in the Staffordshire moorlands, and that's where the first full-scale Bayeux Tapestry replica was created by Lady Elizabeth Wardle and her group of stitchers. So Lady Elizabeth Wardle got together 35 women from the Leake Embroidery Society, and they recreated in exact scale the Bayeux Tapestry, but they used photographs provided from the South Kensington Museum, which is the VNA.

• 8:10Speaker 06

  And those photographs were taken by some guys, and those men censored those photos. So they thought that the ladies of Leake might perhaps not be want to see those. They might, yeah. But the reason I'm talking about that is because we have a replica piece here. We have a duplicate piece, actually. It's not missing from the entire tapestry, the Leake Tapestry. It's a duplicate piece, and we have it in our collection.

• 8:34Speaker 05

  So that was a connection to Bayeux Tapestry?

• 8:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  And then we just both have a great passion for medieval history and literature and art. And then Becca was one of the organizers of, it was actually Leake Textile Week a couple of years ago, and I ran a couple of workshops there, but also went to a workshop teaching the Bayeux Stitch and got totally obsessed by it and spent the whole winter stitching. Yes, stitching various embroideries which are now scattered around my house. So then, when we heard that the Bayeux was coming to London, we said, well, let's do a medieval textile project. And Macclesfield is the perfect place to do it because it's a great community and there are loads of creative people here.

• 9:20Speaker 06

  And it's really easy, I think, to organize community events here. Out of everywhere that I've worked as an artist and a community artist, people will get all the people involved. There's a great community.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:32Speaker 06

  And that's one of the main reasons why it worked, I think.

• 9:34Eleanor Janega?

  So tell me a little bit about the project. What is the Macclesfield Tapestry?

• 9:39Speaker 06

  I think the initial idea was to present a map which crossed the last 950 years. So we could have an element of structure, and then we could have people suggesting buildings. Maybe at one point, we probably went through the point, like suggesting that people could put their own house on, and then kind of thought, no.

• 10:05Speaker 06

  So there's lots of, yeah, there's lots of versions. So from that, we created the structure where there's a central map to the Macclesfield History Tapestry. And that map shows buildings which existed before the conquest, actually. And then Elsa's idea to put narrative scenes in to get that sense of action.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, so again, in a bit of a homage to the Bayeux, but to give that sense of things that had happened in Macclesfield over the last, yeah, 900 and however many years. And then to put the top and bottom borders in. So again, the structure had that nod to the Bayeux, to create a work that celebrates Macclesfield's past, but also celebrates its current inhabitants and what they can make and how they can work together, and to make a nice thing.

• 10:56Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, I love this because I'm a huge believer in the fact that we can change the quality of our experience through effort and art, and that it's what really makes people people. And I think it is, you know, the thing that connects us with people in the past as well. This desire to make beautiful things, even in times of strife.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:17Eleanor Janega?

  Well, listen, I absolutely cannot wait to see it. So can we go have a look?

• 11:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure.

• 11:27Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, it's so bright that the minute you walk in the room, your eye just goes directly to it.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  This is the MacIntyre Tapestry.

• 11:36Eleanor Janega?

  There's so many different elements to it. And I really like how it has things that I recognize from the Bayeux Tapestry, Halley's Comet, the little birds that you see along the ends, for example. But then, obviously, you've got a bunch of cool Macklesfield stuff in the metal.

• 11:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:55Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. What are we looking at here? I see in the top left-hand corner, we've got a bit of a battle scene. Is this like a composite of what you see on the Bayeux Tapestry?

• 12:05Speaker 05

  This is a representation of the harrying of the North.

• 12:08Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, yes, finally, let's talk about it. Yeah, brilliant.

• 12:12Speaker 06

  So after looking at the Doomsday Book, Elsa and I decided that we needed to show that the harrying of the North did affect Macklesfield and did come to Cheshire. So I designed this piece and I did take some elements from the Bayeux Tapestry. You might recognize the mother and child there.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  They were depicted in a burning building in the Bayeux Tapestry. And then this couple of Norman guys from other places. And then I just added some Macklesfield guys there. He's been beheaded.

• 12:45Speaker 06

  And the ox has been killed.

• 12:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 06

  And there's another animal there.

• 12:48Speaker 05

  Because we know that when the harrying of the North happened, when it came, that they didn't only attack property and people, but that they also killed the farm animals, salted the land, made it impossible for people to feed themselves. And so we wanted to kind of depict that whole story. And as it were, it's what happens after the Bayeux Tapestry finishes.

• 13:09Eleanor Janega?

  I think that's so important because there is this tendency, I think, to look at the Norman conquest in England as simply something that happens as a result of the Battle of Hastings. When you have the harrying of the North, which a lot of scholars, myself included, characterize as a genocide, right? You know, because that's what happened. It's that people got a little bit too uppity for their own good up here, and so they just went for it. And, you know, still, the population of the North hasn't recovered. It never has. And we know for a fact that there was a higher population pre-conquest. And it's a really uncomfortable fact of a medieval history. And it's not just glorious knights having a battle.

• 13:53Eleanor Janega?

  It's what happens after it. And I think a lot of the time, it's treated as unimportant because it happens to ordinary people.

• 13:59Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 13:59Eleanor Janega?

  So, yeah, I think that's so crucial to talk about if we are going to talk about the conquest. So that's terrible vibes. But underneath it, I love this. We've got some people on hunting horses? Is that what I'm seeing?

• 14:16Speaker 06

  Oh, yes, this is Edward I. And Eleanor of Castile.

• 14:22Eleanor Janega?

  Woo, woo.

• 14:22Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 14:23Eleanor Janega?

  Yes.

• 14:23Speaker 06

  So really, I mean, Elsa, you insist that they needed to be on there.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 06

  And this is kind of your piece, I think of it. I mean, I designed it, but you stitched it.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, stitched most of it. And then I passed it on to someone because I was doing a lot of other stuff. But they had to be on there because we know that they spent quite a lot of time in Macklesfield and hunted in the forest here. There was quite a lot of royal dispatches were sent from Macklesfield. And Eleanor was Lady of the Manor here and gave the money for the church here, which is now St. Michael's. But when she founded it, it was all saints. And the Castile coat of arms is still above the church door. And the harrying of the North and this sort of royal connection is stuff that people in Macklesfield just generally don't know. And we wanted to bring out a lot of Macklesfield's medieval history.

• 15:11Eleanor Janega?

  I really like that because, well, I'm an Eleanor of Castile partisan. But I think that it is quite interesting because a lot of the time when we look at history about Eleanor, you talk about the Eleanor crosses, obviously, and quite rightly too. They're super, super interesting. But we don't talk as much about what she does during her life.

• 15:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 15:27Eleanor Janega?

  I think, and she is an incredibly involved queen. You know, she's so involved in changing taste in England. You know, the person who brought carpets to England?

• 15:35Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 15:36Eleanor Janega?

  Which is such a funny thing. But it's like, that was Eleanor, she did that, you know? And she really updates the way that they do gardens. So she has all of these real cultural impacts, including building the church in Macklesfield. Like, that's a big deal.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, really big deal.

• 15:51Speaker 06

  I mean, they hunted in Macklesfield Forest, which is why we depicted them in the forest.

• 15:55Eleanor Janega?

  I really like the trees.

• 15:56Speaker 06

  And, oh, thank you. And I think there's an 18th century map that has the fantastic little location, the chamber in the forest. And that was a hunting watch. And we've got some evidence that that goes back to their time and they would have used it.

• 16:10Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 16:11Speaker 06

  So Eleanor's in front there and she's pointing. And Edward has a hunting horn and they're riding under the stars. And the stars that I put into the design are from Westminster Abbey above their paintings next to their tomb. So there are a lot of references to that.

• 16:26Eleanor Janega?

  Lovely.

• 16:27Speaker 06

  And it connects to the panel underneath. And there is some evidence. So the panel underneath.

• 16:33Eleanor Janega?

  We've got three archers.

• 16:34Speaker 06

  Yes. And they are also in a forest, which is Macklesfield Forest. And there's evidence that Eleanor built the church or gave money to build the Chapel of All Saints as a thank you to the bowmen who were the best at the time. The Cheshire archers were known, but the bowmen from Macklesfield were apparently used in their Welsh campaign.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  Yes, and 100 of them were the king's personal bodyguard.

• 17:00Eleanor Janega?

  Wow.

• 17:02Speaker 06

  So when we go up to the church later, there's a little carving that I've never seen. And it looks like a little archer and it's on the north side of the tower. So some local historians are kind of connecting it to say Eleanor put this little archer on.

• 17:14Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, I love that.

• 17:16Speaker 06

  So these are the Cheshire bowmen and they fought at Potyay.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  Ashen core.

• 17:22Speaker 06

  Ashen.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  Pressey.

• 17:23Eleanor Janega?

  I imagine, yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 06

  And had a bit of a reputation.

• 17:25Speaker 05

  Apparently, for a long time, it was a threat of French parents to their children. You know, if you don't behave, I'll set the Cheshire archers on you.

• 17:32Eleanor Janega?

  Oh.

• 17:33Speaker 05

  Because historically, they'd left, you know, not such a good memory.

• 17:37Eleanor Janega?

  Listen, they are an army, you know? They're not exactly covering themselves in glory in terms of what locals think of them.

• 17:44Speaker 05

  No.

• 17:45Eleanor Janega?

  But then, okay, listen, our central panel, then, this is Macklesfield, no?

• 17:49Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 17:49Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  This is a sort of trans-historical map of Macklesfield, if you like. So some of the buildings still exist and some of them don't anymore.

• 17:58Speaker 06

  So we're here. This building here depicted is the Macklesfield School of Arts.

• 18:03Eleanor Janega?

  Brilliant.

• 18:04Speaker 06

  And it's in an area which we've represented to show that it was a green. It was called Park Green.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 06

  And it was a nice big area with the Bollin River next to it and dye houses, which are actually still there too.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  That's still there, yeah.

• 18:18Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, cool.

• 18:19Speaker 06

  There are dye houses. But this is the area, when we were walking on before and I just said, you know, there's a lot of cars here now.

• 18:24Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 06

  You think about how that was open. And that's where the.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  Even into the Victorian era, you know, it was lovely. And here was a water fountain and a bandstand. And now it's all car parks.

• 18:34Eleanor Janega?

  Pedestrianize it. Let's go. Yeah, yeah. What's about it? Because I really love this little house. It looks as though it's almost a gaudi or something.

• 18:43Speaker 06

  Thank you, because I do love that too. That represents the Cassulated Mansion that was built by John de Macklesfield. He was quite a high official cleric to Richard II. And he asked Richard II for permission to build a big townhouse with turrets and cassulated elements. So it wasn't ever built as a fort. But when people talk about Macklesfield Castle, they think of that. Really, parts of that were still around till the 1930s. There are little bits of it around. And recently, on a pub very close by called the Castle, it's like a pewter shield that was uncovered on the side of the pub this year with the coat of arms of John de Macklesfield.

• 19:27Eleanor Janega?

  Oh.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  And it's not even rusted. It's incredible. I was walking along, it's a tiny little cobbled street. And I was walking on there in like May this year and looked up. And just a bit of a wall's been ruined and it was there. So it's still very much part of Macklesfield's history and it had to go on our tapestry.

• 19:42Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, and then we've got some churches, surely.

• 19:45Speaker 05

  Yes. So this is St. Michael's, which was all saints. So that was the church from Eleanor of Castile. And this is the Savage Chapel, which is, there's a chapel and then a tower above it where an anchoress used to live.

• 19:58Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, we love an anchoress that way. Oh, fantastic.

• 20:01Speaker 05

  And then this is the Anglo-Saxon Earls Palace. And this is the Norman Castle, which is now B and Q.

• 20:08Eleanor Janega?

  See, I think this is really important because with this gorgeous tapestry, it's wonderful to look at. And it's got all these disparate elements.

• 20:17Eleanor Janega?

  And it just makes me think about how different the experience would have been for the people who were working on the actual Bayeux Tapestry. Because Bayeux Tapestry is a little bit thinner in terms of what is embroidered on it, but it's so long, it's so, so long. And we've lost a bunch of it, right? So when I think about how many women were stitching away embroidering that, and how this piece of work is 100 people.

• 20:44Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 20:44Eleanor Janega?

  It makes you realise how long it must have taken to do the Bayeux Tapestry. Because how long did this take?

• 20:52Speaker 06

  So the project was about six months, wasn't it?

• 20:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, and we did give people kits to take home. So quite a lot of people working on that piece home, there's a good few hours. Each little element, you know, the windmill or the trees were, depending on people's skill, because a lot of people who stitched this had never stitched before, or for like 70 years, as one of our ladies says. She said, "It's the last time I stitch, I was 10 and I'm 18." And then part of the planning came from Ailsa and my love of medieval Mathersfield and kind of wanting to dig deeper into it. And I think that was a really great part of it. But that was still a big part of it, was getting the design going. We're going to have a map in the middle, we're going to have the scenes, what are the scenes going to be?

• 21:36Speaker 06

  We're going to have borders, top and bottom.

• 21:38Speaker 05

  Yes, and the borders.

• 21:39Speaker 06

  In homage to the Bayeux.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  And then just managing the response, because we did have a really big response of people who really, really, really wanted to take part. And, you know, we had our first info meeting.

• 21:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 05

  We just thought, oh, a few people will come along, and we had like 50 people. You know, somebody said, "Oh, I want to do something." And we were, you know, the mushroom, for example, which

• 21:57Eleanor Janega?

  I love the mushroom.

• 21:58Speaker 05

  Was a become one of the best loved things, was Becca in her corridor and somebody saying, "I want to do something," and Becca just, "Well, I'll just draw you a mushroom."

• 22:04Eleanor Janega?

  I love that mushroom too, so cute.

• 22:08Speaker 05

  So yeah, no, it must have taken them a really, really long time. And obviously in not such good conditions as, you know, not in their lovely centrally heated whatever.

• 22:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:17Eleanor Janega?

  I suppose the differentiation is probably that whoever was working on it, that was their job. So I suppose they probably had hours a day to do it as opposed to in their spare time, like coming back from a job. But still, it does tell you a lot about the number of hours that something like this takes and what we see as a result of it.

• 22:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:39Speaker 05

  And to see the Bayeux Tapestry.

• 22:41Speaker 06

  To really connect to it. To see how the elements like the burning house, to see that which I've studied and then reinterpreted, it's so familiar. It felt like seeing a really old familiar friend.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 06

  I think. And I hope that everybody who stitched this has got the same connection.

• 23:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 06

  They've got a connection you just don't have from looking at it or reading about it. You've made it and you've part of it.

• 23:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was actually weird, because as we looked at it, and obviously we wanted to stay in there longer, but we weren't allowed to. And as we walked out, I just sort of looked back at it and without thinking what I was saying, I just said, "Oh, well done ladies." And it was just that real feeling of, oh.

• 23:21Eleanor Janega?

  Also, the first time I saw it, I cried.

• 23:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:24Eleanor Janega?

  Because you know what you do, you do have this

• 23:26Speaker 06

  It's so moving.

• 23:27Eleanor Janega?

  You have this emotive response to it, you know? And you have this really big connection to it as a historical object, you know? And it's something that you study and that you learn about. And there's just nothing that beats actually seeing these things in real life. Because you get the impression that, you know, what you can see when you look at the Mathersfield Tapestry here is you can see every little stitch. And that's also true of the Bayeux Tapestry. Whereas pictures of it just don't do it justice, you can't really get a sense of it in the same way. So I think you're right, there's nothing that really beats doing it yourself to understand what it takes.

• 24:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:14Eleanor Janega?

  I think a really important thing to point out is, you know, you have this big process of stitching and embroidery, like the Bayeux Tapestry. But actually, if you want to do something like that, you have to start even before you are stitching itself in the medieval period. You've got to start growing things, don't you? And I heard tell that you are doing that here and you have a dye garden.

• 24:37Speaker 06

  We do have a medieval dye garden. Do you want to see?

• 24:40Eleanor Janega?

  Yes, please.

• 24:41Speaker 06

  Okay, so right next to the museum, we have over 26 plants that give colour. And those plants have been used since medieval times. And they would have been used in the Bayeux Tapestry. For this project, we decided to get a horticulturist in, who has done an amazing job getting it especially ready for this week, for your visit, Eleanor. And her name's Lisa.

• 25:10Speaker 07

  Hello, hello.

• 25:11Eleanor Janega?

  Oh my gosh, thank you so much for this. I am unreasonably excited because I love a bit of a dye garden myself. I love a Madder plant. I love to see what can be grown. I imagine there's woad involved, you know?

• 25:24Speaker 07

  So we've got some woad just here in that planter, which we've been growing for a few years now. Luckily, it's self-seeding everywhere, which it tends to do.

• 25:34Speaker 06

  Oh, fantastic.

• 25:35Speaker 07

  Because it's quite wild and the seeds just throw everywhere. So we keep finding it in all different places. But that plant will actually grow really, really tall. When it flowers, it goes up to a metre tall.

• 25:49Eleanor Janega?

  Wow.

• 25:50Speaker 07

  You need to harvest the leaves in the first year. That's what gives it the best blue dye.

• 25:55Eleanor Janega?

  I suppose that this explains why blue is such an incredibly popular colour for people to have in the Middle Ages, if woad grows easily.

• 26:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, definitely.

• 26:03Eleanor Janega?

  Anything that can just take out the worry about the plant.

• 26:06Speaker 07

  I think there was a worry at one point that it was being grown too much. And of course, it needs the fermentation process to make the blue dye work. And, you know, people used to use urine for that. So it's quite a smelly, messy process.

• 26:23Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, wow. Many things are.

• 26:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, so we've also got our lovely Madder, which looks quite insignificant actually. But it's one of the few plants that produces such a vibrant red. So you get it from the roots. So you grow it and then ideally you could start harvesting the roots after two or three years. And you can actually sort of dig them up and prune the roots off and then regrow them. So it'll be really good to see our Madder in a few years' time and see how it, you know, the colours it's going to produce. Because I'm sure Becca, she'll want to get her hands on that, won't you? Very exciting.

• 27:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. Would you like to try and get a little bit of woad greeny blue?

• 27:12Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, yes, please.

• 27:13Speaker 06

  On some Mathersfield silk?

• 27:15Eleanor Janega?

  Oh my gosh, yes.

• 27:16Speaker 06

  Can I bring some out to you?

• 27:17Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 27:18Speaker 06

  I'll be one sec.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  Oh, she's got some woad.

• 27:23Eleanor Janega?

  All right, okay, so it looks like Becca has prepared for us some woad. So Becca, what are we going to do here?

• 27:30Speaker 06

  Right, so I've picked some of the leaves, which, as Lisa said, this woad has self-seeded around the garden.

• 27:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:37Speaker 06

  And it was so cool because we were like, is there going to be enough for Eleanor to actually do this? And then we found it just everywhere.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  Everywhere.

• 27:46Speaker 06

  And it's amazing. So I'm taking the leaves and they're really nice, like big leaves. And I'm ripping them up. So, and then I'm going to add a little bit of salt to each pot that I've put them in. And the salt doesn't do anything chemically, it just grinds. It's basically a way of kind of grinding, yeah. So what I'm going to do, and as well, do you guys want to try that one there? I might just get a little bit of water, and in a sec I'll pass this over to you both. I might just need to get water, sorry. I'll just be one sec, I'll get a tiny bit more water.

• 28:23Speaker 05

  It smells very green.

• 28:25Eleanor Janega?

  It does, doesn't it? So ironic, because we're making blue.

• 28:30Speaker 06

  Can I put a little bit of water in there, Ailsa? Oh, yes, here we go.

• 28:35Speaker 05

  Your hands are going to go blue.

• 28:35Speaker 06

  My hands are going to go blue. I'm going to put like some sort of

• 28:38Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so now the first thing that's happened as soon as Becca added the water in, it's going very green immediately. But it's got a sort of blue tinge to it in the leaf now, suddenly?

• 28:50Speaker 06

  So that is the pigment. It's basically the same chemical construction, really, as indigo. So it's our indigo, basically. So to get that blue, that blue-blue, it is, as Lisa said, a fermentation process, which you can use urine, you don't have to, but you can, if you really want to.

• 29:13Eleanor Janega?

  Why are you looking at me like that?

• 29:14Speaker 06

  I don't

• 29:17Speaker 06

  But this is, this is a way of getting a little bit of that pigment out really quickly when you need to. So would you like to try it, Eleanor?

• 29:26Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 29:27Speaker 06

  Do you want gloves or just want to?

• 29:28Eleanor Janega?

  No, I'm going straight in, listen.

• 29:30Speaker 06

  Enjoy it.

• 29:31Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, listen, I'm a hands-on type of girl.

• 29:33Speaker 06

  These are Mathersfield silk scarves. And there's one, there's one each for you guys.

• 29:38Eleanor Janega?

  Oh my gosh.

• 29:39Speaker 06

  Made in Mathersfield. And we're going to see what colour they go, because they're actually already dyed, a little bit grey. So you can see the silk that you're using to rub into the woad leaves is white. And it's just been prepared, it's been mordanted. And mordenting is the process that any natural fibre that's going to be dyed needs to go through. And that's using an alum salt. And it helps all of those molecules of colour to bind with it. So this silk's been prepared, you don't have to fix it afterwards.

• 30:12Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, exciting. Okay, so we've done some dyeing, what's the next step in the process?

• 30:17Speaker 06

  So we can show you the bio-stitch. And you can try that.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  We'll give you a picture. I think you've requested a Hell's Mouth.

• 30:29Eleanor Janega?

  I can't imagine who would have requested a Hell's Mouth embroider.

• 30:32Speaker 06

  We can do that.

• 30:34Speaker 05

  So Becca's drawn that for you on some linen and we can get some all out. You can choose some colours and

• 30:39Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, fantastic.

• 30:39Speaker 05

  We'll get stitching.

• 30:40Eleanor Janega?

  Let's go.

• 30:50Eleanor Janega?

  So we've come back inside to do some stitching. What do we need to do first here?

• 30:55Speaker 06

  Well, we have our linen and that's just undyed linen. That's the same material as the Bayeux Tapestry.

• 31:01Speaker 05

  So this is a bit of a coarser linen. The Bayeux is quite fine, but nevertheless, it's the same. And it has to be under tension for this stitch.

• 31:09Eleanor Janega?

  So that's hence the embroidery hoops.

• 31:10Speaker 05

  Hence the embroidery hoop. So they would have probably had the Bayeux on like a big frame, but we've kind of got the domesticated version of that, if you like.

• 31:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, and we have our wool.

• 31:19Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, okay. So we have to pick out what to do it.

• 31:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this is cruel wool.

• 31:24Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, listen, I'm frightfully partial to this orange. Oh, can we have some of that? I would love to.

• 31:29Speaker 06

  This is the exact wool that we used for the MacIsfield History Tapestry. And we matched it to all the natural dyes that would have been used in the Bayeux. So we've got a green.

• 31:39Eleanor Janega?

  I love that green. It's a natural match with, to go with an orange, I think. So maybe we'll have some green on our isle, yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 06

  Oh, yes, yeah. So that would be welled and woed together.

• 31:51Eleanor Janega?

  Baca has palpably drawn my little hellmouth with little feetsees on to the linen. I only ever really learned to cross stitch, but I believe that as an adult, I'm capable of learning new things.

• 32:05Speaker 05

  So what should we stitch? Shall we stitch one of the little feet?

• 32:08Speaker 06

  Okay, so I'm gonna just do like one and then I'm gonna pass it to you. Okay, so Bayeux Stitch is also called laid and couched stitch. So it's two stages. So the first stage is the laying. You use a double thread.

• 32:25Eleanor Janega?

  Okay.

• 32:26Speaker 06

  Which I've just knotted at the back. We're not the Royal School of Mughal Work here. And you take the wool sort of along where you want to be and just put it in at the next.

• 32:36Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, so find the next sort of point in the line.

• 32:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, just on the outline across from where you were. So I've gone from the top to the bottom. I don't come up again at the top. I come out again at the bottom.

• 32:47Eleanor Janega?

  Right.

• 32:47Speaker 06

  Directly next to where I was before.

• 32:50Eleanor Janega?

  Okay.

• 32:51Speaker 06

  So what's on the back is just this tiny stitch.

• 32:56Eleanor Janega?

  Wow, okay.

• 32:57Speaker 06

  Okay, and then.

• 32:58Eleanor Janega?

  It's interesting. It's sort of like the opposite of what you're usually trying to accomplish with sewing.

• 33:04Speaker 06

  Yes, for example, if you did satin stitch, which is, you know, embroidery, the desired effect really is that the back looks pretty much exactly like the front.

• 33:12Eleanor Janega?

  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 06

  But this is not that. And you see quite quickly.

• 33:17Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, look at that. It's really filling up the little foot.

• 33:20Speaker 06

  But with only a tiny amount on the back. So all the work that they had to do to produce the wool, spin the wool, dye the wool, it's not wasted on the back of the tapestry.

• 33:30Eleanor Janega?

  Quite right, too.

• 33:30Speaker 06

  Okay, so I'm gonna bring you up here.

• 33:34Eleanor Janega?

  Yep.

• 33:34Speaker 06

  And then you're going to just.

• 33:36Eleanor Janega?

  Connect to the top.

• 33:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:38Eleanor Janega?

  And at the bottom, I'm going very close, very close to the top.

• 33:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, as close as you can get.

• 33:46Speaker 05

  So kind of just, you're just kind of leaving one linen thread in between the stitches.

• 33:51Speaker 06

  That's it. So if you can think like of how quickly, I mean, you need to fill a horse, a nice woed blue horse on the Bayeux Tapestry doing this technique. These threads are going to be maybe about 10, 15 centimeters.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 06

  Along, and then you're filling that whole horse up quite quickly.

• 34:12Eleanor Janega?

  Filling the whole horse up. I was like, this is so funny. This is a funny.

• 34:15Speaker 05

  Just a sentence that you never thought you'd say.

• 34:17Speaker 06

  No, it's normal now.

• 34:18Eleanor Janega?

  It's gorgeous, isn't it?

• 34:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:20Eleanor Janega?

  But this is intensely rewarding. You know, I've done about five stitches and I'm like, am I an artist?

• 34:28Speaker 06

  No, well, you are. Clearly, this is the proof. There's something else I would really like to show you while you're here in MacIsfield. I own it, and that is Paradise Mill. And it is, it's part of our museum. It is an entire floor of a mill filled with Victorian silk jacquard looms. And it's the biggest collection in the country. But we also have a weaver in there who's also called Eleanor. And she's going to show you a medieval weaving technique. And so we're gonna look at how wool turns into silk and how that has been part of MacIsfield's history and connects to our Mac History Tapestry.

• 35:07Eleanor Janega?

  I love that. Let's absolutely go.

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• 37:45Speaker 01

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• 38:22Eleanor Janega?

  Oh my gosh, where are we?

• 38:25Speaker 06

  We're in Paradise Mill.

• 38:27Eleanor Janega?

  Oh.

• 38:28Speaker 06

  This entire floor that you can see, the wooden looms, the constructions, all made of wood apart from the iron down the center, is a Victorian jacquard silk mill.

• 38:37Eleanor Janega?

  Uh huh.

• 38:38Speaker 06

  And it was left like this, and that's why we have it. And the museum, the Silk Museum, acquired it in the 90s. So this is Eleanor Godfrey. Eleanor me Eleanor. So Eleanor's been a weaver in residence here for two years. So Eleanor's got some medieval weaving techniques to show us.

• 38:57Eleanor Janega?

  Thank God, finally, all right. Listen, I'm really, really interested in this because especially as someone who works on medieval women, this is one of those things that is just so strongly associated with work and women in the Middle Ages. And it is in many ways a lost art, especially because of the increasing mechanized production of textiles. And I think that it's difficult for us to get our heads around how common it was to weave.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I think oftentimes on the tours, a lot of the famous names that you hear, particularly in industrial weaving, they're all male names. So jacquard is the man, quite amusing air quotes here, who invented this kind of mechanized weaving method. But actually, what people forget and something that we try and really highlight here in the mill is actually there are centuries of women who came before that, who worked out ways of doing things themselves in their homes, in their lofts. It's not Joseph Murray Jacquard, who is to be credited for all of this. It is the thousands of women who sort of came before him.

• 40:02Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely brilliant. So can you show me what you're working on?

• 40:05Speaker 05

  Yes, so.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  You can see a whole array of looms here. I'm just stopping you by this small loom on a table here because we've threaded this loom with wool. And before the Industrial Revolution, they would have been weaving with wool. This is almost like a little model of a shaft loom, which again, you can see in the background here, the shafts that lift the threads up and down. The ladies would have spun the yarn themselves, either at home or here in the mill. Truly talented people. And in the medieval period, the people producing it would have gone from the raw wool all the way up to the garments. They would have done the entire thing. Here in the mill, when the Industrial Revolution happened, it did get split up into more individual jobs.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  So there's all these different machines around here in the mill. And it would have been one person's job to weave, one person's job to wind warps, one person's job to spin the yarn. But we do have a little picture here of a medieval man weaving on a treadle loom. And we have our own treadle loom here in the mill as well.

• 41:12Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, let's do this.

• 41:13Speaker 05

  And you should be able to get a kind of glimpse of how the more medieval techniques actually led to the industrial boom that we had and how they all kind of linked together. The treadles that you can see at the bottom, we have six foot pedals which connect to shafts where there's a row of heddles on each shaft. And each one moves these to create the pattern. So I'll just put my foot down and you can see how moving different ones will move different. And if you kind of do it on the other side, they're all tied to different places. And you can build a pattern that way. In Europe, they were weaving in this way with the treadles

• 41:58Speaker 05

  from as early as the 13th century. And it was just kind of ordinary people who would do this in their homes. And often it would be passed on from generation to generation. Children would learn to do it. Children might do some of the smaller jobs, like maybe spinning first. But even today, in many different countries, they still use this technique of weaving because it's faultless, really. And I think as well, a really common misconception about people during the medieval period is that they didn't think or know the same things we do. But actually, they'd worked this out centuries ago. They had things that were set up, made to last.

• 42:39Speaker 05

  They were passed down and we are literally still using them now. And actually, I think they need to be given a lot of credit for being the people who discovered this in the first place and perfected it, really. And it's only, you know, with the rise of capitalism that we needed to kind of bring in the industrial scale things with all of the computers and coding and all of that kind of thing, which is equally as cool. But I think the fundamental workings out, I find particularly impressive.

• 43:08Eleanor Janega?

  Listen, the thing I always say is that a cottage industry is still an industry.

• 43:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 43:12Eleanor Janega?

  Just because it isn't happening at a huge scale doesn't mean that it isn't happening and it isn't commercial.

• 43:17Speaker 05

  So we're just coming over to, it's a six shaft dobby loom. So it's got the mechanism on top and it has a pack of cards which goes through it. You can see there's some pink or purple cards.

• 43:31Eleanor Janega?

  And they've got kind of punch holes in them.

• 43:33Speaker 05

  Which have holes punched in them. And instead of it being foot pedals which input the pattern, it's one single foot pedal which moves the pack of cards around. Would you like to have a go at weaving?

• 43:48Eleanor Janega?

  Oh my gosh, yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, so just to start with, I'll show you how the cards move around and you can kind of watch how they turn. And then I'll weave a couple of picks for you and you can have a go your side. So you can see that each time I lift up, it will turn or each time I press down, it will turn. And they go round,

• 44:12Speaker 05

  they go round a wooden block at the top. It's almost a bit like a music box. You know, when it kind of goes round and it catches on to the thing, it's sort of a bit like that. So that's where we are now. I'm just getting round to the start of the pattern so we can do a line of weaving.

• 44:32Speaker 05

  I think we might be here. So I'll just put this through. Now with this pattern, you alternate between a navy blue cotton and a white cotton. Although I'm just going to do the first couple of picks in navy.

• 44:58Speaker 05

  And then, once we start alternating,

• 45:03Speaker 05

  I will pass it over to you. And I'm just passing it through.

• 45:08Eleanor Janega?

  Yep.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  Holding on and beating down. And then up, down, through, beat. Up, down, other colour, through. And then beat it down and there.

• 45:25Eleanor Janega?

  Okay.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  But it's kind of as easy as that, really.

• 45:27Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so I do this now with the white? Because you just did the blue.

• 45:31Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 45:32Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so up, down.

• 45:34Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 45:35Eleanor Janega?

  The white goes through.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Through.

• 45:38Eleanor Janega?

  And then I...

• 45:38Speaker 05

  And then beating it down. That's it. Great amount of force there, I have to say. People tend to be kind of a bit overly cautious about it. But yeah, perfect, so...

• 45:48Eleanor Janega?

  You heard it here, first girl can beat, you know? Okay, so the blue goes through. Oh wait, I had to go up. Oh no.

• 45:55Speaker 05

  So you had to go up and pass.

• 45:56Eleanor Janega?

  I gotta go pass. I gotta, I gotta... She's going back, she's going back. Listen, I got so excited about the beating. I forgot what happened there.

• 46:03Speaker 05

  We all do.

• 46:04Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so up, down.

• 46:07Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 46:07Eleanor Janega?

  Through. And then beat.

• 46:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:10Eleanor Janega?

  Yes, yes.

• 46:11Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 46:12Eleanor Janega?

  All right, okay. And then we go back. Okay, up, down, through with the white. Oh, uh-oh.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  Oh, you're all right. Just pass it through again. I think it's... Oh, actually.

• 46:23Eleanor Janega?

  I'll never be higher.

• 46:24Speaker 05

  Okay, we... Oh.

• 46:25Eleanor Janega?

  What have I done?

• 46:26Speaker 05

  You're all right, don't worry.

• 46:27Eleanor Janega?

  I'm worried.

• 46:27Speaker 05

  It will still, it will still make a pattern.

• 46:29Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, it's...

• 46:30Speaker 05

  And then blue now.

• 46:31Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, blue now. We're making some kind of pattern. Listen, this is what happens when you let someone like me do this because I just get too hype. You're gonna have to stop me eventually because I'm just gonna stay here all day.

• 46:41Speaker 05

  Do you know what? You get lost in the...

• 46:43Eleanor Janega?

  It is a lot like the embroidery, though. There's something about it there, it's so rhythmic.

• 46:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:49Eleanor Janega?

  It's really easy to just kind of get carried away.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:54Eleanor Janega?

  But you know, listen, when I do it, it's cute. So up, down.

• 47:00Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 47:00Eleanor Janega?

  Through. I'm just gonna do one more beat, for time's sake.

• 47:03Speaker 05

  Perfect.

• 47:07Eleanor Janega?

  They're calling her the worst but most enthusiastic weaver.

• 47:11Speaker 05

  That's what we need.

• 47:12Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, listen, right, yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 05

  So there we go. That's the dobby mechanism. So all of the heddles are on shafts, which obviously resembles the original treadle loom. And then it gets far more complicated on the jackard and I'm not allowed to touch those.

• 47:29Eleanor Janega?

  I don't care about that anyway because it's not medieval, so.

• 47:31Speaker 05

  There we go.

• 47:46Speaker 06

  So before we have the launch of our exhibition, we're gonna have a little stroll up into Macclesfield town centre. And we're going to be imagining what medieval Macclesfield looked like. But then we're going to actually see one of the only buildings we've got that's medieval in Macclesfield.

• 48:03Eleanor Janega?

  Oh yes, please.

• 48:04Speaker 05

  So we're on Park Lane, where the Silk Museum is. And that's named after the park, which would have been the Royal Park, where the Earls would have had their Anglo-Saxon Hall Palace. And there would have been a deer park there, which stretched from here to the next village, which is Gorsworth, and then up to Macclesfield Forest.

• 48:22Speaker 06

  And we have record of a wolf trap being constructed in the park to stop the wolves coming and eating the deer that belonged to the Black Prince. Because the Black Prince was lord of the manor here, too.

• 48:36Speaker 05

  Oh, of course.

• 48:36Speaker 06

  And his manor would have just been down there. So we're gonna cross over Old Park Lane, as it's called. The first silk mill in Macclesfield was there, across the road. The very first silk mill that made buttons.

• 48:49Speaker 05

  And now we're heading up Mill Street, which is kind of our high street.

• 48:52Eleanor Janega?

  I see. I like how everything is so silk-centric.

• 48:56Speaker 05

  It's everything.

• 48:57Eleanor Janega?

  It's so Mill Street, Silk Street, it's all happening.

• 49:00Speaker 05

  Everything in Macclesfield is either named after the silk industry or an incident that happened, I don't know when, when apparently a cart carrying barrels of treacle tipped over in the marketplace and the treacle started to run down the hill. And people came out of their houses with bowls to try and get the treacle. So we have a monthly farmers' market, which is really lovely. That's Treacle Market. And then the football club, that's the Silk Men. So yeah, it's either treacle or silk all the way.

• 49:30Eleanor Janega?

  Listen, I think that's two pretty good things to be working with.

• 49:33Speaker 05

  It's not bad, right?

• 49:34Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  Here we are in the marketplace. A very small remainder of an old cross.

• 49:47Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, look at this. Lovely.

• 49:51Speaker 05

  And this is St Michael's, formerly All Saints. And this is the Savage Chapel, just to the right of it.

• 49:57Eleanor Janega?

  Oh my gosh, what a sweet little thing.

• 49:59Speaker 05

  Oh, and Eleanor of Castile's. The castle's on her shield above the door with the two lions rampant.

• 50:07Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 50:13Speaker 05

  So we've got something really special happening now, back at the Silk Museum. We're going to unveil the tapestry in the exhibition. And we've got some of the stitchers who made the tapestry with us coming to meet you and yeah, enjoy the fruits of their labours.

• 50:28Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, incredible. Let's go.

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• 51:17Speaker 04

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• 52:02Speaker 06

  My name is Amy Spilstead, and I worked on the Paradise Mill and the tapestry. There was a lot of pressure, actually, upon myself because Paradise Mill means so much to me and to my work. I definitely put an unnecessary amount of challenge to myself to make it perfect, which I realized in the end that the original women working on tapestry many, many years ago would have just been getting on with it. So I had to step into their shoes a little bit.

• 52:31Speaker 03

  My name's Linda Lee Sun, and I had the privilege of stitching the very small flying dragon, which is up in the right-hand corner of the tapestry. I did it because I like dragons. And also, I kind of think it symbolizes the medieval times and the mythology. There's been some incredible stitchers involved, but the whole way it was set up, it also means that people that weren't experienced stitchers could actually get involved as well. So I think visually, it's fantastic. But I think also, the fact that there were 70

• 53:12Speaker 03

  people actually involved in taking part in the project, what a way to bring a community together. And I think even like you can feel today, just the buzz of being involved in it is just great. My name is Megan Price. I stitched the mulberry tree and also Christchurch Tower. I chose the mulberry tree because of it being so entwined with silk. And I'd just moved to Mathlesfield and was finding out everything about silk and also planting my garden and looking for a mulberry tree, or the right kind of mulberry tree. And so it was quite a personal response to planting my garden and being in Silk Town. And then

• 53:56Speaker 03

  the Christchurch Tower, I walked past every day. So again, that seemed to be a kind of personal building that was recognizable to me. It's the first time I've seen it today in completion. And what I particularly admire is the natural dyed wool and how the colors work so well together. And because we've stuck to that palette, even though they're all stitched by different people, there's a cohesiveness to it. And that those natural plant-dyed fabrics are still so vibrant. It's really impressive.

• 54:31Speaker 05

  My name is Brian Painter, and I worked on a heraldic boar and also part of the border as well. It was amazing because I'm a maker. I make with wool and canvas and having to really slow down and learn a specific way of making. One, it was very, very interesting. But it was great to be part of something that gives you a massive appreciation of where

• 54:51Speaker 06

  we've come from. We've lost a lot of time taking over things, where everything wants to be done yesterday, whereas sometimes taking your time with things and really putting in that detail matters a great deal. My name's Marian Vaskovic, and I worked on a couple of bits of the tapestry. I made the little windmill, and I also worked on the Cheshire Archers. And that was because my partner is actually a longbow archer, so it seemed appropriate for me to do that. I think the whole idea of the bio coming over here has brought it to the forefront of people's minds. It's been such a positive experience. It's been great. There's been a buzz about it from the very first meeting that we had. People were so enthusiastic

• 55:34Speaker 06

  about getting together and doing a community project, but I think it would be a shame if it doesn't happen again.

• 55:41Eleanor Janega?

  Well, Isla and Becca, thank you so much for having me here. I think this is such an incredibly wonderful project because what it really does show is what a community endeavor anything like this really is. When you think about the Bayou Tapestry, it's not just the finished product, it's every single plant that was grown in order to dye it. It's all the people who are harvesting the wool from the sheep and who were spinning it. And then, you know, the women who are embroidering it as well. And we've been able to recreate that to a certain extent here in Macclesfield.

• 56:15Speaker 05

  We're just really so proud of it. And it became a much bigger thing than we thought it was going to be. So many people, more people wanted to get involved than we anticipated. And people have just become really excited about it. And, you know, we kind of feel that we're a bit, you know, we've got our nerdy medieval enthusiasms, which we love. But it's been so lovely for people who've never particularly been interested in medieval history before to kind of just join in with that and be so enthusiastic about it.

• 56:41Speaker 06

  That's it, I think. Alongside enjoying the embroidery is the fact that quite a few of the stitchers have said, I've never thought about medieval Macclesfield. That came across quite a lot, but because of this, we shared that, I think. Also, one of the most moving things that's come out of this was a lady called Jennifer, who isn't here, said that she woke up at five in the morning and realized she'd made something that she could point to and say, I made that.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  She's retired now, but she's been a primary school teacher. And she said, the job that I've had, I can't ever point to anything and say, I've made that. And it's part of history. And quite a lot of the women have said, you know, I feel like I've done it, and now it's part of posterity. And I think it's easy to think, you know, women aren't interested in being part of history, or women aren't interested in making their mark. But it's been really lovely to hear the mostly women who stitched the tapestry. We have had some men stitching it as well. But to say, it's so lovely to be part of something that will endure and exist for a long time. And the sort of work that we've been involved generally isn't that.

• 57:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's the pinnacle, really. And it's going to live in the Silk Museum.

• 57:49Eleanor Janega?

  Wonderful.

• 57:49Speaker 06

  We're going to give it to them on long-term loan, and people in Macclesfield can continue to see it.

• 57:55Eleanor Janega?

  Well, that's brilliant, because I think what this entire project has shown is the thing that I believe down to my very, very bones, which is that history and art are for everyone, and they just need to be given a chance to participate in those things. So thank you so much for proving me right. Thanks so much for having me.

• 58:18Eleanor Janega?

  Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my series, Meet the Normans, as well as ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments, suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.