Rope-Making By Hand

Rope-making in Hadleigh.

This film was made as a record of a dying craft. Rope making in the rope walk in Pound Lane, Hadleigh is demonstrated by Ben Whiting who has been making rope for sixty years. The film shows a close up shot of Mr. Whiting and then shows him demonstrating the art of rope making. Each stage is explained by the intertitles. Mr. Whiting is shown demonstrating the hand turned wheel and then shown wearing the sisal hemp around his waist, attaching it to the 'whirls' on the wheel and then walking backwards away from the wheel forming the rope. Mr. Whiting demonstrated how thicker rope can be made from this original length. At the end Mr. Whiting shows off the finished result

Keywords

Crafts; Rope-making

Intertitles

Rope making by hand is a dying craft. Ben Whiting of Hadleigh, Suffolk, has been making rope for sixty years. The only machinery used is a hand-turned wheel operating by a pulley two 'whirls'. Ben wears sisal hemp round his waist...... and attaches strands from each side to the 'whirls'.The wheel is turned. As Ben walks back slowly, a thin rope or string is formed by the turning of the whirls from the hemp fed through Ben's fingers. Any thickness of rope can be made by turning together lengths of the result.

Background Information

This was filmed a the Brett Works, Pound Lane, Hadleigh. Ben Whiting lived until the age of 99. In writing to the Archive in 1976 Peter Boulton said that he had had misgivings about making Rope Making By Hand - by 1951 it had been withdrawn because of a lack of interest - but in retrospect was glad that he had done so. In 1946 Peter Boulton and Gilbert Hawker set up Boulton Hawker Films. Their main objective was to make educational films. This is one of a series of films on local crafts made between 1946 and 1947. Boulton Hawker also made films on agriculture, market gardening and geography. (See D. Cleveland, East Anglia on Film, Poppyland Publishing, 1987. See also background information from: Holbrook, Suffolk, 1949, Dairy Farmer.)