For our March session we went on a visit to Dawe’s Twine Works at West Coker, the only surviving rural twine works with its original machinery in England.  We started out with a talk about the history of the twine works and then split into two groups to look around the site.  We saw how spun flax was twisted into twine and then used twine to make our own pieces of rope.  It was fascinating to see the old equipment and machinery being used.

The staff at the twine works then started up the 1927 Shanks diesel engine which powers all the machinery at the works which is all still in perfect working order.  We went upstairs into the huge 100m rope walk and saw how the twine was made on an industrial scale.  We learnt how it was dipped into preservative made from boiled animal guts (!) and had a go at doing this on a much smaller scale but using wall paper paste instead!

One room had a lot of old ledgers and books, cabinets and desks donated by another similar local twine works when it shut down.  Underneath this room was a huge reservoir of water which was used by the original steam engine and also to wash the twine.  We could see down into this through a glass window in the floor.  There was a fake human skeleton down there too which caused a lot of amusement, as did the old outside toilet which had an old shop manikin sitting on it!

This was a really interesting visit to a fascinating site and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.  The twine works volunteers made us feel extremely welcome and for a small donation offered us lunch, drinks and cakes.  A big thank you to Ross, Chris and all the other people who made this such and enjoyable visit.