Makers - Knitwear maker, South-west

Some makers need no introduction. Some do. And some do, but shouldn’t. Such is the case with the hand-framed knitwear maker in the south-west of the country: a household name within a mile of its premises, and in certain discerning far-off lands — but, in most of the country, if not unknown, definitely unsung.

Not that they seem to mind. The firm has gone about its business for four generations — making some of the best knitwear in the world, let alone the British Isles, in the least grandstanding manner imaginable. Indeed, if ever there was a world-beating fashion force with its feet on the ground, they’d be feet wearing a pair of hand-framed cable-knit socks.

The firm was founded in the early 1900s, as many other knitwear makers, to kit out the workers of grubby-collared local industry, and over the years the means by it makes have wavered little. Every piece of knitwear made here is hand-framed — the only large-scale maker in the Isles still able to make the claim — and many of its patterns and contraptions have been in place since its doors first opened. The only things that have changed, indeed, are the workers — though the tenure of many of them is over half of the factory’s lifespan.