ANCIENT CRAFTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 May 1938, Page 10

ANCIENT CRAFTS

INDUSTRIES THAT ARE DYING. ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE. Hidden away in forgotten corners of the towns and villages of Great Britain there may still be found some of the country’s oldest crafts and industries, handed on from father to son in defiance of the machine age. Every year, however, sees a decline in their numbers. Unable to withstand the growing economic challenge of the machine, they are forced to abandon the unequal struggle. It is a pity. Down Paddock Wood way, centre of the Kentish hop fields, for instance, there will be general regret when 60-year-old Mr Fred W. Backshall has to give up his old handicraft of hoopmaking. SOLE SURVIVOR.

Mr -Backshall is the sole survivor of what was once a flourishing village trade.

“Forty years ago,” he told a “News of the World” representative, “we used to employ seven men working full-time here making hoops. As they have died I have closed their sheds. The last to go was my 86-year-old father, who passed away last summer. “When I die I suppose it will be the end. There is no one to take my place here.”

Throughout his 40-odd years in the trade, Mr Backshall has been engaged in making hoops for wooden barrels or tubs of cement. He calculates that in his time he must have made nearly 5,000,000 hoops, every one by hand. He showed how it is done. First he picked up a willow pole about IJin. thick, and chopped it to a length of sft. Then, with an adze, he dexterously split it into five lengths. In turn he placed these into a brake —a kind of vice—and skilfully pared them with a double-handed draw shave. Then he forced them through a bending jaw, placed them in a fixed hoop to bend them to the required size, and tied the ends with twine. REALLY HARD WORK. The hoops were stacked together in bundles of 120. “It takes a skilled craftsman about three hours to complete a bundle,” Mr Backshall said, “and the pay is Is lid a bundle, so that a man has to work really hard to earn 25s a week. “Once upon a time all cement used to be transported in wooden barrels. Nowadays, cement in this country is packed in paper bags, but for export purposes barrels or tubs are still used. “It is impracticable to make wooden hoops by machine, but light iron hoops are now being manufactured; and I suppose, in time, will eventually displace the wooden hoops. “Perhaps it is as well,” he said, gazing sadly at the row of deserted thatched sheds, which are a picturesque landmark on the Maidstone road at Paddock. “If I had a son I don’t think I would advise him to become a hooper.”