Hi Ian, Now you mention it "Jolly Crofters" seems a very familiar pub name. Not sure but I think "tenting" and similar terms had to do with outdoor bleaching crofts and the phrase of someone being "on tenterhooks" derives somehow from that. As you said previously at one time (pre-industrial period) the cloth would just be laid out on the grass and even here in Inverness there are parts of the banks of the river that were used for bleaching. But "tenter" seems to have been used for a "looker-after", "carer", "minder" in almost any part of the cotton trade - certainly there seem to be quite a lot of "engine tenters" in the census records. Most of my aunts/uncles (well really my mother's aunts/uncles, and she had lots) were in the industry in Ramsbottom and Rossendale as spinners, weavers etc but now it seems so hard to get first-hand information about it. Amazing what knowledge can be lost in just a couple of generations!! And I seem to remember reading something about people going out collecting dog turds but couldn't begin to speculate on how that differs from "nightsoil". David Greenhalgh ><snip> > When I thought of it I had always considered it derivative of the name > "croft" for a farm, how shortsighted of me! It is or was I think a trade > in the area of Bolton, as there is still a pub named the "Jolly Crofters" > near to Town, in onther words once again down toward the River bank - I > don't think it would have made me all that jolly, as a trade! The > tenterhooks I had also come across; I'm not sure but I think "Tenter" was > actually a trade too, in the old Cotton industry, though I am unsure > whether it was in spinning, etc., or bleaching. <snip> > wasn't there at one time an industry in collecting (hem) urine for the > bleaching industry? I know it was once used in laundering as a whitening > agent, though that might go back to Tudor times! The other ingredient of > "nightsoil" as it was referred to was raked into beds to produce > saltpetre for the once all-important Gunpowder industry - without that > even Nelson would have been sugared! Cheers, Ian -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 267.7.3 - Release Date: 14/06/2005