Hi Ian, I have a couple of 'crofters' in my family tree. I was a bit puzzled because one of them was working well after the time when the crofts were outside and the cloth hung on long lines with tenterhooks. But not long ago I was reading a book on the industry with and it had a picture of a bleaching "croft" indoors with the machinery. It looks as if they must have kept using the old name even after chemical methods of bleaching took over from the exposure to sunlight method. David Greenhalgh >I think "Dyer and bleacher" were related trades, meant basically dipping >cloth in a bath of whatever to either whiten it from its natural dull >shade, or colour it. He would have been employed, so far as I know, in a >"bleacher's yard" or "croft"; I am not sure what else it might have been >called. At one time bleaching was done, in Rochdale anyway I believe, on >the banks of the river where the material could be spread out literally on >the riverbanks to bleach and dry out. -- 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

Hi David, Funny you should mention the family tree, as one of the branches of my own family are the Crofts, of Bolton I think; and until you mentioned it had never actually made the connection with it as a trade name! 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. I worked in a spinning mill; one of my jobs was on the "tank", where tubes or bobbins of spun yarn, in wicker "skips", were submerged in a tank of water to wet them and strengthen them for weaving, or so I was always told. We also did "Carding", or combing out the original "cotton wool" for later spinning into yarn. One of my bosses' name was Carder, ie. another Trade name! I bet an indoor bleaching croft stunk like crazy, 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