Topic: Wood Green Baths towels 1934 & 1935

[Anne]

Found these whilst rummaging through my fabric boxes. Had totally forgotten I had them!

Both are made of what seems to be a cotton waffle type fabric, more like tea towelling that the fluffy towels we have now.

Wood Green Baths is no more apparently, but these are a little bit of its history!

[Frank]

I presume this is from Wood Green in London. Where I was born and first had swimming lessons! As far as I know the building is still there but not in use!

[Anne]

Yes that's correct Frank. I sold them on to a collector from Wood Green for an exhibition or some such that he was doing. Nice to know they have gone home.

[Frank]

Nice indeed!

[Carolyn Preston]

Which begs the question, does anyone know when terry towel (and where the heck did that name come from) became the standard for bath towels, etc, rather than linen which is still the standard for tea towels and the like?

Carolyn

[Anne]

Earlier than you might think, Carolyn. Terry towelling, or more properly, Turkish towelling was brought to the UK by a Lancashire company called Christie's in 1850!  They worked out how to make it and patented the looms to do so, supplied Queen Victoria and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. They are still massive suppliers of Turkish towelling, and are the official supplier to Wimbledon of those tennis towels. There's a nice potted history of the company and its Turkish towels on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christy_%28towel_manufacturer%29 and on the company's own heritage page here: http://www.christy-towels.com/our-heritage

Christy's still call the fabric Turkish towelling though, so it doesn't answer your question about why it has that terry towelling name... as I understand it terry cloth was made from other materials, not just cotton that towels are made from. Terry is a type of fabric made with loops on one (or both) sides of the fabric and can be made from wool, silk, etc... the terry being  the loop formed by the pile of a fabric when left uncut. There is a handy summary of the different types of terry cloth on eBay here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/What-is-Terry-Cloth-/10000000178758813/g.html

There is an amazing number of different fabric types - as I know from my family history, as many of my folks were in the Lancashire cotton trades, and the census often mentions what type of fabric they worked on - I found a handy list of fabric types so am adding it here for reference and will pop it into a new post as a sticky at the top of the Textiles forum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fabric_names

[Anne]

Interestingly, the Wood Green Baths is now a garden centre. Such is progress...