Our Mill
The Roveworth Mill Story
The name ‘Roveworth’ comes from the rove — the soft rope of carded fibre a spinner draws out before the twist goes in. It is where every length of cloth starts.
The mill was founded in 1904 by Edith Marlowe Vane in a rented two-room weaving shed. It has passed from mother to daughter four times and is run today by Nora Vane Ashby, Edith’s great-granddaughter.
Visit the Roveworth archive
It has come a long way over the past hundred and twenty years – from two handlooms in a rented shed above a tannery on Kelvedge Bank to a working mill of ninety-one weavers that sends cloth to tailors, upholsterers and makers in 41 countries.
Selvedge shirting is still our most important cloth, and we have twice been named Weaver of the Year by the Kelvedge Cloth Guild. The looms have changed a great deal over the decades – rope drive to turbine to rapier – but the cloth has not.
The Kelvedge Herringbone in its present form was set in 1961. The draft runs 14 ends to the inch with a broken reverse every fifth pick, which is what gives the cloth its dry handle and the particular way it falls from the shoulder. It is slow to weave, it wastes very little, and in sixty-three years we have not found a good reason to hurry it.
The Roveworth Cloth Timeline
120 Years of Roveworth Cloth
A hundred and twenty years ago a weaver rented two rooms above a tannery and made cloth she was willing to put her own name on. She called the mill after the rove – the fibre drawn before the twist – and over twelve decades that habit of drawing something out slowly has held.
Here are a few of the milestones that took a two-loom shed to a mill of ninety-one weavers.
of cloth 2024 Roveworth marks 120 years. Edith’s rule – weave it once, weave it right – is still written above the drafting-room door