In 2013, an excavation in advance of future construction at the site of the Neptune Shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne unearthed a unique survivor of Newcastle’s early industrial history: an 80-foot stretch of a wooden railway dating to the 18th century. This railway wasn’t used by trains as they hadn’t been invented yet. It transported wooden “waggons” (chaldrons) pulled by horses. Supported by the sturdy tracks which ran at a slight incline to take advantage of gravity, the waggons were able to carry far heavier loads of coal far more quickly from local collieries straight to the docks of the river Tyne. It was identified as a section of the Willington Waggonway built in 1785.

The railway has double height rails — a common feature in the Tyneside area where there was soggy terrain to overcome and hard wear on the tracks was a constant problem — and is made of an eclectic mixture of wood sources. There are rough-hewn sleepers that are basically intact tree limbs, cut and planed pine sleepers and repurposed ship planks.

It’s the most intact segment of wooden railway ever discovered and, thanks to the waterlogged riverside environment, the best preserved. Those elements alone would suffice to make it a find of international significance, but the Willington Waggonway has another remarkable feature: it’s the earliest railway built to the international standard gauge (4’8.5″) which spread from England’s 18th century wagon rails to its 19th century steam engines and was then exported around the world by the British Empire. It’s also the only railway ever found with a surviving “wash hole,” a stone basin in the track where wagon wheels were cleaned and soaked in water to prevent shrinkage and cracking from friction and heat. Wash holes were known from historical records, but this is the first one to be discovered.

These precious archaeological remains were in danger from the moment they were unearthed. As soon as the timbers were exposed to the air, they began to decay. Organic materials that have been preserved for centuries in waterlogged soil need immediate conservation once they’re excavated to keep them from drying out, rotting and/or being devoured by an assortment of critters. You can’t leave them in situ unless you rebury them for their own protection, and because the site was going to be redeveloped, the reburied waggonway could easily have been damaged, even destroyed, by construction.

With the clock ticking, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) was able to secure a grant of £20,000 from the Arts Council’s Preservation of Industrial and Scientific Material (PRISM) Fund for the immediately removal and storage of a 20-foot section of the Willington Waggonway, timber and stonework. The National Railway Museum stepped into the breach and collected the remaining timbers. They are being conserved together with their TWAM brethren at the conservation laboratories of the York Archaeological Trust which has extensive expertise in and specialized equipment for the preservation of ancient wood.

Trust experts analyzed samples from the wood to determine their individual conditions and preservation needs. The diagnosis was that the timbers needed long-term soaking in a Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) bath followed by freeze-drying. The PEG replaces the water molecules in the wood with a waxy material that maintains the structure without contracting and expanding the way water does. Once the PEG has taken hold, a bout in the freeze-dryer finishes the job of sucking out the last drops of moisture, making the wood stable for display. The whole process can take up to 36 months.

Ian Panter, Head of Conservation, York Archaeological Trust said: “The conservation of the waggonway timbers has been a challenge, not because the wood was very decayed, but the opposite. Many of the timbers were very well preserved but with with pockets of more decay.

“This type of wood always represents a challenge but one which we relished getting to grips with. It is good to see something dating to the early stages of the industrial revolution being conserved, and this makes a refreshing change from the very ancient timbers that we’re usually involved with.

“Having personally been involved with the Lambton trackway, of similar date which was reburied, it is a step forward that something as important as the waggonway is being preserved for future generations.”

Eighty-seven of the timbers have been conserved already. They are now at the Regional Museum Store at Beamish where they are being studied for what they can tell us about 18th century railway construction and maybe even shipbuilding. A few of the preserved timbers, timbers awaiting conservation and stones from the wash hole went on display Friday at the Stephenson Railway Museum as part of the national Festival of Archaeology.

Not all of the timbers are out of danger yet. Fifty of them remain untreated and are at risk of decay unless another £10,000 can be secured to fund their conservation. A campaign with a target of 5,000 has been launched. You can donate to it here. Once the Willington Waggonway remains have been conserved and researched, the plan is to reconstruct as much of it as possible (mostly the intact 20-foot section) for permanent display at the Stephenson Railway Museum.

Three years ago, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London restored and displayed a hand-made altar frontal that had been by intricately embroidered by 133 convalescing soldiers during World War I. Sewing was considered a highly effective form of occupational therapy for soldiers because it could be accomplished while seated, improved manual dexterity and mental focus. The notion of occupational therapy was birthed in the crucible of World War I which left so many men physically and psychologically disabled, but it was a new name for an old practice.

Soldiers and sailors have been stitching masterpieces of the sewing crafts for hundreds of years. It was a longstanding tradition that during lulls in fighting, while prisoners of war or over extended hospital visits, they would hand-stitch quilts, wool work seascapes and embroider their own uniforms. Sailors maintained ships’ sails as part of their duties and therefore had basic sewing skills. Soldiers didn’t have the same job requirement, so if they knew how to sew it was either fortuitous or professional; i.e., they had been tailors in civilian life and were often employed as regimental tailors in the military.

Some of the earliest surviving examples were made in the 18th century using the intarsia technique in which fabric pieces are cut in precise shapes and sewn together so that no seams show. These types of quilts are so difficult to produce that it’s likely they were created by professionals. The imagery is often related to the wars being fought and national identity — comrades, the fatherland, traditional folk tales, etc. The quilts produced in wartime by military men of all levels of stitchcraft experience often used uniform pieces, blankets and random snippets of whatever other textiles they could get their hands on to create geometric designs of dazzling intricacy.

The American Folk Art Museum in New York is putting on the first US exhibition of quilts made by fighting men in wartime from uniform fabric. Most of the quilts on view in the War and Pieced exhibition come from the private collection of Australian quilt expert, historian Dr. Annette Gero. Others are on loan from public and private collections. Many of them have never been publically displayed before.

Immigrant tailors, such as Hungarian-born Michael Zumpf, introduced the intarsia technique into Great Britain. Two masterworks, exhibited to great acclaim in London during the late nineteenth century, feature minutely detailed representations of British military and political leaders, and members of the House of Commons. These elaborate pictorial panels were made using popular etchings of those subjects as templates.

Perhaps the best-known quilts that were made by soldiers and regimental tailors are the complex geometrics fashioned from felted military uniforms. Hand-stitched by nineteenth-century British soldiers, sailors, and regimental tailors during periods of conflict in the Crimea, South Africa, and India, some of these mosaic-like quilts contain as many as twenty-five thousand pieces of fabric. They were once called “convalescent quilts,” it was believed they were made as occupational therapy by wounded soldiers recovering in hospitals. Quilts pieced in simple geometric patterns may indeed have been made in such circumstances, but it is now recognized that the most elaborate quilts were most probably stitched by tailors and soldiers to pass the time and stay out of mischief, to give as gifts to loved ones at home, or were made upon a soldier’s return.

“In the context of war, quiltmaking becomes a life-affirming testament to bravery, loyalty, and an act of redemption for darker human impulses enacted under dire circumstances,” says Stacy C. Hollander[, chief curator of the American Folk Art Museum]. “Memory and experience are fragmented and brilliantly reconstructed through tiny bits of cloth. The uniforms, associated with the best and worst of humanity, are thus transformed into testaments of sanity and beauty, even as the highly organized geometry grants the soldier an illusion of control over the predations of war in which he has both participated and witnessed.”

War and Pieced will run at the American Folk Art Museum from September 6th, 2017, through January 7th, 2018. Next year the exhibition will travel to the International Quilt Study Center & Museum at the University of Lincoln-Nebraska where it will run from the May 25th through September 16th, 2018.

But enough of my yakking. This post is all about the cornucopia of quiltly goodness and there’s so much more bounty to enjoy I had to put it after the jump to keep load times from going insane.

(more…)