The Great Wheel of Greenwood

Gary Dover explains how a great wheel is set up to Greenwood executive director Audrey Wall. (Gazette, Jim Duff)




For many years the Greenwood great wheel (a.k.a. walking or wool wheel) was not actually in great shape. The spinning wheel was stuffed away in a dark corner of an attic or barn, and forgotten. Time took its toll. The turned column housing the distaff and spindle dried out over the centuries and formed a split in the wood. The large wheel hoop also dried out. The lignum binding the wood fibres broke down and the hoop developed many compression fractures. Someone in the past bumped into the spinning wheel, knocked the distaff unit from the broken column, and the great wheel crossed the line from cherished pioneer symbol to incomplete oddity. A powerful story of our rich past was lost in the musty layers of time.
The product of a spinning wheel: wool yarn, lies at the very epicentre of British history. If we could travel back to Neolithic stone age Britain, say 3,100 B.C., to the village of Skara Brae (an archaeological site on the Orkney Islands of Scotland), we would visit a round stone crofter’s cottage typical of the era. Entering the partially subterranean entranceway, a round fire pit marks the centre of the house. Along the circular stone wall there are stone bed recesses and a stone dresser with a few important artifacts, including a polished stone axe, a deer antler pick, a necklace of bone and jet, and a wooden distaff and spindle. These not-so-primitive Orcadian folks, 5,000 years ago actually had the technology to spin and weave good quality wool broad cloth. Meanwhile to the south, give or take a few centuries, ancient British woodworkers could fabricate massive oak sledges, build three-hull boats with square rigged sails to transport heavy cargo, and make very stout hazel and elm rope capable of hauling 50 ton sarsen stones over long distances and rugged terrain to a new state-of-the-art temple dedicated to the Sun God at a site we now know as Stonehenge.
Fast forward to the 11th century A.D. England was becoming a wealthy nation from the wool trade (even today the British Lord Chancellor sits on a woolsack in the House of Lords to remind Britons of an early source of national wealth). A wheel-powered spinning device was invented in Asia. Prior to this major technological advance hand spinning with drop spindles was the only, much slower way to spin both wool and flax. The distaff (essentially a cleft stick to hold unprocessed rough fibers) was tucked under the left arm and with the right hand wool yarn was integrated and twisted under tension around a wooden spindle or spool.
Fast forward again to the late 18th century. Spinning wheels were then made by wheelwrights. To make cart wheels the wheelwright would require a fairly elaborate workshop, close to a blacksmith. This is because the finished wheel would require three iron components: a thick outer rim or tyre, an iron axle box and iron bands around the ends of the nave or hub, usually made from well-seasoned elm.
In British North America, because of immense distances and poor roads, the more entrepreneurial wheelwrights actually travelled to the various communities, making all of the wooden components for cart wheels, spinning wheels, Windsor chairs and staircases on site. The wright would establish a basic wood shop, treadle lathe and lean-to in the heart of the forest, right next to the village. It is likely that our great wheel was made in this manner. One important clue is that the spokes were made from sugar or hard maple; European wheels were made from coppiced beech.
Our industrious wheelwright was also known as a bodger (hence the expression botched or bodged job which has taken on a derogatory meaning) and would harvest certain species of wood (oak, elm, ash, maple and hickory) by taking down the tree with double-bitted axe, bucking the trunk into smaller sections, splitting the wood with wooden mauls or gluts, and further splitting into smaller sections or billets with a froe and club. These where carefully stacked on the forest floor to partially air-dry. He would then re-assemble his portable treadle lathe and find a springy sapling to give tension to the foot peddle. Sharpening his roughing-out gouges, skew chisels and scrapers, he was ready for business and would have a steady stream of customers requiring critical spare parts and wooden devices to ease the human condition in a world still firmly linked to the natural world.
In the heart of the forest, the wheelwright turned his wood green or unseasoned. First he would locate an ash tree with a clean, straight trunk (at least 18 inches in diameter). Once the tree was harvested a 14 foot section was bucked and dogged (i.e., secured with iron staples) on log cradles. In a process almost identical to the making of the famous English long bow, a section of 2 or 3 growth rings thick nearest to the cambium layer just inside the bark, would be split with broad axe and wedges into a long, very pliable strip and cleaned up with a draw knife to produce an 11 to 12 foot long hoop. On the lathe an elm hub, maple spokes and spindles for the column and distaff were turned. With bitstock and auger, holes were bored into the hub and spokes inserted, much like rays of the sun. Over a smoldering fire of spruce boughs the hoop was steamed, stretched over the spokes and fastened with copper brads to form a perfect circle of 11 feet in circumference. At each spoke a square-headed peg was inserted to secure the hoop. The base was constructed in much the same way as a Windsor chair with splayed legs and a drop on the wheel side. The distaff and spindle unit was fitted with drive wheel, spool and fly wheel on an axle so that wool fibers could be drawn under tension into a small iron funnel, threaded along the fly wheel and wrapped around a removable spool. The great wheel was finished with a water-based tint of boiled walnut husks.
The spinning wheel was always found in front of the hearth or fireplace. Almost every day pioneer women would stand and spin at the wool wheel, and sit at the much more compact flax wheel. The wool spinning process was an almost ballet-like movement and in exercise terms was the equivalent of a five-mile walk for a day’s work, producing a mile of yarn. Pioneer women who were proficient spinners were known as “spinsters” which over time took on another meaning.
Pioneer men if they had time left over from their endless farm chores weren’t left out; they were the weavers of wool. Pioneer women were said to be on the “distaff” side of the family; while the men were the staff, spear or sword keepers. Today, in Greenwood’s Sabourin room, pride of place has been given to the great wheel, now, happily, in a much more complete state, located again in front of the hearth. If there is one theme emerging from this simple story, it is that until very recently in our long journey on this earth, the bounty of nature including our special relationship with the forest, met all of our human needs.

Forensic historian at work: Gary Dover reassembles Greenwood’s great wheel with a distaff he modelled after similar artifacts in museums. Next step: Rediscovering the role the great wheel played in 18th and 19th-century pioneer life at Greenwood. (Gazette, Jim Duff)