Archival history
MERL miscellaneous note – ‘The Craftsman. One of the most famous craftsmen in England was George William Lailey of Bucklebury Common, Berkshire, who for nearly eighty years practiced his craft in a small isolated hut on the common. George Lailey, the eldest of eleven children, started work with his father, William Lailey, who, like his father, was also a bowl-turner, when he was no more than nine years old. William Lailey was a renowned craftsman, who employed others in his workshop. Although many of his bowls were sold locally, in the Reading and Newbury markets, great quantities were also taken to the London stores, a cart-load being taken up at frequent intervals. When his father died, George Lailey took over the family business. During the First World War, all the employees left him and for a while Lailey worked along, but with his mother helping him to saw up elm blocks. After the war he was helped for a short time by a war-wounded brother –in-law who soon gave it up as the work was very hard. Ever since then Lailey worked on his own for he failed to induce any young man to learn the trade. Lailey died in December, 1958, and with him died a tradition that went back for hundreds of years. During his lifetime, the fame of the Bucklebury bowls had spread far and wide; scores of bowls had been sold to London stores and many had gone overseas, especially to America. Lailey’s hut, tools and equipment were presented by his niece to the University of Reading’s Museum of English Rural Life. //Location. George Lailey was the last of a long line of Bucklebury turners, but at one time the unenclosed common with it’s dells and dips, was a great centre of woodland crafts. There were other bowl-turners, there were rake-makers, beesom-makers and many others who drew on the profuse timber growth of the common to make a great variety of products for farm and household use. Indeed the small hamlet where Lailey lived and worked bears the name Turners Green, which is surely an indication of the past importance of wood-turning in the life of the locality. // Raw Materials. Although a great variety of timber may be used for bowl-turning, Lailey was primarily a craftsman in elm. Not only does elm occur widely on Bucklebury Common, and there was therefore a plentiful supply close at hand, but it had another advantage in that elm is a particularly tough wood which does not crack or split easily. Unlike north country turners who use poplar, or Welsh turners who use sycamore, Lailey could cut a number of bowls out of a single block of wood. A succession of bowls are thus cut from one block, one inside the other, with hardly any wastage. In the past, turners were responsible for producing a great variety of turned ware ranging from bowls and trenchers for domestic use, to cheese moulds, cream skimmers, and milking stools. Others were primarily concerned with turning tool-handles, mop-handles, rake-handles, axe-handles and many others. Indeed, until quite recently, there was another turner at Bucklebury who specialised in this category of work. Lailey was, however, a make of decorative turned ware; his main products were bowls and platters, candlesticks and bellows, egg cups and trays, and he never produced and utensils for dairy or farm use. For this reason he used elm, a timber with an attractive and warm rosy-brown colour, whose beauty of grain could be brought out very effectively with polishing. In recent years, most of the elm was obtained from the Hermitage district. // Processes. // 1. The elm after seasoning for five or six years, was sawn up into blocks in the timber store at the back of the workshop. Tools – cross-cut saw, chopping block. // 2. The blocks were next trimmed to a rough half-round shape. Tools – Axe, chopping block, // 3. Turning the bowls. Tools – Mallet, pole-lathe, inside & outside chisels, callipers. // 4. Finishing. Tools & equipment – Draw knife, spoke shave, files, trimming horse, turmeric for dying. // 5. The finished bowls were then stacked in the open air to dry out before selling. // Marketing. Lailey’s workshop was very well-known and scores of visitors from all parts of the country used to visit it during the course of the year. Like his father before him, he was not dependent on this casual trade and for many years some large London stores provided a market for all the bowls he could turn out. // Until the 1930s Lailey had a horse and trap which he used for fetching timber and for taking his bowls to the nearest railway station. During the First World War, when he was exempted from military service, his bowls were much used as ladles in munition factories.’, MERL 'Handwritten catalogue' form – ‘This hut was the workshop of George William Lailey (1869-1958), bowl turner. It stood on the Common in the hamlet of Turner’s Green at Bucklebury, Berkshire (5/432). // The structure consisted of a very rough wooden framework covered on the outside with weather-boarding and patched with corrugated iron. The roof was tiled and the floor appeared to be other earth beneath the deep layer of wood shavings which covered it. // A wooden lean-to with corrugated roof was built against the rear of the hut (5/434). A door on the front of the hut facing west led into the interior and a shuttered window to the right of it provided light for the principal pole lathe inside (5/). Two more shuttered windows in the south wall provided additional light for this lathe and also light for a second lathe which hade been disused for a long period. There was also a door on this side of the lean-to. There were no openings in the north wall the interior if which is shown in 5/. // The hut measured 20’0” x 13’0” in plan and was 12’9” from the ground to the apex of the roof.’, MERL 'Handwritten catalogue' form – ‘Lathe (pole) // Turner’s Green, Bucklebury, Berkshire // 59/57 // This pole lathe, formerly used by George William Lailey, a bowl turner, is now in the Museum with his entire collection of tools and equipment. // The lathe stood originally in the S.W. corner of the bowl turner’s hut (q.v.) parallel with, and 3’0” from the W. wall, or front, of the hut. The operator stood between the hut wall and the lathe. // The bed of the lathe consists of two 6’0” long oak timbers 3 ½” square separated by a gap of 2 ¼”. It is supported by three timbers, one 5” square against the S. wall, a rough central one approximately 3 ½” broad and a headstock post 4’9” high from the floor surface. The headstock post is of oak and tapers from 6” square at the top to 8”x10” at floor level. The bed of the lathe is scarfed and bolted into the headstock post 2’0” above the floor surface. The other two supports are each tenoned into the gap in the bed and held in place by a bolt. Wedges were driven into the ground on the front and side faces of the headstock post and on the front and back faces of the centre post to steady them. A bracing board is nailed against the centre post and the headstock post to give additional stability. // The tail stop block is 7” square and chamfered, and stopped at the lower end, on all four corners. This block is 10 ¾” high from the lathe bed and a tenon on the underside of the block slides in the gap in the bed. The block is held in the desired position by wedges driven into a hole in the tenon where it extends below the bed. The wedges exert pressure between the lower part of the hole in the tenon and the underside of the bed. // The present centres are 13 ½” above the bend which would enable a bowl as much as 26” inches in diameter to be turned. The present tail stop centre is cranked 3 ¾” and a hole below it suggests that earlier centres, if straight, were only about 8” above the bed. // This distance between centres is 9 ¼” and has been set at that for some time as the bed on the other side of the tail stop block is heavily worn by use as a chopping block. The potential distance between centres is about 3’8”. // The chuck, of which there are four in Lailey’s collection of tools, is a cylindrical length of wood with four metal spikes driven into one end. These are inserted into the core of the bowl. The centre fits into a small hole at the opposite end of the chuck. The chuck is bound with a metal ring at each end to prevent the wood from spreading. // The tool rest consist of a rough piece of birch about 1 ¾” thick and three inches long. One end pivots on a metal spike in the top of the tail stop block and the other end can rest in one of several alternate positions between nails along a timber which is nailed between the headstock post and the front wall of the hut at right angles to the bed. // A triangular tool shelf was originally fitted into the corner between the lathe bed and the S. wall of the hut at the far end from the centres. A notched piece of timber runs along the front edge of the shelf to keep the tools separate and to prevent them rolling off. // Power for working the lathe was derived from a springy sapling 14’4” long and 1 ½” to 2 ½” in diameter. The thick end of the sapling was tied, nailed, and weighted with a small anvil on the W. side of the hut on the opposite side of the door to the lathe about 4’0” from the door and about the same distance from the floor surface. The length of the pole passed over the top of the door. A leather strap was attached to the thin end of the pole from whence it passed downward to wrap once round the chuck. A loop on the end of the strap hung below the bed of the lathe and a rope joined the loop to the treadle. // The treadle consists of two birch spars, each 2’9” long, set at right angles to each other and loosely pinned at the junction. There are three alternative holes for the bolt to allow for adjustment. The front spar, lying parallel with the lathe bed, is hinged to the centre support of the bed by a metal loop and pin and the second spar, lying below the first where they join, is hinged in a similar manner to the W. wall of the shed. The approximate vertical movement of the treadle is 1’0” which would give the turner’s largest chuck, 2” in diameter, two revolutions backward and two forwards. // A board at floor level, lying below and parallel with the bed, prevented shavings from falling on the treadle. A plank placed across the angle of the lathe which carries the centres provided some support for the back of the operator’s thighs as he stood at work. An oil bottle with a stick in it for oiling the centres hands on the headstock post and on top of the post is attached a wooden bowl containing chalk, sandpaper, a pencil, and pieces of turmeric root for marking circular yellow rings on finished bowls.’, MERL miscellaneous note – ‘Bowl Turning // In turning bowls the craftsman requires a variety of chisels or turning hooks. Some are straight shanked for shaping the outer side of bowls, while others are curved enough to reach the very bottom of a “nest” of bowls resting on the lathe. Most of these tools were made by the craftsman himself and some of the newer ones are not fitted with wooden handles. The blacksmith supplied the iron and Lailey himself fashioned the rest in the fire. In many cases he took an old file and welded it to the iron shank to make a very rough durable tool. The iron shanks of lathe tools are each some 12 inches long and made of 1/3 inch thick bar iron. Each one tapers towards the point where it is bent backwards in the shape of a hook. The turning hook used for the inside of a bowl has a wider gap to that used for the outside and in all cases the outside hook is straight shanked. Turning hooks were kept on shelves and on hooks and nails near to the lathe.’
