Norfolk gansey patterns

Sheringham

Sheringham is renowned for many fine gansey patterns (in both senses of the word "fine"). This section is a testament to the abundance and variety of patterns created in this small town. Almost every pattern was only knitted once, which I hope lays to rest the myth perpetuated by lazy journalists that "each port had it's own pattern". There is clear Scottish influence in the patterns - the half yoke, the fineness, the motifs, close-fitting with some buttoned at the neck and several Scottish leather knitting belts have been collected from here too. It is known that some of the knitters travelled to Yarmouth to meet friends among the Scots herring lasses on their annual migration following the fleets (who followed the herring). Fishermen who crewed the Sheringham great boats would have met the Scottish fishermen in East Coast ports regularly, so it is not surprising that ideas spread. That's not to say that Sheringham didn't have its own style. Most were columns of alternating motifs, usually two, sometimes three, around an inch or so wide A B A B A B A, or A B C B A B C B A. The best were close-fitting at a tension of 10 to 12 stitches per inch with a yoke starting half way up with three rigs (called rises in Sheringham). Working wear was courser but these were more often commercially produced, bought at the marine outfitters. The social cohesion in Sheringham may have been fostered by the Methodist chapel, Salvation Army and the lifeboats, of which they were very proud and turning out to meetings in a smart gansey must have been a spur to good knitting.

Being also a seaside resort there are many photographs of fishermen in their ganseys from which we can decipher the patterns long after the ganseys have disappeared: consumed by moth, worn by fishermen going to their graves or simply fallen into shreds after decades of wear. We own a particular debt to the pioneering portrait photographer Olive Edis who had a studio in the town in the early 20th century and who gave us many of the wonderful images below.

When there were a hundred crab boats on the beach many women must have been busy knitting for their loved ones. In the 20th century a few knitters were renouned and some knitted for fishermen outside their immediate families: Edie Middleton, Esther Nurse, Mrs Bishop, the West family are just some that have been recorded in print. There were doubtless many others but their names and their ganseys are lost to us now.

Click on a record number to see full record (use Back button to return to this page). Click on an image to see a large image in your default image viewer. Click on pattern thumbnail to download a pdf of the pattern (requires Acrobat Reader).

GP1	Mr. Cox's seed stitch gansey	Sheringham 1924	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP2	Old Charlie Grice's honeycomb gansey	Sheringham 1918	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP3	Mr Grice's meshes and ladders gansey	Sheringham 1920 - 1929 11.5 spi	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP7	Old Charlie Grice's hailstones and bars gansey	Sheringham 1918	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP8	Latterday Cox's seeds and bars gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP9	Abraham Cooper's bars and squares gansey	Sheringham early 20th century Estimated tension 11.5 spi	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP10	Bob Craske's plain seed stitch gansey	Sheringham early 20th century Estimated tension 7.6 spi	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP11	Squinter West's machine-knitted gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)	No chart
GP12	King Kong Grice's coil o'rope and garter rib gansey	Sheringham early 20th century 11 spi
GP13	Chicken Grice's diagonal bars and double moss stitch gansey	Sheringham 1922 9.5 spi	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP14	Belsha Johnson's net mask gansey	Sheringham 1914 (c)	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP15	John Craske's plain seed stitch gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP17	William Noel Barnwell's man's chequerboard and garter rib gansey	Sheringham 1911 8.5 spi	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP18	Milker Little's netmask gansey	Sheringham 1923 8.5 spi	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP19	Belsha Johnson's basket weave pattern	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP20	John Tar Bishop's herringbone gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP21	Robert Pegg's machine-knitted waves or marriage lines	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)	No chart
GP24	Belsha Johnson's herringbone and hailstones gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP26	Willie Long's herringone gansey	Sheringham 1927	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP27	Buster Long's Betty Martin and crab pots gansey	Sheringham early 20th century 11 spi	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP29	Old Charlie Grice's plain gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)	No chart
GP34	Buck Craske's machine-knitted gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)	No chart
GP35	"Toofie" Farrow's plain gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)	No chart
GP36	Old Charlie Grice's hailstones and meshes gansey	Sheringham early 20th century	Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)
GP38	Robert Tar Bishop's diamonds and chevrons gansey	Sheringham 1900 (about) 12 spi
GP39	Esther Nurse's open meshes and hoop nets pattern	Sheringham 1950 (c) 12 spi	Sheringham Museum (M. Warren)
GP40	Obadiah Cooper's meshes and ladder stitch gansey	Sheringham 1914-1924 9 spi
GP41	Jimmy Coalie Cooper's herringbone and moss stitch gansey	Sheringham early 20th century
GP45	Henry Little's coil o' rope and diagonal bars gansey	Sheringham early 20th century 10 spi
GP46	Henry Little's meshes and diagonal bars gansey	Sheringham early 20th century
GP47	Edie Middleton knitted for Strangers' Hall	Sheringham 1956 12 spi
GP48	Jimmy Chibbles Bishop's herringbone gansey	Sheringham 1930-1949 9.3 spi
GP49	Jimmy Chibbles Bishop's small cables gansey	Sheringham 1930-1949 10.3 spi
GP50	Jimmy Paris' lightning and hailstones gansey	Sheringham 1912 11.5 spi
GP51	Sparrow Hardingham's gansey	Sheringham 1920-1930 9 spi

Above is a superb studio photograph (CRRMU : CP1753) by Hellis and Sons, a firm of London photographers who had studios around the country. It shows twelve Sheringham fishermen round about 1900 apparently at the studios in the fishing port Great Grimsby in Lincolnshire. It seems to represent the crews of more than one of the 'great boats' from Sheringham who would go there 'in the season' to land their catch. Numbers mentioned below are from back row left to front row right. The machine made gansey #2 could have been purchased at the Cosalt depot in Beeston Road but the others are hand knitted. Are they all Sheringham-made ganseys or were some purchased from commercial knitters? For example GP58 and GP59 do not appear typical of Sheringham and even the netmasks GP57 and GP60 are generic.

GP52	Sheringham fisherman #1 Jack Martins' chevrons and meshes gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 10.5 spi
GP53	Sheringham fisherman #2 George "Salter" Farrow's machine made gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c)		No chart
GP54	Sheringham fisherman #3 Billy West's double meshes and hailstones gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 10.4 spi
GP55	Sheringham fisherman #4 William Bishop Little Sheringham bars and hailstones gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 10 spi
GP56	Sheringham fisherman #5 lightning and hailstones gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 9 spi
GP57	Sheringham fisherman #6 "Alma" West's net mask gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c)
GP58	Sheringham fisherman #7 Potter Hardingham's chevron and Betty Martin panels gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 8.5 spi
GP59	Sheringham fisherman #8 Old Charlie Grice's big diamonds gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 8 spi
GP60	Sheringham fisherman #9 Rook Reynolds net mask gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c)
GP61	Sheringham fisherman #10 Jacob Martins' chevrons and mashes gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 10.5 spi
GP62	Sheringham fisherman #11 "Chicken" Grice's gansey	Sheringham 1900 -1910(c) 8.5spi
GP63	Sheringham fisherman #12 "King Kong" Grice's gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 8.5 spi

GP65	Willie Long's diagonal bars and Betty Martin gansey	Sheringham 1910 (c) 8 spi
GP66	Bob Fields' meshes and Betty Martin gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 10.75 spi
GP67	Buster Long's chevrons and Betty Martin gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 12 spi
GP68	Robert "Dowsey" Little's gansey	Sheringham 1900-1910 (c) 12 spi
GP73	Harry "Duncan" Cooper's gansey	Sheringham 1940-1960 (c) 12 spi
GP75	John Grimes' seeds and bars Sheringham gansey	Sheringham 1858
GP76	Keff Sadler's flags and steps gansey	Sheringham 1890s 9.3 spi
GP77	Sheringham double coil o'rope and hailstones gansey	Sheringham 1890s 11 spi
GP78	Henry Grice's hailstones and meshes gansey	Sheringham 1905 (c) 8.75 spi
GP83	John West's chevrons and meshes gansey	Sheringham 1900 (pre) 11.5 spi
GP85	Anonymous Sheringham moss stitch, meshes and cables gansey	Sheringham undated 11 spi	© Batsford/Dover
GP86	Sheringham meshes, arrows and chevrons gansey	Sheringham 1960-1979 12 spi	© Deb Gillanders
GP87	Sheringham small basketweave, zigzag and meshes gansey	Sheringham 1960-1979 12 spi	© Deb Gillanders
GP90	Eliza West's meshes and double moss gansey #2	Sheringham 1930s 12 spi
GP99	Tooshy Brown's gansey by Esther Nurse	Sheringham 1920s or early 1930s 11 spi
GP100	Eliza West's meshes and double moss gansey for Harry Billy	Sheringham 1930s 11.5 spi
GP103	Squinter West's bars and meshes gansey	Sheringham 1906 (pre)	©Francis Frith
GP109	Dorothy Martins' lightning, moss and coil o' rope gansey	Sheringham 1980 14 spi, 19 rpi	©Sheringham Museum Trust (MRW)

References

• Rita Taylor, Lesley Lougher, Jan Hillier and Lisa LIttle. Sheringham Ganseys. People, Places, Patterns : The Sheringham Museum Trust 2017 : 84 pp
• Rita Taylor, Lesley Lougher, Jan Hillier , Ken Holloway and Martin Warren. Sheringham Ganseys. People, Places, Patterns (Second Edition) : The Sheringham Museum Trust 2019 : 84 pp