P E O P L E

My Dad lived in the Framework Knitters' Museum!

My mum used to say I'd been vaccinated with a gramophone needle because I talk so much and today I've enjoyed talking about Ruddington and the part it has played in the history of my family. I was brought up in the North East where I still live, but I never tired of hearing about Ruddington all through my childhood.

My great-grandfather was the John Parker who went travelling in America to find his bride Hannah and came back to buy up 3 cottages for his Framework Knitting business. Those houses are now the museum. It's also where my father, Leslie Arthur Packer spent the happiest times of his childhood. His own father was killed when a beam fell on his head in the Nottingham Lace mill where he worked. His grandparents took him in while his mother went to work where she could, settling in the North East. My great-grandfather used to ride through Ruddington like the local squire in his carriage and paid his workers half a pence more pay a day than any of the others. Theirs was the first factory to make fair isle, fancy tops for mens' socks. They even made socks for King George the 5th.

That path which leads into the museum, my Dad used to run along that path. They're still the same stones. I used to play at Post Offices on the desk which they now have in the museum. But when I first visited Ruddington, in the 1950's, the glamorous stories of my childhood were hardly to be seen. My father loved it so much here that even though he moved away for work, the stories he told me made it special. I stay in touch with the museum and always read the Newsletter. I still love Ruddington, even as it is now and someday I'd like to come back here to live.

Ruth Robinson
Hartlepool

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