Belvès Spinning Mill

A few kilometres from Belvès, in the Dordogne, the River Nauze rises in the forest to later travel about 17.6km before spilling into the River Dordogne at Siorac de Périgord.

At one time, the river water along its valley serviced 22 mills. The products milled here were diverse: wheat and corn, nuts, stationery – and wool.

The valley of the Dordogne has been called one of the most picturesque in France, and a small detour brings you alongside the river Nauze to the village of Fongauffier, once an abbey which was constructed in 1094.

The convent and the village walls were destroyed during the Revolution but there is one monument to its past - the fountain. The spring water used to run through the abbey pantry, but now runs through the basement of the current town hall. The fountain was restored in 1844, and the flow of water has been constant.

It is just before Fongauffier that the Spinning Mill of Belvès remains as a living and active testament to the legacy of wool spinning and weaving that was once a dominant industry across France and was a great economic driver in this region.

Beside the parking area there is a welcoming assembly of grazing sheep guarded by shepherds, and one busy shearing beside the mill stream. The native vegetation is protected as you wander along boardwalks to explore the Nauze valley below

The mill created socks, shorts and its finest quality work was exported to the finest artisans across France: for the tapestries of Aubusson in the Creuse, whose tapestries vied with those of Gobelins for recognition of finest quality - but not quite their equal.

Spun wool was also sent from here to the ancient city of Lavelanet in the Ariège. Here, expertise in weaving started with training by the Phoenicians. The quality must have been exceptional, for in 1213 the Emperor Caracola had fine cloth from here transported to Rome.

The wool picker captures the left over wool on the bobbins and pieces of wool fabric, breaking them down into useable fibres  Wool could be processed from sheep, alpacas, or angora rabbits - and with sheep it depended upon the breed for the quality of the wool. A local lady recalls that instead of ashing the fleece they used to wash the sheep before shearing - which they found made life much easier. Today the beautiful boutique on site features woollen items from outside France as well as some more local products: sweaters, scarves, socks, and felted hats and beautiful felted bags and fabrics.

A perplexing question about sheep

If wool shrinks when you wash it, why don't sheep get smaller when it rains?

Ron Brackin

For anyone with curiosity and a love of the elegance of Victorian era machinery, this spinning mill is a feast for the eyes.

The sheer poetry of the end of the machine where the spindles are loaded shows the extreme skill that was needed to create goods of the quality that they held their export value.

The first wool spinning production workshops were actually in Winchester, England when in 50BC, under the Romans it was known as Venta Belgarum. At this time the site became renowned for production of cloth in "madder red", and "murex purple".

Madder dye comes from the root of the plant. Madder grows in many different geographies and produces a beautiful pure red colour used in dying for centuries. It was the dye for the British "Red coats". This is colour was purer than the alternative method of producing a red dye -made from cochineal and the crushed female insects kermes that feed on the sap of oaks and create a true crimson. In food production it is known as E120 and colours Cherry Coke and Campari.

Murex purple was created from the unfortunate murex snails to provide the highly valued purple reserved for wearing only by those of royalty or otherwise high status. In 1909, chemist Paul Friedländer secured 12,000 Murex bandaris from the Mediterranean in the hope of understanding how to create the dye synthetically. The sad fate of the snails resulted in only 1.4g of pure pigment and its structure proved no different in result from that already been developed from plant material (woad) from an earlier version in 1897.

The first wool spinning production workshops were actually in Winchester, England when in 50BC, under the Romans it was known as Venta Belgarum. At this time the site became renowned for production of cloth in "madder red", and "murex purple".

It was the development of the Industrial Revolution that saw water power mechanise the spinning and weaving process.  The English technicians were sought after across Europe.

Here in Belvès local farmers would often bring their fleeces to be prepared and carded so they could bring them home to spin and create their own mattresses and blankets. 

Mill management was often a family business and the care in producing ordinary office materials can be seen in the saved record books for timekeeping, phone book - and even the list of Saints Day...the two former being definitely as artistic as functional.

When humble notebooks were art

The now silent mill machinery

Looking at the complexity of gears and rollers and belts, I am reminded of the Steve Jobs quote

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.

Design is how it works. 

These great machines are a form of poetry.

They are the manifestation of solutions created from ingenuity

working back from a well-stated problem .

For a short while I lived in a loft apartment in New Orleans in what was the old cotton mill. It had wonderful massive windows and the original brickwork and somehow the character of the place drew creative people to it. My neighbour was a Film Location Scout who had worked for most of the famous big names in the movie business. Another was a yacht designer - as in super yachts. My own apartment was filled with photos made when roaming the softly lit streets of the French Quarter at 5am in the morning before collecting my beignet for breakfast - or of the mist winding along the Mississippi River at 3am after dancing tango. 

This woollen mill had an additional benefit to me as well as that nostalgic connection.. Here, the smell of  wool still clung to the floorboards - reminding me of the shearing sheds in country Australia in my childhood.

As I looked at the river valley outside what would have been an orchestra floor filled with extremely noisy spinning machinery, I wondered how many workers had a moment to enjoy the contrasting view and its eternal peacefulness.

It recalled a quote I had read :

A river is a reflection of the world itself

— constantly changing, yet always the same.

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