March 2026

We had an excellent talk by Fiona Wemyss from the Wemyss School of Needlework which was founded in 1871 by Dora Wemyss, at aged 21, who had been inspired by her cousin’s patronage of the Royal School of Needlework. The Wemyss school was set up to educate the wives and daughters of local miners and give them skills that would allow them to earn their own income to support their families after the law banned women and children from working in the pits. Fiona gave us a fascinating insight into her family’s role in shaping both English and Scottish history: politically, industrially and in the arts. She explained how the needlework school came about, how girls were trained and the very progressive way they were employed. She explained how the work of the school was done and how it has changed from the time that she took over as custodian from her 104 year old mother-in-law. She shared the family's plans for the future and how they how to preserve the school's vast array of documents and textiles. It was interesting to learn how the patterns were drafted for individual clients (Fiona does them digitally now), how the count of a canvas and the threads it is stitched with can dramatically change a design and how modern procion dyes wear more than the organically dyed threads. We were also very privileged to be able to see some of the items from the Wemyss collection and had a large array of kits to purchase all from designs taken from the collection.