New summer season starts at Textile Museum

This year’s summer exhibition continues the theme from last year and expands on the museum’s permanent displays on the local businessman Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones. It also celebrates the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II by showing the company’s collection of ladieswear through trade catalogues during the first 30 years of the Queen’s life.

 

Visitors can see the exhibition when the museum opens its doors tomorrow (Saturday) until the 1st September on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays betwen 2pm and 5pm.

 

"Pryce Jones started the world's first mail order business in Newtown in 1861. Taking advantage of the national postal service introduced in 1849, customers could order goods by post. In 1862 he supplied flannel to Florence Nightingale and later received an order for flannel from Queen Victoria. During the 1870’s Pryce Jones took part in exhibitions all over the world, winning several medals and becoming world famous. In 1879 he opened the Royal Welsh Warehouse and expanded his woollen and flannel production to outside of Newtown," said a museum spokesman.

 

"The company’s seasonal catalogues show a wide variety of goods although the emphasis is on clothing. From the catalogues it is clear that Pryce-Jones Ltd followed the latest fashion and offered its customers the newest trends in ladieswear. For this exhibition Powys Archives has kindly lent the museum a number of trade catalogues."

 

Newtown Textile Museum is housed in 5-7 Commercial Street. "This building is a typical example of an early 19th century weaving shop with six back-to-back cottages on the ground and first floors and two large rooms on the second and third floors running the full length of the building. The cottages would each have housed a family, who would have worked in the weaving shop on the two floors above," added the spokesman.

 

The museum was founded in 1962 by the late Major Peter Lewis. In 1990 the museum was transferred to Powys County Council and the curator of Powysland Museum in Welshpool. In 2002 a grant from The Heritage Lottery Fund enabled the museum to form a more welcoming entrance directly off Commercial Street and to fully interpret both the building and the collections.

 

The museum now gives a comprehensive picture of the living and working conditions for woollen factory workers in the first half of the 19th century, it describes the development of the manufacture of flannel and places the history of Newtown in a broader Welsh context.