Gye’s Yard in 1906

These days an interesting development of houses is known as Gye’s Old Yard. But of course, Gye’s Yard was where the family firm of builders, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights etc. actually wor...

Wheelwrighting

At Market Lavington Museum we have quite a lot of wheelwrighting equipment, much of it on display in our trades room. Below we have a sample. Here we see equipment that would have been familiar to ...

Charles Burnett

We looked at Charles (or Charlie) Burnett a couple of years ago. You can click here to see that page. We add a bit more information about Charles here, together with a wonderful, characterful photogr...

A Spoke Shave

Some of the tools used in times past strike us, these days, as just a tad dangerous for the user. Such a tool was the spoke shave. These were sometimes known as a draw knife. We have such a tool at Ma...

Gye’s Yard in 1950

Today we feature a photograph which is redolent with olde worlde charm. Yet it was taken within the living memory of many people alive and kicking today. It shows a part of Gye’s Yard and it was tak...

A spoke gauge

Wheelwrighting was an amazingly complex job. There were so many pieces in a wheel and all had to be made to fit together accurately and securely. To assist in the task, various gauges were used and to...

The Wheelwright at work – fitting a tyre.

We have seen Charlie Burnett before on these pages. He was born in Easterton and we know that in 1911 he was a young carpenter in the village. Later, he started to work for the Gye business in market ...

The Gye’s lathe

This is unusual. Normally this blog is about items in the Market Lavington Museum collection. Today we are looking at an item which is at the Museum of English Rural Life at Reading. But the object â€...

Charlie Burnett

Charlie Burnett was an Easterton  man. He was actually born, at Trudoxhill in Somerset in  1890 but by 1891 the family lived in Rowde where Charlie’s father, Henry,  worked as an innkeeper and ...

Easterton schoolboys in about 1906

This photo has recently come to light and been given to Market Lavington Museum. It shows boys at Easterton village school in about 1906 Not only has the picture come to light, it is well captioned...