THE Stroudwater Textile Trust has recently added to its collection of mills with the new Weaving Shed at Gigg Mill.

In this smallish building in Nailsworth, trust volunteers take visitors on a practical journey through the development of the loom.

The first step is demonstrated by table-top looms on which the visitor can help to weave a length of cloth.

These looms are scaled down versions of the looms that were used in most cottages up until the mid-18th Century.

Weaving was a slow process in those days, with the weaver sitting in front of the loom and 'shedding' (opening the correct sequence of warp threads), with his wife and another helper 'picking' (passing a baton carrying the weft thread through the opened 'shed'). If the weaver was making 10ft broad cloth, this process was extremely time consuming.

In 1733 a weaver in Lancashire, John Kay, invented the flying shuttle. It was an ingenious long shuttle, shaped like an off-centre narrowboat.

The shuttle's lopsidedness meant that it leant into the warp threads and that the weaver could now work alone, pulling a string which sent the shuttle flying from one side of the loom to the other.

At Gigg Mill the trust has an idiosyncratic loom of this sort, which dates from 1850 and was painstakingly restored by trust members after being stored in a garage for 20 years.

Cast iron looms were introduced in the mid to late 19th Century and the Weaving Shed contains a powered loom of the sort that was used by large manufacturers such as Strachan's between the 1890s and the 1950s.

With skilled textile engineers Robin Mitchell and Terry Eldridge on hand to explain this very local and practical history to visitors the Weaving Shed looks set to become a popular addition to the Stroudwater Textile Trust's collection of living museums of the textile industry.