Affetside

Created during the ArtivistGM residency programme, this series of handkerchiefs reflects upon the experiences of Bolton textile workers who travelled to St Peter's Field, Manchester, on 16 August 1819 to participate in the peaceful demonstration that became known as the Peterloo Massacre.

The work takes as its starting point the story of fifteen-year-old Isaac Entwistle, who walked from Affetside to Manchester to join the gathering. I became interested in the physical journey he undertook and the intimate knowledge of landscape that such a walk would have required. The routes, paths, textures, and terrain passed beneath his feet became a way of thinking about how experience is carried through the body and remembered through movement.

Research undertaken in Bolton Archives led me to the writings of Samuel Crompton, inventor of the Spinning Mule. Examining his handwritten letters, I became fascinated by the relationship between writing, making, and touch. The curled forms of individual letters echoed the qualities of spun fibres and woven structures, revealing traces of manual skill embedded within the page. Fragments of handwriting were translated into stitched marks and rhythmic patterns across cloth, drawing connections between language, labour, and textile production.

The handkerchief form references commemorative Peterloo handkerchiefs produced in the aftermath of the massacre. Historically, these objects functioned as both memorials and acts of protest, carrying political messages through textile means. In this work, the handkerchief becomes a site where personal histories, archival traces, and collective memory intersect.

Through stitch, repetition, and cloth, the work seeks to reconnect the struggle for democratic representation with the embodied knowledge of the textile workers who participated in it, acknowledging both the physical labour of making and the courage of those who marched in pursuit of political change.