Royal task for worms

Press, 22 July 1986, Page 41

Royal task for worms

NZPA London Several thousand silkworms on a Dorset farm have been working overtime so that Sarah Ferguson’s dress can be made from pure English silk in the tradition of previous Royal weddings. Watched over by a picture of a smiling Prince Charles and the Princess of Wales, the worms have devoured sackful after sackful of mulberry leaves to spin their cocoons for the dress. The thread on each cocoon can run for up to five kilometres, but only about a thousand metres is usable.

At a peak period there are up to 40,000 silk worms, which have a life cycle of only a few months, at the Lullingstone Silk Farm, near Sherborne.

It is the only silk farm in Britain and about 2000 of the silk worms will have contributed to Miss Ferguson’s dress. The' farm, which was originally started at Lullingstone Castle, Kent, has a long Royal tradition dating back to a visit by Queen Mary and the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. It has provided silk for the wedding dress of the present Queen, and her Coronation robes, three more Royal weddings, including that of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and layettes for some of the Royal offspring.

Mulberry leaves, said Mr Goodden, were the delicacy silk worms craved for, and he recalled how, when the Prince and Princess of Wales married, he had to send staff to West Country houses and vicarage gardens to gather hundreds of sacks of the leaves because they were scarce at the farm.