PARCHMENT FACTORY

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 August 1929, Page 2

PARCHMENT FACTORY

WORKING FOR 1,000 YEARS. Close by Havant Church, and only six miles from Portsmouth, in England, is the scene of an industry which, if local legend be true, has been carried on by the same methods and on the same site for 1,000 yeais. The parchment made there was famous through Europe in days gone by, and is still preserved in many libraries and museums on the Continent, but it is the New World that is giving a stimulus to the little factory at Havant to-day, writes a correspondent. There has been recently a great demand from America for English parchment to be used for diplomas and certificates in American universities, and though the demand has been great enough to cause a shortage and send up the price, this seems no deterrent.

When I visited the factory I crossed a small stream, in which lies the secret of its fame, although no scientist has yet been able to explain the reason. Water plays an important part in parchment making, for the sheepskins are soaked in a mixture of water and lime for weeks before they are made into parchment.

It is an ordinary-looking chalky rill that runs down from Portsdown Hill, but although attempts have been made to create the same properties chemically as this stream possesses, they have all failed to achieve the same results.

The workers at Havant give the stream the chief credit. “It’s been making parchment for us for a thousand years,” said an old greybeard, as he scraped away at a sheepskin stretched on a frame like an easel, “and maybe it’s good for another thousand. Long ago they found out there was something uncommon in this water, but they’ve never found out .what it is.

“Yes, it’s skilled work: It took me five years to learn,, and I’ve been at it now for nearly fifty. But the young ones don’t seem to take to it, though you can earn now £5 a week when we’re busy. They’re impatient nowadays. No one will spend any time learning a craft, not even if there’s good money in it in the end. It’s the girls who are to blame, if you ask me. They won’t look at a young chap who can’t take them to the pictures and all over the place.”

The sheepskins, after soaking in the pits, are “fleshed” (scraped) with special semi-circular knives that have been used for many centuries in the industry, and which peel off the fat in long strips. They go then to the only modern piece of machinery used in the whole craft of parchmentmaking— a splitting machine that can be adjusted so finely that it will split tissue paper. This separates the inner skin, of which the parchment is made, from the rest, and after more scraping and smoothing with pumice stone, painting with whiting and soda ash, and washing with warm water, the parchment at last emerges, smooth, pearly white, without blemish or mark.