Beating the carpet

Whilst these devices were always called carpet beaters, more commonly they’d have been used on rugs. Carpets may have been beaten on something like a once a year basis.

Picture a 1920s house. The furnishings may have been simple and the floor covering probably would not have involved fitted carpets. There may have been carpet squares in some rooms or just rugs in various places.

All the usual dust, mud, pet hairs, dropped food etc. would have got into any rugs and carpets – just as happens today.

But you didn’t have a powerful vacuum cleaner to suck it all out again. From time to time, you took rugs and carpets out, hung them over a clothes line and gave them a good walloping. The device you used to hit them may have looked like this.

Carpet Beater dating from the 1920s at Market Lavington Museum

This carpet beater is made of twisted bamboo with a sturdy steel ferrule to hold it all together. It can be found hanging by the range in the museum kitchen but it once belonged to Miss Partridge of Spin Hill in Market Lavington.

The modern, all electric person may not understand how beating a carpet cleaned it. When you hit the carpet, it suddenly moves forward. Dust and dirt, loosely attached, doesn’t move forward so it falls out. The design of the beater (ours is 72 cm long and the beating head is 17cm across) is such that quite a large area of carpet is moved, but the beater has a minimum of structure to stop the debris from falling out.

It makes an attractive looking device which was very functional

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Victor Rug Tool

Everything in Market Lavington Museum has a connection with the parish. Our Victor rug tool was used to help one lady make rugs in the parish. We think ours dates from the middle of the twentieth century but the design goes back further than that.

Victor rug tool at Market Lavington Museum

Many cottages had a cheaply made rug in front of the range. In my post world-war-two childhood, I remember elderly relatives sitting in front of the kitchen range where, apart from cooking, they might also be unravelling old woollen garments and cutting the fibre into suitable lengths for rug making on a canvas mesh grid. Sometimes, instead of wool, old fabric was used to make a rag rug. What ever was used, the need was to get a piece of wool or rag fastened on to the structure of the canvas mesh. All sorts of hooks and tools were devised to help with this. The Victor rug tool was, perhaps, a rather advanced design to help with the process.

Apart from the rug tool, at Market Lavington Museum we have the kitchen range that was always in the house and a rag rug, made in the village but to a northern design, is in front of it.

Range and rag rug at Market Lavington Museum

The museum is now nearing opening day – Saturday 1^st May and then each Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday and Bank Holiday afternoon from 2.30 to 4.30 until the end of October. If you need to visit at another time then please click here to contact the curator.

This year is our Silver Jubilee year and there are many new displays so do pop in and take a look.

Easterton is not forgotten at the museum. On Monday 19^th April the curator will be talking and showing photos etc at the Easterton parish meeting in the Easterton Village Hall. There’s a chance to see some of what the museum has about Easterton, which was once a part of the parish of Market Lavington.