Weavers' windows are large horizontal

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent materia ...

s on the top floor of a

weavers' cottage A weavers' cottage was (and to an extent still is) a type of house used by weavers for cloth production in the putting-out system sometimes known as the domestic system. Weavers' cottages were common in Great Britain, often with dwelling quarte ...

that allowed the residents light to weave. Weavers' windows are associated with the

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

migration to Britain and Ireland. Before the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

, weaving was carried out in the homes of weavers, and their looms were typically on the top floor of their dwellings, lit by "Weavers' windows", long windows that admitted the most sunlight. Weavers' windows were also called "lights". In chapter 17 of ''

A Child of the Jago ''A Child of the Jago'' is an 1896 novel by Arthur Morrison. Background A bestseller in its time, it recounts the brief life of Dicky Perrott, a child growing up in the "Old Jago", a fictionalisation of the Boundary_Estate#Old_Nichol_rookery, Old ...

Arthur Morrison Arthur George Morrison (1 November 1863 – 4 December 1945) was an English writer and journalist known for realistic novels, for stories about working-class life in the East End of London, and for detective stories featuring a specific detecti ...

wrote:

And the wreckers tore down the foul old houses, laying bare the secret dens of a century of infamy; lifting out the wide sashes of the old ‘weavers’ windows’— the one good feature in the structures letting light and air at last into the subterraneous basements where men and women had swarmed, and bred, and died, like wolves in their lairs.

References

External links

www.19princeletstreet.org.uk
- a preserved house in

Spitalfields Spitalfields is a district in the East End of London and within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The area is formed around Commercial Street (on the A1202 London Inner Ring Road) and includes the locale around Brick Lane, Christ Church, ...

with Weavers' windows Architectural elements Windows Weaving {{Architecturalelement-stub