Novels 1857-1876

Along with farming and coal, the other big industry around Griff was weaving - though it was in decline. Weavers like Silas Marner worked at looms in their own homes and Mary Ann remembered the long loud hours of rattling from the local cottages:

"The questionable sound of Silas's loom ... had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or bird's-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread, became aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to make them take to their legs in terror."