Hosiery Hosiery, or hose, includes socks and stockings. Hundreds of years ago, stockings were made from cloth. When Queen Elizabeth 1 was given her first pair of silk stockings, around 1560, she refused to wear cloth hose ever again. One of Elizabeth’s subjects, a curate named William Lee, invented a hand loom called the stocking frame. Frame knitting in silk developed into an important cottage industry, especially in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. The workers were known as framework knitters or stockingers. They produced garments for hosiers, who provided the silk and rented them the equipment. Some workers managed to save enough money to buy their own frames. By the 18th century, framework knitting kept whole families at work in their own homes. Children wound the yarn onto bobbins ready for use, and also stitched up seams. Many workers’ cottages had a workshop on the upper floor, with long windows to let in as much light as possible. Eventually cotton yarn came into use, boosted by the invention of Jedediah Strutt’s ‘Derby Rib’ stocking machine in the late 1750s. With the Industrial Revolution, hosiery manufacture was gradually transferred into factories. Read More >> More Pictures Textiles and Mills.