Pascual Segura tells us lots of fascinating things about the history of Bigastro.
In his latest post her tells us about the old houses in the town that had a loft with a small window for ventilation. Apparently that is where they raised silk worms fed with mulberry leaves grown on trees in the town.
In the eighteenth century they would produce up to 5,000 kilos of silk per year.
It was silk from those worms that was used to produce the cloak that the statue of Mary wears.
Now my wife was born in Macclesfield. They didn't cultivate silk worms there but they did weave silk from Italy into fine cloth which made the town famous.
Silk was woven in Cheshire from the late 1600s. The handloom weavers worked in the attic workshops in their own homes. Macclesfield was famous for silk buttons manufacture.
