About the group.

The East Anglia Gansey Group was set up formally in November 2021 but has evolved from the Sheringham Museum Textile Team, created in 2014 to support the Museum’s exhibition “A Shoal of Ganseys”

We aim to discover, record and research ganseys worn by East Anglian fishermen and the women who knitted them. The Sheringham gansey knitters were known for their particularly fine work throughout the twentieth century. Sheringham Museum has good examples from 1900 to 1980s.

Sheringham fishermen also worked on boats out of the ports of Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Grimsby, travelling as far as the Shetlands with the herring fleets. Sheringham knitters were keen to see the ganseys made by the Scottish Herring Lasses who ended their season at Great Yarmouth.

Ganseys are now of international interest so as well as being in touch with gansey enthusiasts in Yorkshire, Scotland and the Netherlands, we have spoken about our research to the group based in the Net Loft, Cordova in Alaska who are also the US outlet for the Sheringham gansey book.

In The Netherlands, Stella Ruhe has researched the traditional patterns from thirty or more fishing villages across the country. Her work has resulted in a number of books, one of which will be available from the Sheringham Museum website. She has also produced a video (39 minutes) on children’s ganseys which you can view on our YouTube channel by clicking HERE.

With funding from The Arts Council, Lisa Little, Museum Curator and Manager has designed a Gansey Identification Flow Chart for museums and a Gansey Glossary. You can download these documents to print by clicking on the appropriate image below.

Sheringham Museum has published ‘Sheringham Ganseys – People, Places, Patterns’, a very informative book.

In 2019 Sheringham Museum was fortunate to receive the knitting collection of Michael Harvey who was a gansey researcher, writer and collector of ganseys and knitting sheaths.

Charting

We continue to chart and knit gansey stitch patterns from photographs of Sheringham fishermen.

Please see Martin Warren’s website at www.northfolk.org