Original subtitles

Most people nowadays... ..have a carpet in their home.

No, no, no. Where are you going? That way.

Whoa, stop! Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Whoa! We've done it.

Whether plain... ..or patterned...

..it always makes a room look cosy.

We love a bit of comfort underfoot, so it's no surprise that the UK's

carpet and rug industry is worth more than £900 million a year.

So to unravel the secrets of carpet production...

..we've come to a place that's been making them for over 80 years!

I'm Gregg Wallace...

Wayhey!

..and tonight, I'll be following the journey of a carpet

from woolly beginnings...

I can't believe how much wool is on him.

About 8-10 kilos, I would say.

..to intricate looms...

Here we go.

Whoa!

Every single lift and drop of that loom

is producing another multicoloured stripe.

..and careful inspection...

There are 290,304 tufts on a carpet of this size.

And you're going to check every single one? Yes.

..so it's strong and soft for twinkle toes like mine!

Oh, stunning!

I'm Cherry Healey and...

..I'm discovering how science can remove the most stubborn of stains.

And Ruth Goodman unfurls the history

of the UK's most intricate carpet designs.

Every single little bit of thread has to be knotted by hand.

It does.

46,000 square metres of carpet are made in this factory every year.

And we are going to reveal exactly how they do it.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This is the Axminster carpet factory in Devon.

Founded in 1937, they have a long history of carpet creation.

Axminster isn't just a brand name.

It's the name of the town that's home to our factory.

And it's also the type of carpet we're featuring,

made by intertwining knotted or U-shaped tufts into a backing.

On this huge site,

they weave colourful yarn into over 8,000 different styles,

creating carpet for everything from your bedroom

to trains

and stately homes.

But I'm following the production of one of their most popular designs,

the Havana Diamond Steel wool carpet.

I guess that means I'm going to need some wool.

Usually, my journey starts at the factory's intake bay,

to meet a big tanker full of a raw ingredient like flour,

but today, it's a bit different.

50 miles north is Vespasian Farm,

one of 20 farms that supply our factory with wool.

It's home to a flock of Grey-Faced Dartmoor sheep.

Meh!

Hey, look at these!

Along with ten other hardy breeds,

the wool from these beauties creates the yarn for my carpet.

And to collect this essential raw material,

the flock of 180 are in the process of being sheared.

So I'm joining farm owner Rachel Gatril in her barn to lend a hand.

Hello. This is Andy Weir, he's our shearer.

Hello, Andy, I'm Gregg. Is it a he or she?

It's a boy, yeah, it's a young ram.

Oh, this wool is beautiful, isn't it?

I can't believe how much wool is on him.

I can't believe how robust it is. It's almost like a soft rope.

20% of the factory's wool comes from the strong,

durable fleeces of these Grey-Faced Dartmoors.

So how much of him now is wool, in weight?

About 8-10 kilos, I would say.

Really?

Yeah. He does need his wool off, because in the summer,

he'll get really hot, so they need shearing.

Nowadays, most shearers opt for electric clippers,

but Andy uses blades,

a more traditional method that takes longer, but is kinder on the sheep.

The reason we're shearing with the blades is that

the sheep generally stay more relaxed,

and we can leave a nice bit of cover of wool on the sheep.

We're leaving 10-15mm on that sheep, and that also leaves

a good layer of lanolin, the natural grease produced by the sheep

to keep them weatherproof, so we can turn them out whatever the weather.

How many of those could you do in a day?

On these Dartmoors, probably about ten an hour.

One every six minutes.

They're shorn once a year in the spring, after their thick

and durable fleeces have kept them warm through winter.

And it's this strength that makes the wool ideal for carpet making.

The flock provides the factory with 1,350 kilograms of wool,

enough to make over 950 square metres of carpet.

This is second nature to you now, right?

Some people go and play golf. I shear sheep.

This may be an easy skill for Andy, but I can't say the same for me.

Fingers on the bottom.

And those blades are very sharp,

don't stick your finger in between them.

Left hand, just... So I can clearly see there...

But don't pull the wool, just raise it. That's it.

Oh-hoo! God, you're so scared

you're getting too close to the animal. Oh!

So nervous of getting close to his skin.

Phewf!

That was nerve-racking.

Hey! It's almost like he was in disguise.

Now look at him!

You're all fresh and clean!

You look so handsome!

My friend, that was brilliant! Thank you, thank you.

Phwoar, now my heart's started to beat properly again!

With the sheep shorn,

the precious super-strength wool is gathered and bagged,

and the production of my carpet is under way.

After keeping their owners warm through a long British winter,

it's no surprise this fleece is tough enough to be made into carpet.

But while my raw wool is fluffy and white, the carpet factory uses

a huge selection of colourful yarn to create their myriad of designs.

Cherry's finding out what it takes to turn a woolly fleece

into these multicoloured reels.

Once the annual shearing is over, the raw fleeces are sorted

and graded, and sent to places like this,

to blend, spin, and dye the wool.

Calder Textiles turn 1.5 million fleeces

into coloured yarn every year.

And 1.8 million miles of it is supplied to our factory.

First, the wool is mixed with 20% nylon to add durability.

Then it's carded, a process which disentangles

and intermixes the wool, removing short fibres and any plant matter.

It goes through up to 17 different processes,

from blending to spinning, which culminate in the fibres being

twisted together to make a three millimetre-thick yarn,

before it's reeled into a 3.5 kilo batch, known as a hank,

ready to be dyed.

Stephen Norris is managing director of the dye house.

Stephen, can I come in? Of course.

Right, so I hear you're the man to help me get these colours

on my carpet. I'll try. Where do we begin?

Well, I received a master from the customer, Station Blue.

Let's see. So that is the colour we're after.

That's what we're going to be dying. Station Blue. Yup.

The dye house can create an enormous range of colours

to match their customers' requirements,

on average making around 7,000 different colour dyes a year.

To create our Station Blue, 22 wool hanks, or 77 kilos in total,

are hung above a dye vessel filled with 2,300 litres of water.

Oh, wow! So this is where the magic happens.

We need to put in a product called a restrainer blocker.

What does a restrainer blocker do?

The nylon has got a greater affinity for the dyes than the wool.

And if we don't put this product in,

all the dye is going to rush onto the nylon. OK.

So this helps us get a nice even solid dyeing.

3.5 litres of restrainer blocker are added to the tank.

Made from detergents, it saturates the nylon,

allowing the wool to absorb the coloured dye.

Next, two litres of acid are added to the vessel, reducing the pH

level, which helps the molecules in the dye attach to the wool.

And the yarn soaks in the mixture for five minutes.

Finally, it's time for our Station Blue.

Using a computer-programmed formula,

637g of synthetic dye is mixed with five litres of water

and is added to the vessel.

Oh, my gosh! The water has turned into the most beautiful,

rich, kind of aquamarine blue!

The water is gradually heated to 98 degrees Celsius, which allows

the dye molecules to fully penetrate the fibres of the wool.

And after half an hour, the hanks of blue wool are lifted out.

Oh, look at that!

Wow!

But is it the exact shade that we need?

Raw wool has many natural colour variations,

which can impact the finished colour when it's dyed,

so Stephen must check each batch

to make sure it's the perfect hue of blue for our carpet.

What exactly are you looking for?

There's two things you need to take into consideration

when checking the shade. The depth. The depth.

And the tone. And what's the difference?

Depth is whether it's darker or lighter.

The tone is the actual shade.

You could say it was greener or redder.

How do you feel about the depth and the tone of this?

Well, I have to say I'm quite pleased with that.

Are you? Yay! Yes.

If it didn't match the factory's example,

Stephen would have to repeat some of the process.

Luckily, my sample has passed with, well, flying colours.

But now that I know quite how much work goes into making sure that

that blue is the perfect blue,

I'm really not sure I want anyone to walk on it.

I'm back at the carpet factory in Axminster,

five days, 15 hours and 35 minutes

since my wool was shorn.

It's been carded, spun and dyed Station Blue,

and a batch of 300kg has just arrived.

The wool is off-loaded and delivered to the Yarn Store.

Inside, it's an Aladdin's cave of thread.

A delivery of two tonnes arrives every week,

and there are 2,500 different colours

to suit any carpet design you desire.

Within this treasure trove of twine,

I'm meeting production director Barry Searle.

Barry? Hello, I'm Gregg. Hiya, Gregg. All right?

Beautiful array of colours.

I know, yeah. No, this is our base colour library, so we've got

about 2,500 different colours in here which we use for our designs.

What are these called, spools? No, they're called cheeses. What?!

I know. It's a very strange thing, but it's an old English name.

It's not used just for carpet yarn.

It's any thread, that's on a cone-shaped container like that.

It's called a cheese. That sounds funny, doesn't it? Cheese.

How much yarn is on one of these cheeses?

A full cheese, like one of these, is about 5,200 linear metres

on there, which is about the equivalent to one good sheep fleece,

scoured and cleaned and spun into yarn.

That's one sheep? That's about one sheep.

And one sheep goes 5,000 metres?! 5,000 metres.

So how many metres of yarn have you got in here?

So we have about 38,000km,

which is about enough to go around the circumference of the world.

We have a lot of yarn on site.

So for your carpet, there's four colours.

This is the last colour that we just had delivered today.

Each cheese carries a standard 3mm yarn,

specifically tailored for carpets.

Along with Station Blue,

my carpet also contains Med Green, Oyster Grey,

and Chroma Silver.

I've got my colours, but before I can start carpet making,

I need my design.

So I'm heading to the factory's design studio

to meet design director Gary Bridge.

Hey! Gary, right? Hi, Gregg, yeah.

And you are in charge of design. I am, yes.

And these, I can see, are my colours. They are.

Is that my design? It is your design, yes.

So this is done on computer, right? It is, yes.

All carpet is designed on basically graph paper. Little squares.

Carpets are made up of thousands of little tufts of yarn,

usually measuring between 12.7 and 25.4mm in length.

And each one of these tufts is represented by a square

on the graph paper.

While there's no standard carpet size,

we're making a 10 x 3.6 metre order,

which, width-ways, will measure 1,152 of these little squares.

Everything is designed within a square inch,

and so the more squares or tufts of yarn you'll get within that square

inch, the more compact it becomes, the better the quality it is.

So at Axminster, we are what we call eight pitch,

so there are eight squares to the inch.

Is that like the amount of pixels in a photograph, or on your TV screen?

Exactly the same as that.

The more pixels you get, the better the definition,

the better the quality, it's exactly the same, yes.

So we've printed it out off the computer, all your design

and information is on this USB,

and then you go plug it into the loom.

Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Nice to meet you.

The factory comes up with 400 patterns a year

to suit all manner of tastes.

Most of us take it for granted that our rug or carpet

can be design or colour we want, but Ruth's been investigating

a time when a patterned carpet was the absolute height of luxury.

Before the 18th century,

carpets were far too precious to put on the floor.

In fact, most of them were displayed like this,

laid out on a table for all to admire.

The earliest carpet dates back to as far as the 5th century BC.

But in Britain, they really came to prominence in the 15th century,

when carpets were imported at vast expense from the Ottoman

and Persian empires.

But it took a savvy entrepreneur to turn an imported luxury

into a home-grown success story.

Thomas Whitty was an entrepreneur willing to engage in a spot

of industrial espionage to build his carpet empire.

And it all started in the town that's home to our carpet factory,

Axminster.

So, I've come to the street where Thomas Whitty's first carpet

factory stood to meet local historian Laurence Hitchcock.

Hello, Laurence. Hello, Ruth.

Welcome to lovely Axminster. Thank you.

Who exactly was Mr Whitty?

Mr Whitty was a weaver of cloth.

His family was growing, he had a big family,

and he was finding it really hard to provide for them all.

The money Whitty made from cloth like this

barely gave him enough to feed his 12 children.

So, when he first saw the imported Middle Eastern carpets,

Whitty realised that, if he could recreate them in Britain,

at a cheaper price, it could make him a fortune.

The question was - how?

He'd heard about a weaver in Fulham and actually went there,

said he was a relation of somebody or other, and actually got in.

And what did he find?

He saw how they were weaving on a different type of loom

that he had here in Axminster.

Like most English weavers of the day,

Thomas Whitty was using a horizontal machine known as a treadle loom.

This relatively simple device held thread lengthwise under tension,

while another thread was woven crossways through it

to knit it together and create a cloth.

But what he spied in London was a loom that made carpets

with the same detail as those from the Middle East,

and to achieve that,

it needed a simple yet radical adjustment to the loom.

In 1755, Witty copied the idea and set about building his own.

Oh!

There you have his vertical loom that he made.

An upright loom, not flat. Yes. Not flat, no.

To help me understand why the vertical loom was

so vital to Thomas Whitty's carpets,

weaver Judy Percival is going to show me his early technique.

Instead of being laid horizontally, the loom holds the threads upright,

while the weaver attaches the woollen tufts.

Here are three of the tuft threads.

OK. Thread it through into the middle.

I've got sausage fingers.

When you've done about 50, you'll be really quick!

And then pull your knot down nice and tight.

And that's how you make a carpet,

every single little bit of thread has to be knotted like this by hand.

It does.

Wow! So labour intensive!

The tufts were knotted and added one line at a time,

with an interwoven thread to hold them in place.

Due to the popularity of Whitty's carpets,

the technique became known as the Axminster weave.

Depending on the size of the carpet,

this could take weeks or even months to complete,

and would have been completely backbreaking

on a traditional horizontal loom.

If you're doing it on a horizontal loom, you're reaching over to do it.

It would take so long, and so difficult.

It wasn't just that the upright loom allowed the weaver to work

comfortably for hours on end, it also meant that multiple weavers

could work on a single carpet at the same time.

Suddenly, Thomas Whitty's large family was no longer a burden,

but an asset.

He did have six daughters and aunts who were all looking for work.

Ah, so he had a ready-made female labour force. Yes, absolutely.

Drawing on the weaving skills of his family

allowed Whitty to keep costs low.

The first carpet he sold in 1757

cost just a third of that of his closest competitor.

Word quickly spread amongst the aristocracy that this small corner

of Devon was producing Ottoman-style carpets at a fraction of the price.

And in 1770, he received his biggest commission yet,

to make a carpet for the glorious Saltram House near Plymouth,

now cared for by the National Trust.

Wow!

Remember that most people in the 18th century had never set foot

on a carpet.

So what I'm about to do would have seemed to them

like the very pinnacle of luxury.

Zoe Shearman is the curator here at Saltram.

Zoe, hello! Hi, Ruth.

This is stunning, isn't it? Absolutely beautiful.

It's thought to be the most significant carpet

in the collection of the Trust.

Staggeringly, this carpet was made in a single piece

on a gigantic custom-built loom.

At six metres wide,

it was larger than the looms in most modern factories today.

The loom would have been suspended from the ceiling,

and we think about nine people would have been working, sitting down.

So we've got a six-metre roller hung up high and then another one

at the bottom, another six-metre roller, with all the threads

down on it, and this great long row of people,

sat side by side, working on it.

Knotting, each knotting.

Thomas Whitty's carpets made the once-struggling weaver

one of the most celebrated businessmen of his day,

and created a globally famous industry.

And after seeing a carpet like this up close,

it's no surprise that Whitty's Axminster weave made such an impact.

Who wants to go back to bare floors after this?!

British homes would never be quite the same again.

267 years since the start of Thomas Whitty's pioneering business,

the factory in Axminster is carrying on the town's tradition

of carpet making.

While the days of hand-weaving may be over,

the factory has 12 looms creating up to 100 different designs a week.

With 40,000 working parts from front to back...

..these looms weave two metres of carpet an hour.

And each one covers 23 square metres.

Armed with my design, and my trolley of cheeses, it's time I got weaving!

All right, mate?

So I'm heading to the back of one of these monsters...

..where weaver Steve Marks is in charge.

Hey! Hi, Gregg.

They are massive. Yeah. They're not little.

So where do we start? What do we do? Right, OK.

This is the back of the loom, this is where all of the yarn

gets loaded in to be taken up to the front.

Once my design's uploaded to the loom's computer,

it's time for my four coloured cheeses.

Yep, so we'll have all of those.

And Steve's not hanging about.

All right. Shall I bring them? Yeah, you're going to have to be quicker

than that. OK, mate!

We've got to work here. He's demanding, this man!

You're making me look bad.

Do tell me we're going to stick the cheeses on a stick.

Yeah. Onto each one of these.

My cheeses are in position,

and they've been placed next to one of the most intriguing

pieces of machinery I think I've ever seen.

What is this?! It looks like an enormous cheese grater,

but there's a bit of thread coming out of every single metal pocket.

What's going on? Right, well, this is the smart creel.

Each one of these are what we know as bins.

We load all of the yarn in here. It's drawn from the back,

and then drawn up into the front of the loom.

The smart creel at the back of the loom is divided into

two pairs of eight frames.

Each pair of frames has 1,152 bins

containing a specific colour yarn.

The yarn leads through the bins to the back of the smart creel

and is taken up through individual pipes to the front of the loom,

ready to be woven.

Right, Gregg, we're going to load up the yarn

and start loading your colours into the smart creel.

Once the cheese of yarn is ready,

the loom's computer tells the smart creel to top up each bin

with the correct amount, using an automated arm.

Pressurised air blasts the yarn into the bins, where it sits loose,

ready to be called upon by the loom.

Overall, it will take 11,000 metres of yarn

to create my 10 x 3.6 metre carpet.

Oh, wow!

The smart creel works out exactly how much yarn it needs

per individual bin for the entire length of your carpet.

Wow!

That's like a computer working out what I'm going to want

for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next three years

and delivering it on time.

Yeah, pretty much.

Before this came along, it was all done by hand,

which could take two men anything up to 50 hours.

50 hours.

Yeah. Nothing is quick in carpetmaking.

Once my yarn has been loaded into the smart creel's bins,

it's fed through the other side to the heart of the loom.

Through there? Yeah, in through there.

So I'm following it, inside the belly of the monster,

to meet master weaver Mike Hutchings.

Hello, my friend. Hi, Gregg.

Am I right in thinking that your environment changes colour

every day? Yeah, it does. Yeah!

So these are the strands from every bin? Yeah, every single bin.

From the bins at the back, each one of my colourful lengths

of yarn is fed through individual tubes to the front of the loom.

But as well as wool,

there's another essential component for my carpet...

..cotton.

This is your cotton over here, Gregg.

This is what we use for the base of the carpet.

So my bits of coloured yarn are being woven through cotton?

They are, yeah, that's exactly right.

The beams of cotton yarn are held under tension

and laid lengthwise, ready to form the base of my carpet.

This is known as the warp. Cotton is perfect for weaving,

as it stays strong when it's stretched.

The 1,152 strands on each beam

are also fed from the rear of the loom,

to where the carpet action happens.

Right, Gregg, this is where everything comes together.

So this is now the front of the loom. Yeah.

And this looks like the inside of the grandest piano I've ever seen.

Well, I suppose it's similar in a way, yeah.

So this is an Axminster eight pitch gripper loom.

An eight pitch loom creates a carpet in lines,

using eight tufts of yarn per inch.

Can I now see this in action?

You can actually start the loom up.

I think that's probably the way to go. An honour, an honour!

Here we go. There's reset.

And now go!

Whoa!

Wow!

How lovely is that?

A 30 centimetre long needle shoots back

and forth across the cotton warp, carrying lengths of 2.5 millimetre

thick fibre made of jute, called weft.

So that jute is going up and down through the cotton,

weaving the cotton together? Exactly.

Meanwhile, the strands of coloured woollen yarn are fed into sliding

carrier frames, which hold them in position at the front of the loom.

So, basically, Gregg, all of those tufts of yarns

that are fed from the smart creel to the back are all here now.

Do you see the way the carriers are lifting up there

to select the colours of yarn? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Above the loom, a computer program controls a network of strings

attached to the carriers, holding the different coloured yarn,

telling them whether to move up

or down.

To select the colourful wool that makes my design,

grippers rise up to collect the strands from the frame,

cutting a tuft measuring 14 millimetres in length,

and pulling it down towards the cotton.

A bit like a massive filing system.

So it's lifting to the exact place along that top line,

ready to select.

That's beautiful!

How does our coloured yarn get on to the cotton?

The grippers bring it down,

and then we send another shot across, which will tie that all in.

With each journey of the shuttle back and forth,

1,152 individual tufts of yarn are woven in,

creating my colourful carpet.

To weave in the wool...

..the grippers deliver the tufts between the cotton warp.

The needle carrying the jute weft is threaded over the wool yarn,

holding it in place.

Another weft is delivered

and the cotton warps change position,

before another weft is woven in,

and the process begins again.

That is fabulous.

That is carpet forming in front of my eyes. Exactly.

Every single lift and drop of that machine, that loom,

is producing another multicoloured stripe.

As my design appears, row upon row of tufts create a carpet

with a pile exactly 8.1 millimetres deep.

Nowadays, you'll find a carpet in almost every home,

but there was a time when tufts weren't the only trend

when it came to floor covering, as Ruth's been finding out.

For the 1950s housewife, clean floors were paramount

and one material became a firm favourite - linoleum.

Durable, affordable, and very easy to clean,

this humble British flooring became a global phenomenon.

But the original lino is far from its modern counterpart.

So to uncover its surprising history, I'm in Glasgow,

at a time capsule of a house

that hasn't much changed for nearly a century.

100 years ago, when this house was furnished,

the owners chose to use linoleum,

which, at that time, was the most fashionable of floor coverings.

Helping me to uncover its origins

is National Trust Scotland's Emma Inglis.

Emma, hello. Hello, Ruth. What a wonderful house!

Isn't it just?

Emma's team are in the midst of restoring the home,

and today, I'm giving her a hand.

Much of the linoleum in this prosperous merchant's house

dates from the 1920s.

Many people, when they hear the word lino, what they've actually

got in their heads as an image, is vinyl flooring, isn't it?

But lino's something different. What exactly is it?

Well, lino is made out of natural materials, as opposed to vinyl,

which is made out of sort of man-made plastics.

Lino is made out of linseed oil, cork dust,

resin, and colour pigments.

Linseed oil, the crucial ingredient in linoleum,

is made by pressing the dried seeds of a plant called flax.

For centuries, the oil has been a key ingredient in paint,

because it congeals when exposed to air,

locking the colourful pigments in place.

But it took an accidental discovery in the 19th century

to inspire someone to create this thick, durable floor covering.

So who invented linoleum, then?

Linoleum was invented by a man called Frederick Walton

around about 1860.

His family business was in brush making. One day in his workshop,

he noticed an open tin of linseed oil paint

that had been sitting open for some time.

I've got an example of that over here.

He could see that a skin had started to form on the top of the paint,

and so that got him thinking.

Walton's brainwave was that a linseed oil base

could be spread out onto a backing

and then kiln-dried to create a hard-wearing waterproof flooring.

Pigments could be added to create colourful patterns.

From that simple idea sprung an extraordinary success story.

He patented it in 1863.

By 1872, he was already exporting to America and setting up

a lino manufactory over there and cracking the American market.

Walton's American factory was so successful that an entire town

called Linoleumville sprung up to house the workers.

Soon, lino was all the rage, not just in Britain and America,

but across fashionable Europe too,

and by the 20th century, it was available almost everywhere.

Hello! Hi, I've come to show you some lino.

Come on in. Thank you.

Lily Barnes is running the country's biggest-ever project

on the history of linoleum for the Fife Cultural Trust.

She's brought along some pattern books from the golden age of lino

in the 1920s and '30s.

Oh, my goodness! They are so varied! Yeah.

By the 1920s, linoleum production was a huge industry,

worth the equivalent today of almost £800 million a year

to the British economy.

There were options for everybody, from extravagant designs

to plainer lino that cost a quarter of the price.

This staggering variety was possible thanks to the flexibility

of the printing process.

We've got this painting of the printing lofts

in one of the factories.

He's spreading the paint onto the printing block

and just printing the red squares on.

You're not constrained by having to weave a pattern from threads,

or having to make something out of tiles.

You can just do whatever you want.

It could be anything. Absolutely, yeah.

For decades, lino was king.

But things changed when plastic-based vinyl flooring

became popular in the 1960s.

Because artificial plastics were cheaper than the natural ingredients

in linoleum, vinyl could undercut lino on price.

And over time, lino came to be confused

with the worst qualities of vinyl flooring.

Vinyl flooring was of lower quality,

and so it didn't last as long as lino does.

Lino gets conflated with vinyl, and all the things that are bad

about vinyl, people start to lay at lino's door, unfairly.

So actual lino suffers a decline. Yes.

In its pomp in the 1950s,

there were nine large firms producing linoleum in the UK.

By the '80s, just one remained.

But happily, that's not the end of the story.

After years in the doldrums, lino's staging somewhat of a comeback.

Customers nowadays, we are thinking about not just the longevity

of things for us and how long is it going to be in our house,

but what happens after it leaves our house?

Can it be recycled? Absolutely.

What's the imprint of it afterwards?

So thanks to its natural ingredients,

lino has had a resurgence in recent years,

with British production up by 50% since the 1980s.

And no wonder, given what good condition it's still in

after nearly a century of hard wear.

Back at the carpet factory,

the monster loom has woven its magic for ten hours,

and the threads of wool, cotton, and jute have been transformed

into my ten-metre roll of carpet...

..which is now transported to Finishing.

And I'm on my way to discover what happens next,

with the help of operator Ewan Guppy.

Hey, Ewan. Yeah. Hello, my friend... Wayhey! That's my carpet!

Ewan, I love that. Why have you hung it up here?

Not just for me to look at, surely.

Your carpet is attached to what we call the shearer.

It shears it just like an old-fashioned lawnmower.

But I've already sheared the sheep! I've now got to shear the carpet?

Yeah.

The shearer is almost as big as the loom, at 17 metres long,

nine wide, and four metres high.

My carpet is attached to a row of other designs,

all lining up to be sheared.

This caravan of carpets is fed through a series of S-bends

and rollers to keep them tight, before they arrive at the blades.

I'm a bit nervous for my carpet. There it goes!

As it enters the shearer...

..two blades rotate at a speedy 600 rpm,

shearing 2mm off the top of the tufts,

leaving them a perfectly even length.

You are a carpet barber,

something I've had no need of for the last 30, 40 years.

Finally, the carpet goes through another set of blades

to neaten any rogue threads.

Bit like trimming it with scissors and then finally shaving it.

Having had its 2mm off the top,

it's time to see if my carpet's trip to the barbers was a success.

That does look completely different and feels different.

That is really soft!

That is so soft, you could lay on it.

That is lovely!

Look how much sharper it looks.

So is that it? Is our carpet finished?

I'm afraid not. Once it's fully out of the shearer,

it's got to go over to Emma at Inspecting.

My freshly sheared carpet is lowered onto a transporter table

and wheeled to Inspection...

..where it's pinned to a giant roller,

ready for head carpet inspector Emma Tytherleigh.

So this is what we call the inspection table. Righto.

And we're going to run the carpet we just pinned on onto the table. Sure.

Here it comes. Here it is.

In a moment, we're going to be, like, inside the carpet. We are.

I'm going to turn the bottom lights on now,

and we're going to check for missing tufts.

Why have you turned the lights off?

Then we can see the light shining from the light box underneath.

Oh, I see! I see.

So if there's a hole in the carpet, the light will shine through.

Yeah. If there's any missing tufts, we'll see them.

There are 290,304 tufts on a carpet of this size.

Wow!

And you're going to check every single one? Yes.

I'm telling you right now,

there will be no missing tufts on my carpet.

My carpet is perfect,

and I am surprised you've suggested otherwise.

Well, we're going to check it, just to make sure.

All right. Go on, then. You won't find anything.

Not on this tableful. Shall we move it on? Yeah.

You're wasting your time, I'm telling you.

Ah! Look!

There's a problem. I know that Mike. I never trusted him.

He didn't look like he was concentrating.

Look at that, look! The light's shining through it, clearly.

We've definitely got tufts missing.

So what's caused that? Just the loom hasn't put them in? Yes.

We're going to have to repair them. How do we do that?

I'll show you. But we're going to have to put the lights on.

Using a collection of coloured yarns that match my design,

Emma fixes every imperfection by hand.

So what are you doing?

Are you going through the weave of the cotton? I am.

I'm putting it in just as a loom would,

so I'm replacing the tufts.

Wow! That's attention to detail.

Hang on a minute, you've just done it. And I just chopped it off.

That's amazing! That's like invisible mending. Mm.

I didn't really see how you did that.

So you just looped some round... What secured it?

It's secured, as I wrap it round the middle jute,

and that's what secures it. It's exactly the same as the loom.

Emma, that is really skilful. How long have you been doing this?

34 years.

Do you, when you go to people's houses,

really stare at their carpet? Do you? Mm.

How closely do you inspect other people's carpets?

I'm not on my hands and knees or anything, but I do look.

Do you? Yeah.

It's good to know that my carpet is in such careful hands.

Over the next two hours, Emma inspects every inch of wool

to make sure it meets her very high standards.

After all the work that's gone into this carpet,

you'd be really upset if you spilt something on it.

But when accidents do happen, what's the best solution?

Cherry has been busting some myths.

Some mistakes are so disastrous...

SLOW MOTION: Nooo!

..we need a miracle to fix them.

And many of us think we have just that -

a cupboard full of remedies to get rid of the toughest stains.

Everyone's got their own opinion

on the best way to get out carpet stains,

but which of these miracle methods actually works?

For answers, I've come to the Good Housekeeping Institute's

specialist lab in London, where Laura Cohen and her team

carry out 4,000 consumer tests a year.

Today, we're testing common home remedies

for getting rid of three particularly tough carpet stains.

We are testing buttered toast,

we're testing milk, and we're testing red wine.

Stain one, the dreaded buttered toast,

which you know is going to fall face down every time.

All carpets, wool or otherwise, are made from absorbent material,

so once there's a spillage, it stains easily.

There, I see a lovely piece of carpet, all lovely and clean...

Ha-ha-ha, for now!

Oh, stunning!

The stain from buttered toast

is caused by the fats within the butter.

I'm pitching my home remedy against Laura's suggested method

for getting rid of oily, buttery stains.

Right, bicarb of soda is good for getting out stains. Mm-hm.

You go for that one, you need some water. All right. Here we go.

And I'm going to go for the methylated spirits.

That is what I use to clean my paint brushes.

I know it might seem harsh, but let's see.

To explain the science behind stains, chemist Reshma Akhter,

one of the Institute's expert testers,

has come along to spill the beans, hopefully not on my carpet!

Reshma, why are greasy stains like butter

so difficult to get out of carpet?

So oils are made up of long fatty chains with incredibly strong bonds.

This makes them stick to the carpet fibres

and essentially harder to remove.

But banking on bicarb to remove these fatty chains of butter

was a boo-boo.

Bicarb hasn't got rid of all the colour.

In fact, you can see it's still really yellow. Yeah.

It's essentially created a paste and kind of gone into the carpet.

So it's really set it in. Set the stain, yeah.

Excellent. I'm glad my paste made things worse!

But Laura's methylated spirit has done the trick,

leaving her carpet completely stain-free.

And if you're handling methylated spirits at home,

it's advisable to wear protective gloves.

Why does methylated spirits work so brilliantly?

What they do is break up the long fatty chains

of oils into smaller particles.

Methylated spirits are made of 90% alcohol, which reacts with the oils.

The fat particles that are left over by this reaction

are dissolvable in water contained within the methylated spirits,

and that means it's much easier to dab them up.

Next up - let's not cry over it - here's a quick trick for spilt milk.

For liquid spills, remove as much as possible from the surface

of the carpet, before you apply your stain remover.

You get some kitchen towel and you just dab very gently into the stain.

With milk, there is sometimes a smell that comes from the stain.

Yes, it's incredibly stinky.

Milk contains odour-producing bacteria,

which thrive at room temperature,

so they hang around in the fibres of your carpet.

The best way to banish these stinky stains is water

with a squirt of washing-up liquid.

But what temperature should the water be?

I'm using lukewarm water, that's about 37 degrees Celsius,

while Laura goes for hot water, which is 50 degrees.

Urgh! So sorry to tell you this Laura, I don't mean to be rude,

but yours is really stinky!

While my lukewarm water with washing-up liquid has got rid of

the milk smell, Laura's hot water has hardly worked at all,

so what's going on?

With hot temperatures, the milk protein starts coagulating.

So when you heat milk in a saucepan,

you might notice a thin film forming on the surface.

That's exactly what's happening in your carpet right now.

So for milk, make sure the water's room temperature

with your washing-up liquid.

For the third and final test,

the ultimate nemesis of carpets everywhere.

Red wine contains stain-causing substances called tannins.

Oh, this feels so wrong! Argh! Argh!

First, we're going to test the two most popular

methods for banishing this most epic of stains,

salt...

..and white wine.

Looking here, the salt doesn't work and the white wine doesn't work.

No. Salt just permanently sets your wine stain.

It makes it worse?! It makes it worse. No!

Why does the white wine not work?

Well, white wine actually also contains tannins,

so what you're essentially doing is fighting the stain with a stain.

Tannins are also in white wine? Yeah.

So what does work?

So we recommend that you use a cleaning product

that contains oxygen-based bleaching agents.

These specialist bleaches release oxygen when exposed to water,

triggering a reaction which transforms the tannins

into colourless compounds.

Unlike chlorine-bleach, oxygen-based bleaches shouldn't

discolour your carpet, but always test on an inconspicuous area first.

Finally, I have the definitive answer on how to get rid of

the toughest stains out there.

But I'm not sure how useful it will be cos I very rarely spill anything.

Back on the factory floor, there's not a stain in sight.

My carpet's missing tufts have been hand-sewn,

and it's passed inspection with flying colours.

Now, my ten-metre roll,

containing 290,304 woollen tufts,

is transported across the factory to Dispatch,

where it's deposited onto yet another odd-looking carpet conveyor,

controlled by Pete Coath.

Hey!

Hello. Hi, Gregg. Pete, right? Yeah, that's right.

That's a lot of kit. But what are you doing with it?

Well, this is when your carpet gets measured out

and cut to the desired length that you've ordered.

And then the fitters can take it away when it's delivered

and put it straight down, hopefully.

We've got ten metres but we want two five-metre bits,

so... We're going to cut it in half. We're going to cut it in half.

With the press of a button, the conveyor is programmed

to measure out my carpet to exactly five metres.

Magic carpet! There it is!

So the next thing would be to cut it,

and we have a special knife, which is this one.

It's on a roller,

and it fits into the groove down here, just beside the carpet,

and then we push it along,

and it will cut the carpet at the exact length. Is that right?

If you fancy a go, you'll actually be cutting your own carpet off.

No, I'm really not. I'd love to, but I'm really nervous.

No, don't be nervous. You can't get it wrong, mate. You'll be all right.

Just walk it along? Yep.

No. Oh, oh! That's it. Now you're winning.

Whoa! Whoa!

GREGG LAUGHS

I'm cutting a carpet in half!

Oh, that's easy! That knife must be really sharp.

Well, you're now the first person to walk on your own carpet as well.

Shall I take my shoes off? You can if you like.

Bounce up and down on it? Yeah.

This is an opportunity I can't pass up.

GREGG LAUGHS

MUSIC - The Nutcracker, Dance Of The Mirlitons

I love this!

How does it feel, then, Gregg? Nice and soft?

It's really nice and soft and spongy. Yeah.

Like only a brand-new carpet can be. Lovely.

But then we haven't spilt any low sugar fruit drinks on it yet,

or any coffee or pints of beer.

That is my finished carpet.

My carpet is carried along a conveyor,

where five motorised rollers rotate to turn it into a roll.

Then it's sealed and wrapped in brown parcel paper.

All that's left to do now is put it on a van.

Is my carpet on there?

With a bit of luck, it will be arriving in a second, mate.

Ah! A specially adapted forklift. That's right. A carpet forklift.

Yeah. Very clever.

So how do you explain our love affair with our carpets?

Well, it's a luxurious thing to have in your house.

It's fashionable because we change the patterns all the time

for people. And basically, the comfort.

Yeah, it is, isn't it? It's luxury. It's warm, it's soft and it's cosy.

That's right, as you found out walking on it.

Dancing on it!

So, once he's loaded that on, are we done?

Yes, that will be it.

That's it. That's my carpet, lovingly made, on its way.

Seven days, 16 hours and 15 minutes after shearing my first sheep...

..my finished carpet leaves the factory.

Every month, they send out 4,000 square metres of carpet

to shops and homes around the UK and Ireland.

And rooms are kept cosy with Axminster weaves as far afield

as America and Australia.

Before I came here,

I'd never imagined the effort that goes into turning a fleece

from a fluffy sheep into a carefully crafted carpet for our homes.

Every thread has been thought through,

to make it hard-wearing, stitch-perfect, and easy on the eye.

A bit like myself!

The factory has come a long way from its first early assembly lines.

But how did we get from there to here?

Explore the history and the future of the factory

on an interactive timeline.

Go to...

..and follow the links to the Open University.