Resources
Museums
The Historic Dockyard Chatham - Master Ropemakers
Preserved English naval ropewalk with rope making demonstrations.
The French navy’s “Versailles of the sea,” now a museum of rope history.
Hardanger Ship Protection Center
Norway’s only active ropewalk, within a museum of ships.
Features exhibitions about Bridport’s cottage rope making history.
The Rope Making Museum in Älvängen
Museum located within Sweden’s longest functioning ropewalk
Museum of rope making with tours of an active Dutch ropewalk.
Contains a preserved section of the Plymouth Cordage Company ropewalk.
Museum inside a preserved English ropewalk.
Further Reading
Christy Anderson. “Ropewalks and the Linear City.” Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes 42, no. 4, 2022, 243–53.
J. G. Coad. “Chatham Ropeyard.” Post-Medieval Archaeology 3, no. 1 (1969): 143–65.
J. G. Coad. Historic Architecture of the Royal Navy. London, 1983.
Margherita Desy. “Ropemakers for the Navy, Part 1.” https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2016/10/06/ropemakers-navy-part/
Margherita Desy. “Ropemakers for the Navy, Part 2.” https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2016/10/21/ropemakers-navy-part-ii/
K.R. Guilbert. “Rope-making.” In A History of Technology, Vol. 1. C. Singer and E.J. Holmyard (eds). Oxford 1965, pp. 451–455.
Kenneth Hudson, Industrial Archaeology: An Introduction. Routledge, 2015. Originally published in 1963 by John Baker Publishers.
Tim Ingold. Lines. A Brief History. New York 2007.
Émilie Le Guiniec, and Ariane Léandri. Corderie royale de Rochefort: une vie d’atelier. La Crèche 2022.
Duhamel du Monceau. Traité de la fabrique des manoeuvres pour les vaisseaux, ou, L’art de la corderie perfectionné. Paris 1747.
Samuel Eliot Morison. The Ropemakers of Plymouth. A History of the Plymouth Cordage Company. Boston, 1950.
Anthony Sanctuary. Rope, Twine and Net Making. Aylesbury 1980.
W. Tyson. Rope. A History of the Hard Fibre Cordage Industry in the United Kingdom. London 1966.
Mike Williams. Bridport and West Bay: The Buildings of the Flax and Hemp Industry. London, Historic England, 2006.
