Wigston FrameworkKnitters Museum

The Wigston Framework Knitters Museum occupies a master hosier's house on Bushloe End dating from the late seventeenth century, with a two-storey Victorian frame shop built in the garden behind it. When the last working knitter, Edgar Carter, died in 1952, the workshop was locked up and left largely untouched, preserving knitting frames up to 150 years old along with tools and fittings from the East Midlands hosiery trade. The building was opened as a museum in 1986 and is run by a small charitable trust rather than a local authority. It opens to visitors on Sunday afternoons, the first Saturday of the month and bank holiday Mondays, closing over Christmas and through January and February. Volunteers demonstrate the frames in action during open sessions, giving a rare working view of a trade that once dominated Leicestershire's villages.