Home is security, safety. Our mitochondrial DNA originated in the Middle East around 50,000 years ago. Home has moved.
“Roof Over Our Heads” is an oak-framed house form, a scaled-down version similar to the weavers cottages found at Tillyloss in Kirriemuir. The front and rear faces of the house have oak cylinders running across their length – the front and back beams of a loom in the lower half of the house where the weaver’s would have worked. A handwoven fabric made from linen warp with mixed cotton cord and linen weft is wound around the front cloth beam and travels up the front and over the roof of the house. It’s pattern encodes mine and my foremothers’ shared mitochondrial DNA sequence. Where the roof meets the rear wall, the woven fabric ends and warp threads carry on down the rear face, where they are tied onto the back beam. The fabric covers one half of the building. Weaver cottages were shared by multiple families.
Jessie was born in Kirriemuir in 1867, the fourth of five children, at an address that no longer exists. By the time Jessie was 14 years, at the 1881 census, Jessie was living in Tillyloss and employed as a ‘factory worker’, most likely a weaving factory. Jessie married in 1890 in Dundee, aged 23 years, where she was by this time and working as a ‘weaver’. By the census in the following year, Jessie had returned to live at Tillyloss. She remained there for the birth of her first two children. Her next seven children were born at five different addresses in and around the centre of Kirriemuir.
While her children were young, there is no occupation listed for Jessie on the census returns. However, by the 1921 census, aged 54 years, Jessie had returned to work as a ‘weaver’.
Jessie died in 1955, aged 87 years, when my mum was three years old. Jessie’s youngest son registered her death, and he was living in the house at Tillyloss. My mum’s generation can remember Jessie from their childhood; and have vague memories of visiting the house at Tillyloss.
Across all the generations, the weaving-related labour of fore-mothers has ensured we have a roof over our heads.
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