For over three hundred years some of the world’s most famous admirals, explorers, buccaneers, and aristocrats captained ships and luxury yachts whose sails were made from the exceptional Coker Canvas - a much sought after sailcloth that became the standard of quality for the British Navy and other countries around the world. This book explores the history of sailmaking in East Coker and how this global ‘brand’ impacted the local area.

Coker Canvas was stronger, more durable, less prone to rot and latest twice as long as any other sail cloth. As a result, it was superior and, therefore, more expensive.

Cost would eventually be a cause of a downturn in fortunes as other canvas makers tried to copy the Coker Canvas pattern of weaving but failed to recognise that the true quality of the Canvas was the result of the flax and hemp fibres being ‘bucked’ (strengthened) as yarn using a special process rather than strengthening a piece of finished sailcloth – hence the phrase 'Bucked in the Yarn Not in the Piece’. The book fully explains the process and the terms used locally to describe the acts of preparing the fibres.

Three reasons behind the book - Terry Stevens 

1) On becoming a Trustee of the Coker Rope & Sail Trust contributing to the restoration and conservation of the Dawes Twineworks in West Coker – today the only working Victorian twine factory in the UK – I became acutely aware of how this structure was simply part of a much bigger jigsaw of a unique heritage that was at the heart of the DNA of East, West and North Coker.

 2) The second factor came, I suppose, from the fact that as you get older you become more quizzical of your past – both personal and of where you journey in life began. This feeling of beginning and ending, of continuity, of being still and still moving is central to the poem East Coker , one of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. Despite living away from Coker for over 50 years I am increasingly drawn back to the place that gave me my identity. 

 In my beginning is my end, as Eliot wrote and as my father (the then village carpenter was by default the village undertaker) was charged with interring Eliot’s ashes in the village church in 1965, I thought it time to get to know my original square mile in more detail.

3) I was motivated through anger when during COVID I was reading The Annals of West Coker written in 1930 by the eminent historian and former civil servant Lt. Col. Sir Matthew Nathan, in which he made the astonishing statement that, ‘Nothing much ever happened in this part of England where the Coker villages lie. No great man was ever born or died here. No battle was fought near it nor did any constitutional crisis have its rise in the neighbourhood. It was never the centre of great industry nor the source of wide-spreading trade. No relic of saint nor monument of art nor scene of natural beauty ever attracted visitors to it.’ He was so wrong and misguided and I felt it important that this view was contested.

What do you hope readers will take from Bucked in the Yarn?

Firstly, the fact that there are often fine heritage stories to be discovered in your local area. There are people who have done remarkable things with locally sourced raw materials to create something amazing…so go out and find out more about your square mile. Secondly, I hope they will find something of interest in this book irrespective of any background related to sailing or maritime history.

Finally, I would love to think that readers of this book will take the time to visit the Cokers, to attend on the Dawe’s Twineworks Open Days, to stay in the villages, to enjoy local hospitality and contribute to the economy that, in turn, will continue to assist the Coker Rope & Sail Trust to celebrate and conserve this extraordinary heritage. (Professor Terry Stevens). 

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