Britain's Bayeux Tapesty

The idea of making an accurate replica of the Bayeux Tapestry, ‘so that England should have a copy of its own’, was the brainchild of Elizabeth Wardle, an accomplished embroideress and the wife of the renowned Staffordshire silk-dyer Thomas Wardle. In 1885 thirty-five ladies of the Leek Embroidery Society, founded by Elizabeth Wardle, began work on the ‘tapestry’, painstakingly reproducing every detail of the Bayeux Tapestry stitch by stitch, using specially dyed woollen yarns created by Thomas Wardle.