A Good Yarn....The Story of the guernsey

When you pull on one of our guernsey sweaters you’re not only wearing an enduringly timeless classic, you’re sporting a piece of history

There aren’t many items of clothing with a history that cuts as rich a seam as the guernsey jumper. Whilst knitting was first documented on the island of Guernsey in the 16th century it has been mighty difficult to pin a date on when guernsey jumpers were first created

“There are references to the guernsey that date from the early 1800s,” (according to Caro Drake, author of the book, Guernsey with a small g) but
because working class people’s clothes were rarely recorded by historians “It
makes giving a definitive date incredibly tricky"

GANSEY, YOU SAY? Guernseys remain everyday wear on the island and globally have become associated with salty tales of sea farers. As the guernsey’s popularity spread beyond the Channel Islands, the practical design was adopted by fisher folk up and down the land. The word ‘guernsey’ became ‘gansey’ in some areas and you’ll find similar square shaped designs copied and adapted all over the British Isles as the guernsey inspired "fisherman’s jumper"

Originally knitted by the wives, mothers and sweethearts of fishermen and farmers to stave off bracing winds and rain. The use of worsted wool meant that guernsey knitwear was extra durable and super weather resistant, springing back into shape after washing or a good soaking in a storm, so pulling on an authentic guernsey is wearing a piece of living history.

To shop our iconic guernsey jumper, you can browse here

(In fact all our jumpers are unisex so you can buy from anywhere on our site - they're also reversible and we advise wearing them back to front / front to back, to extend wear)

Global acclaim and famous fans

What’s not in dispute is Guernsey’s illustrious history of producing superior knitwear of especially fine quality. Records from the Tudor era show a thriving trade in the export of luxury knits – many made from worsted wool for a finer yet stronger knit – a tradition that we continue with our knitwear today.

At one point almost half of Guernsey’s population worked as knitters. Their work was of such a high standard that in 1586 a pair of Guernsey stockings commanded eye-wateringly high prices – about £300 in today’s money. A true luxury item, it is claimed that the royal family were regaled by the fine qualities of Guernsey’s woollen wear so too Louis XIV of France and both
Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots are rumoured to have worn Guernsey knits – the latter in the form of white stockings at her execution.

With industrialisation, the island’s knitters turned their nimble fingers to creating warm woollen jumpers for their seafaring menfolk using a technique much like the one used to make their world famous stockings. Reversible and durable, these weather-resistant knits were of course well known by Local Man Admiral Lord de Sausmarez, whose alleged championing of the guernsey jumper saw it adopted as uniform in the Royal Navy (although Lord Nelson is more commonly attributed as recommending it to the Admiralty in 1804) It wasn’t long before guernseys were being worn in garrisons as far afield as Nova Scotia as the garment became part of the armed forces’ winter uniform.

WHY WORSTED WOOL? Our guernseys are knitted from worsted wool – a term used to describe a strong, high quality yarn with long, fine, smooth fibres.
Originally hailing from the Norfolk village of Worstead – a centre for textiles
in the Middle Ages – worsted wool’s tightly packed fibres make it both durable
and resilient. No wonder it was chosen by local folk to keep wet and windy
weather at bay

Care tips for wool can be found here

A winning design for five centuries

The guernsey has stood the test of time for good reason – and when something
has been successful for centuries, why change it?

Still a family owned business, our guernseys are as enduringly practical as
they were when first created all those centuries ago. We started creating
guernseys from a generous relative’s garage before moving into our first
workshops in St Peter Port on the east coast of Guernsey in 1964. We may
have moved several times over (we are now on the west coast just down the road
from Fort Grey “the cup & saucer”) and to this day we hand-finish our
jumpers and are the only brand on the island to continue do so.

Hand finishing means we knit the body and sleeves on vintage punch-card
machines, before passing them through a team of trained knitters working in
their own homes. They individually knit
the featured shoulder seams and necks; varying their stitches according to the
size and bringing that personal stitched piece of mastery to every garment –
just as they would have done many, many generations before.

The Gold Standard of guernseys

In more recent times our guernseys have been selected to grace the pages of Vogue, GQ and Esquire as well as being called in by Costume Designers over and again for Hollywood films. We gifted a traditional navy guernsey to our “Duke of Normandy” King Charles III to celebrate his coronation (and because it hasn't been returned we like to think of him walking briskly around Balmoral kitted out in his gold standard knitwear) We supplied guernseys for The Virgin Atlantic Challenger powerboat crew, Britain’s America’s Cup teams and receive repeat orders from the British army.

Recently we produced 50th anniversary guernseys for our local Rowing
Club as well as the navy guernsey being reinstated as uniform for all members of the Guernsey Border Agency, of which we are immensely proud.

Guernsey jumpers were always made with love and innate skill to protect
the wearer from the worst the elements could throw at them and we’ve been
creating our guernseys for over half a century now, based on these very same
enduring principles.

You can read more about our talented family of craftspeople on our Meet the Makers page.

A Good Yarn....The Story of the guernsey

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