Did you know…. that you can make your own skipping-rope in the Zuiderzee Museum?
 

You do it just like people did it way back: by hand, in a rope-yard, which was also called a rope walk. Because the ropes were so long, the site of such a rope-yard was often 110 to 160 metres long. In some towns and cities a street name will still tell you that there used to be a rope–yard a long time ago, for example the Lijnbaansgracht (Rope-yard Canal) in Amsterdam.

A rope was made by one worker turning a wheel, while another worker was walking backwards with the strands of string that had to be twisted.

One worker turned the wheel… 

the other walked backwards with the strands.

Ropes were usually made of hemp, just like the ropes in the Zuiderzee Museum. But sometimes they also used manila (from the leaf fibres of the wild banana) or sisal (from the leaf fibres of the agave).

Rope-makers were sometimes called yellow-bellies, because the big bundle of hemp that they carried around on their stomach gave off a yellow colour.

In those bygone days, it was quite common for children to work in a rope-yard. Most people were poorly off and children had to work hard to add to the family income. So the money they earned they had to give to their parents.

Children often turned the wheel in a rope-yard to twist the strands. They were used for this part of the rope-making, because it was simple work. Besides, their wages were much lower than those of grown-up people. Sometimes it happened that children of just four years old were turning the wheel!

But when in 1874 Van Houten’s Children and Young Persons Act was passed, children under 12 were no longer allowed to work in workshops. But even so young children were still used to do other kinds of work, like working the land…

Children lifting potatoes

Rope-makers made ropes for sailing ships and for fishermen and farmers. But they also made clotheslines. Apart from skipping-ropes, the rope-maker in our Museum also makes such clotheslines.

Nowadays ropes are usually made of synthetic materials such as nylon. And they are no longer made by hand, but with machines in factories, where they produce as many as hundreds of thousands of metres of rope a day!

Would you like to make your own skipping-rope? Then come and visit the Zuiderzee Museum. The month of April will be devoted to rope-making. At various locations you can see how they made rope in the old days and you are also welcome to give the rope-maker a hand.

See you in the Zuiderzee Museum!