The origins of the home knitting industry in Gairloch can be traced back to the 1800s.  Elsewhere in Britain, the wool industry had become largely mechanised by this time.  But in the Highlands, wool was still being shorn, spun and knitted by hand - a ‘home’ industry. The wool used was from sheep kept on the croft.  Teasing, carding, spinning and dyeing were all done at home, with the colours obtained from natural dyes.  Men wove the spun wool into patterned tweed.

In 1836 Sir Francis Mackenzie, 12th laird of Gairloch, married his second wife Mary Hanbury, the mother of Osgood Mackenzie of Inverewe.  Under her influence, a localised knitting industry thrived.  She employed a lady from Skye to instruct twelve young women in knitting ‘nice stockings with dice and other fancy patterns’.  After her husband died in 1843, she became a trustee of the Estate and lived for ten years at Flowerdale – the Gairloch home of the Mackenzies.  During this time, she threw her energies into establishing the manufacture and export of quality Gairloch stockings.  

The Dowager Lady Mackenzie organised and trained spinners, dyers and knitters and promoted their craft further afield.  The sale of Gairloch stockings became an important source of income for crofting families, particularly during the potato famine years of the later 1840s. 

A letter written by Dr John Mackenzie, the Estate factor (and her brother-in-law), in 1847 to the Destitution Board in Edinburgh requested a grant towards ‘Materials for Female Employment’ as Lady Mackenzie ‘has got above 100 women employed spinning wool who work up about 35 stones per week which is then knitted into stockings’.  He suggested that a supply of wool would ‘keep these women employed and enable us to give them some new clothing’.