Vintage British-Made Men's Beanies — Voted by the Community

The close-fitting, brimless knitted cap now often called a beanie has a long history in Britain. One of the earliest documented knitted caps is the Monmouth cap, named after the Welsh town where hand knitters were making caps by the fifteenth century. The caps were knitted large and then fulled, or felted, which shrank them and made them warmer and more weatherproof. Later much of the trade moved to Bewdley in Worcestershire, and the name came to describe a style rather than a place. Monmouth caps were everyday wear for soldiers, sailors and labourers. In the 1620s the backers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered them for settlers, and knitted wool caps remained common outdoor headwear from the eighteenth century onwards. The word "beanie" is much younger. It was first recorded in the twentieth century and probably comes from "bean", a slang word for the head. At first it usually meant a small cap sewn from panels of felt or cloth. Only later, in many English-speaking countries, did it become a common name for a knitted cap.