British-Made Men's Knitwear in Devon — Voted by the Community

Knitting has deep roots in Britain’s textile history and predates mechanised manufacture. Early examples of hand-knitted woollen garments such as caps and stockings appear from the fifteenth century onwards, reflecting the country’s longstanding engagement with wool and knit fabric. The British knitwear industry expanded significantly with the onset of mechanisation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of the world’s oldest continuous knitwear factories was established in 1784 in Derbyshire by John Smedley, which later became renowned for producing fine knit garments and remains a touchstone of British knit tradition. Regional knitting traditions also contributed distinctive styles to British knitwear. For example, Fair Isle patterns from the Shetland Islands became widely recognised in the early twentieth century for their intricate colourwork, later gaining broader popularity in the 1920s. Elsewhere, hardy knitted garments such as the guernsey (or gansey) emerged in Britain and the Channel Islands as functional sweaters for sailors and fishermen, known for robust stitches and weather-ready construction. These varied traditions — combined with advances in knitting machinery and yarn processing — helped establish knitwear as an important part of British textile manufacture by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today’s British-made knitwear draws on this heritage of regional stitchcraft, industrial innovation, and material expertise to create garments that reflect both functional performance and enduring style.