A plea has gone out to trace the history of a company that made knitting yarn in the past.

The Knitting & Crochet Guild at Scholes near Holmfirth wants to find out more about the firm called Wakefield Greenwood and hopes Examiner readers can give them more information about its past and what happened to it in the end.

Barbara Smith, Volunteer Publications Curator at the Knitting and Crochet Guild, said: “The company seems to have started out before the Second World War as plain Greenwoods with an address in Victoria Street, Huddersfield, but after the war it became Wakefield Greenwood with an address in Railway Street.

“Until the early 1960s they advertised their yarns and knitting patterns in Vogue Knitting Book and other magazines like Woman’s Weekly and Pins & Needles. We have nearly 200 of their knitting patterns in the Guild collection but there are a lot of gaps in the numbering so we know there were many more.”

Promotional card for knitting company Wakefield Greenwood that was based in Huddersfield

One of the photos shows the pattern for a charming 5-piece set for a little girl that was advertised in 1950.

The Guild has some Wakefield Greenwood yarn in the collection provided by a French woman and the label states: “The World’s Best Knitting Wools for every purpose.”

Barbara added: “I also heard from an American woman who was clearing out her grandmother’s knitting and sewing things and found a bag of Wakefield Greenwood cashmere yarn. Her grandmother had lived all her life in West Virginia so presumably she had bought the cashmere there. They really did make ‘Wools for the World’!”

Barbara says that in the early 1960s the company address changed to Wakefield Mills, Thornhill Beck Lane, Brighouse.

Wakefield Greenwood knitting wool. The company was based in Huddersfield

And then they stopped advertising and Barbara doesn’t know what happened to them.

She added: “There might be Examiner readers who can supply more information. Did they really have a spinning mill on Railway Street or was it made elsewhere?

“And what happened to the company in the end? If anyone has any Wakefield Greenwood knitting patterns they no longer need we should be very glad to give them a home in the Guild collection.”

Contact Barbara me via collection@kcguild.org.uk or through the Guild website http://kcguild.org.uk .