You are in: Nottingham > History > Local history > Spurned love leads to knitting invention William Lee was so fed up with his girlfriend's passion for knitting he produced his own textile machine.

The knitting frame had been invented by William Lee of Calverton, Nottinghamshire, in 1589, and by the mid-1700s there were about 1,800 frames in Britain, the majority located in the East Midland's ...