Homegrown Homespun hopes to help revive Blackburn’s textile industry, by producing linen clothes locally – from growing the flax to making the garments.

“The idea with Homegrown Homespun is to rebuild the entire supply chain,” says Patrick Grant, fashion designer and founder of Community Clothing, who is also a judge on long-running BBC TV show The Great British Sewing Bee.

“In this country we used to be completely self-sufficient in clothing. Most clothes were linen or wool, and flax was grown all across the UK. In fact, in the 16th Century, it was law that every landowner had to dedicate a portion of their land to growing flax.”

Flax is sometimes called “Britain’s forgotten crop”. It is considered to have first been cultivated in the British Isles for the production of linen during the Bronze Age, external – some 4,000 years ago.

By the 18th Century around 50 million yards of linen was produced in the UK, but during the 19th Century it was replaced by imported cotton, and linen production fell away.

Flax is still grown commercially in the UK to produce linseeds, which you can eat, and linseed oil, which is used as a wood treatment and in paint. However, flax hasn’t been grown commercially for the plant’s fibre since the 1950s.

“We want to see if it’s possible to rebuild the UK flax and linen industry,” says Mr Grant.

“So, we can have locally-grown fibre going into our clothes for the first time in a long time. We want to demonstrate that flax can be grown viably, for linen, in the UK.”