High Peak MP Tom Levitt has pledged his support for a local craftsman to help prevent his skills being lost forever. Mike Turnock, from Whaley Bridge, is the last practising sieve maker in the country and fears that when he retires it’ll be the end of a centuries-old tradition of fashioning quality sieves from wood and wire.

Mr Levitt visited Mr Turnock in his workshop (last Thursday, 28th) to see for himself how the skilled craftsman creates sieves and riddles for all sorts of purposes – from sifting flour for cooking to separating different sized grains of metals used in industry, or for sieving glazes used in the pottery trade. His customers include individual cooks and gardeners, as well as foundries and others he keeps supplied with regular bulk orders.

“This isn’t just about preserving old traditions,” says Mr Levitt, “There’s a great opportunity here for young people to learn from an expert and take pride in delivering quality tools from materials that will last.” Mike Turnock is one of many craftspeople whose skills are in danger of disappearing. He is a member of the recently formed Heritage Crafts Association, chaired by another Derbyshire crafts person, Edale wooodturner Robin Wood. Its aim is to highlight the potential loss of traditional craft industries all over the country.

The MP has already raised the matter with the Culture Minister and is planning to apply for an Adjournment Debate before Parliament rises for the summer. Admiring the skills involved in crafting the sieves, he said he was sure there must be a bigger market out there, if more people could be recruited to learn the craft.

The frames for the sieves are cut from five-foot lengths of English beech, which are sliced into thin strips before being softened in steam and bent into shape. The mesh can be as fine as 40,000 holes per square inch, to riddles with half a square inch, or rectangular holes for grading shellfish such as shrimps & cockles. These bigger ones are deftly woven by hand inside the 18” diameter frames.

“Sieves can be designed for anyone who needs to separate objects by size,” says Mr Turnock, who took over the business from his father and uncle who started it in 1948. In those days his father employed 11 men, and there were three or four similar businesses with a three miles radius of his, all of them since closed.

Mr Turnock, who’ll be 64 in August, would like to pass on his skills to someone who can take over the business and keep the centuries-old tradition alive.

Click here to see Robin Wood's blog on traditional crafts.