What is recorded here
Sma' Shot Cottages preserve an eighteenth-century handloom weaver's home and loom shop beside nineteenth-century millworkers' cottages in Paisley. Together they show the move from home weaving to factory work and explain the long dispute over payment for the unseen binding thread called the sma' shot.
What this place is
The site joins a handloom weaver's cottage and workshop to a row of later millworkers' homes, with a garden linking the different domestic and working spaces.
People and events
Paisley weavers fought employers over payment for the sma' shot, the hidden thread that bound patterned cloth; their campaign ended in victory in 1856.
How it was used
The older rooms combined family life with skilled loom work, while the later cottages housed people whose textile work had shifted into larger powered mills.
What survives
Furnished rooms, original looms, the loom shop, millworker cottages and the connecting garden survive as a compact record of two forms of textile life.
Why it mattered
The cottages turn an argument about a nearly invisible thread into a clear story of pay, dignity and collective action during Paisley's industrial change.
Sources for this account
- Saved source: OpenStreetMap contributors
- Paisley.is: Sma' Shot Cottages
- Renfrewshire Council: Doors Open Day guide
Sources checked 16 August 2026.
From OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) n7995394691
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Picture notes
- Thomas Nugent, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Computer-made picture. It does not show this monument.
- Billy McCrorie, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Stephen McKay, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Lairich Rig, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Computer-made picture. It does not show this playground.
- Richard Webb, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
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