WHEN textile expert Hamish Carruthers went digging around in a collection of files in a Scottish weaving firm’s cellar, he uncovered a thread that would interweave the story of the end of the mighty Imperial Russian Army with the early days of the RAF.

Among the many files stored beneath the boardroom at the historic weaver’s, Robert Noble’s in Peebles, was a swatch of an RAF fabric described as “Blue-grey No 3 WP”.

Researching that fabric would lead Carruthers to a story of how Replin by Hainsworth, a textile manufacturer that was partly founded in Peebles had, in 1917, received an order for large quantities of a blue material – its destination, the Imperial Russian Army. Unfortunately, history was to get in the way, as 1917 just happened to be the year of the Russian Revolution, when the soviets rose up against Russia's Tsarist rulers.

The Imperial Army was disbanded during the uprising, leading to the creation of the Soviet Union. Crucially for Hainsworth (which later bought Peebles firm Replin), it left the company with an awful lot of excess stock and a hole in their finances.

But Russia's loss was to be Britain's gain, as Carruthers, who is the chairman of the Scottish Centre of Textiles project, which aims to set up an archive in the Scottish Borders, and who has made it his mission to rescue fabrics that might otherwise be lost, explains: “It looks like they were stuck with this fabric with nowhere to send it. Somebody in their organisation must have thought why don’t we try the War Department?”

The timing, after all, was perfect. The RAF was only founded in April 1918, fusing the Royal Flying Corps, whose uniforms were mainly army khaki, with the Royal Naval Air Service.

“In 1918,” says Carruthers, “a new RAF uniform in blue-grey came out. They adopted the fabric that had been destined for the Russian Imperial Army.”

While the order records have not been uncovered to back up the story, this is a tale that is known both in the RAF and the weavers themselves. It is one among many examples of textiles stories that are in danger of being forgotten, says Carruthers.

The textile expert and designer has been creating an archive to help save some of those stories, as well as some of the fabrics. “We, as a nation, really do not know enough about what has come out of the Scottish textile industry,” he says, “and that’s why I’ve tried to set up a Scottish textiles centre. Because we have no idea what’s made here and sent all over the world.”

Carruthers recalls that stumbling across that RAF swatch, which was from a 1939 uniform, and also another file containing a swatch of 1914 army fabric. He says it was a moving experience for him. “These files show not just the fabric itself but also the number of pieces of fabric that were woven, and there were hundreds. And it gives you the name of the weaver and which factory it was made in. And you realise that all of that fabric went on to be made into uniforms for people who were killed.”

The history of the Scottish textile mills is interwoven with the history of war. Throughout World Wars One and Two, March Street Mills, which made fabric for Robert Noble and Replin, focused almost exclusively on making barathea wool and cavalry twill fabrics for Army, Navy and Air Force kit. In response to rationing, the land behind the mills was turned over to allotments for employees and retired workers.

“You look through some of these files,” says Carruthers, “and you see that mostly its men that are the weavers, until the war starts, and it starts to switch over to women as the men have been enlisted and gone off to war.”