When we were up the Ashby Canal last year, we caught the bus into Hinckley town centre to see the museum.
Unfortunately, I hadn't read the website properly – we'd gone on a day when it wasn't open. So this time we double-checked and, last Saturday, finally got inside. Downstairs there are a couple of rooms celebrating Hinckley's past as a centre of the hosiery industry. Socks, stockings, etc – hose. One room was set up with a big knitting loom as it would have been for the cottage industry. Another had examples of the machines they later invented to automate the processes.
Upstairs, the old timbers of this 17th century building are splendid, and the exhibits cover some of the social history of the area, especially the local tradition of "Non-conformism".