E W King's first warehouse on Tenter Field, Grange Hill.
The meaning of Tenter (originally Tainter from the Middle English word teyntour)
After a piece of cloth was woven, a craftsman called a fuller cleaned the woollen cloth in a fulling mill, and then had to dry it carefully, to prevent the fabric from shrinking. The fuller would place the wet cloth on a large wooden frame, called a tenter, and leave it to dry outdoors. The lengths of wet cloth were stretched on the tenter using tenterhooks (hooked nails whose long shank was driven into the wood) all around the perimeter of the frame to which the cloth's edges (selvedges) were fixed, so that as it dried the cloth would retain its shape and size.
The word 'tent' and the phrase 'on tenterhooks' derive from this process
Date: About 1910
Ref 41/17