In France the early lace industry was based on handmade bobbin lace. Skilled workers, mostly women, applied detailed designs on a net background to create a coveted lace fabric. The French government sought to introduce machines to the French lace industry against British laws forbidding the export of British machines. In the early nineteenth century, British lacemakers succeeded in getting machines into northern France and many set up in Calais. In those early years , the Calais of today was two entities - Calais being the town within the fortified walls with access to the harbour and the English Channel to the north, and St Pierre-lès-Calais being the open village beyond and to the south of Calais. 

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The lacemaking machines were very noisy and they were worked into and through the night. As the industry expanded, the noise of the machines and the increasing numbers of English workers became a nuisance to the French inhabitants of the walled town of Calais. After about 1820 the lace machines and the workers began to move out of Calais and into St Pierre-lès-Calais. With an influx of people needing buildings for their machines and in which to live, the village began to grow and before the upheavals of 1848 it is this developing village of St Pierre-lès-Calais as the lacemakers knew it .