The Sma' Shot Cottages are owned and run by the Old Paisley Society, a registered charity who purchased the disused cottages in the 1980s and restored them to how they would have looked during the heyday of Paisley's weaving and textiles industry in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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The museum features a weaver's cottage from the 1750s, which includes an exhibition room and working loom shop; across the garden you'll find the foreman's cottage from the 1840s, a much more affluent dwelling with a number of bedrooms as well as a parlour.
The "sma' shot" refers to the binding thread that was woven into the cloth to hold all of the threads together. However, this shot wasn't visible in the final product, so the manufacturers, also known as the "Corks", refused to pay for it.
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This led to a long dispute, with weavers summoned to protest marches by the Charleston Drum, reportedly recovered from the Battle of Waterloo. In 1856, an agreement was finally reached to pay the weavers for the sma' shot, and the first Saturday of every July is celebrated in Paisley to this day as Sma' Shot Day.
Watch our short film, produced by Martin Heron in 2013, which showcases some of the highlights of the Cottages and explores the backstory of the Old Paisley Society's work in restoring the cottages to their former glory.