IT’S hard to tell what it is. From one angle, it looks like a great metal obstacle course or one of those puzzles the contestants used to face in the 1990s quiz show The Crystal Maze, but from another angle, it all looks much more organic. From one end of the room to the other is a complicated trail of yarn that’s purple and red and intricate, and around it people are tending the machine’s working parts, tweaking here and there according to some obscure pattern I can’t work out. And then there’s the sound, the constant noise of artificial life: the thrum, the clack-clack, the rumble.

This is how cashmere scarves are made, and have been made here at Begg & Co in Ayr for the last 150 years and today I’m going to be taken through the whole process to see what has changed and what hasn’t. The giant contraption I’m looking at is a traditional section warping machine, a device which takes the different coloured yarns, loaded onto row after row of cones, and begins the process of weaving them into a scarf. Everything is hand knotted into place according to the pattern dictated by one of the company’s designers, and by the end of the process a 50-metre piece of fabric will have been produced which can then be turned into 50 scarves.

Standing at the end of the machine loading the material into a giant drum is 53-year-old Marianne McColl. She started working here 33 years ago as a weaver. It’s a long time to have worked in one place, but she says the machine’s been here a lot longer than she has, which is how Begg & Co do a lot of their business: the traditional way. McColl's job is to feed the cashmere from the section warping machine into the drum from where it will be taken to the weaving sheds.

The way McColl does her job pretty much hasn’t changed in all the time she’s been here, but over the years, as she’s fed the material into the great drum, she has noticed how fashions have changed. “Years ago, it was thicker materials, scarves and tartans – a lot of tartan,” she says. “Whereas now it’s not so much tartan and more delicate material.”

The big thick tartan rugs used to be the mainstay of Begg & Co. The company was established by Alex Begg in 1866 in Paisley, which used to be the heart of the weaving industry, and the firm’s bestseller was the famous Begg shawl that would keep ladies’ knees warm while travelling in carriages. Then, in 1902, the company moved to Ayr, drawn by the quality of the water and the fact that it made exporting easier, and it’s still here today. The early 1900s was a time when the Scottish textile industry was developing rapidly and expanding into new markets, driven by new technology.

The modern story of the industry is not so positive and as Lorna Dempsey, the production manager in Ayr, takes me to the next stage of the process, she says Begg & Co has not been immune. “In my day, we have seen a decline and the industry has its up and downs especially in manufacturing,” she says. “But I think because we are at the high end, we don’t tend to see it as much as middle of the range brands.”

She tells me about the Mongolian goats they use and how the cashmere is brushed out of them (no goats were harmed in the making of these scarves). She also tells me about the Italian teasel plants which are dried in the sun and then used to soften the cashmere. And she tells me about the manufacturing process and how much of the work is still done by hand.

We meet one of the workers who does the intricate hand work: Margaret Parry from Prestwick. She’s sitting by a giant easel and is using a pair of magnifiers mounted on her head that, combined with the big woolly fleece she’s wearing, makes her look slightly like a benign robot. Her job today is to very slowly thread a cashmere fibre into a scarf to mend a flaw.

It’s close-up, detailed, slow work, and the remarkable thing is 63-year-old Parry has been doing it for 43 years. She tells me that what she is doing will take roughly half an hour but she loves it. “Time passes quickly because you get engrossed in what you’re doing and you can’t look away – you have to keep your eye on it.” Does she darn at home when her socks get a hole in them? No, she laughs, I chuck them in the bin.

Once she is finished, the cashmere goes to the final room where a small team cut the fabric into scarves – in the ceiling, shower heads spit out a fine spray of water to keep the room moist so the cashmere doesn’t dry out. If a member of staff from 100 years ago was able to travel in time and visit today, they would recognise some of this process, but they would be bewildered by other parts. The staff here say they modernise when it’s an improvement but keep the traditional techniques if they still work.

Around 80 per cent of the finished product is exported, mostly to Japan, but to mark its significant birthday this year the company is also promoting a scarf made from 150 colours, one for every year of its existence. By the large, the company is still doing things the way they always have, but there is a danger of some of the techniques disappearing forever. Begg & Co seems to be aware of that and works with local schools to encourage people into the industry; they also take on apprentices and train them for four years.

It’s about having as many new ideas as possible, they say, to help preserve the old ways.