Pocock Brothers was the largest boot manufacturer in the world.
Thomas Pocock (1791 – 1879) was born in Shoreditch, London. He entered into business as a boot manufacturer and leather merchant from 1815.
Pocock was soon assisted by his three sons, Thomas Gotch Pocock (1815 – 1883), Alfred Pocock (1822 – 1887) and Ebenezer Pocock (1824 – 1902).
By 1855 the sons had taken over management of the business, and began to trade as Pocock Brothers. A boot factory was established at 20-23 Southwark Bridge Road, London.
A workforce of 400 to 500 was employed by 1871.
T G Pocock was a model employer, guided by his Christian faith. He provided a pension scheme for elderly and infirm employees and was well-regarded by his workforce.
Pocock Brothers also produced padded cells for “lunatic asylums” by 1886.
Pocock Brothers advertised itself as the largest boot manufacturer in the world in 1888.
Ebenezer Pocock retired in 1889 to leave three brothers, Thomas Pocock (1844 – 1891), George Pocock (born 1853) and Percy Rogers Pocock (1857 – 1934) to manage the business.
Pocock Brothers employed well over 1,000 men and women by 1891, and along with Rabbits & Co, was the largest shoe manufacturer in London.
Pocock Brothers held contracts to supply boots to the Army and the Metropolitan Police in the 1890s.
The retail operations were sold to Freeman Hardy & Willis in 1910, but the boot manufacturing operations continued.
300 people were employed in 1914.
The business was registered as a limited company, Pocock Brothers Ltd, from 1927.
By 1988 the business was based at 235 Southwark Bridge Road and was a leading supplier to the shoe repair trade.
Saxone was the largest footwear manufacturer in Scotland.
Origins
Clark & Co of Kilmarnock was established in 1820. The firm largely manufactured shoes for export, particularly to South America.
Following the implementation of import tariffs in many countries, Clark began to open retail outlets across Great Britain from 1887.
The company factory at Titchfield Street, Kilmarnock, employed 150 people by 1904.
F & G Abbott Ltd was a shoe retailer established in 1902 which purchased much of its stock from Clark & Co. Saxone was their own-label brand for an American-style men’s shoe.
The Saxone brand offered half sizes, as well as five different fittings for each size. This wide offering of varieties was the key behind its success.
Saxone Shoe Company
Clark & Sons merged with F & G Abbott in 1908 to form the Saxone Shoe Company. George Clark (1861 – 1937) and George Sutherland Abbott (1862 – 1940) became joint-managing directors.
The Saxone Shoe Co went public with a share capital of £1 million in 1928. There were 106 retail stores by this time.
George Clark, chairman and managing director, died in 1937. G S Abbott died in 1940 and left an estate valued at £133,592.
Throughout the Second World War a large proportion of production was devoted to military service contracts, including regulation army boots and officer’s footwear.
1,200 people were employed at 180 retail branches by 1948, and 1,000 people were employed at the Kilmarnock factory.
Merger with Lilley & Skinner
The company merged with Lilley & Skinner to form Saxone, Lilley & Skinner in 1956. The merger combined the second and third largest shoe retailers in Britain, largely in order to combat the rise of British Shoe Corporation, the largest shoe retailer in Britain.
The merger was to prove a success, and profits rose considerably. Saxone, Lilley & Skinner operated 475 shops, four major factories and 15 repair workshops by 1961.
Acquisition by British Shoe Corporation
Saxone, Lilley & Skinner was acquired by British Shoe Corporation, the largest shoe retailer in Britain, for £27 million in 1962. The merged company was the largest shoe chain business in the world with 40 percent of the British shoe market and 2,000 shops.
British Shoe realised between £10 million and £15 million by selling the freehold of the majority of the Saxone, Lilley & Skinner sites and leasing them back.
The company introduced American Hush Puppie shoes to Britain in the 1960s.
Saxone manufacturing was severely affected by Italian imports to Britain in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Saxone had 111 outlets and 1,100 full-time equivalent staff in 1995, but the chain was loss-making. British Shoe Corporation closed the unprofitable Saxone stores in 1996, and the profitable outlets were sold to Facia. Later that year Facia entered receivership and 61 Saxone stores were acquired by the Stylo sports footwear group (now Barratts of Bradford).
George Payne & Co became the largest tea merchant firm in the world. The business is best-known today for Poppets, a chocolate-coated toffee confectionery.
Largest tea merchants in the world
George Daniel Payne (1845 – 1927) was a tea buyer and blender for Brooke Bond. He was recognised as a forthright figure.
Payne established George Payne & Co, tea and coffee blenders, from 1896. The factory was at Queen Elizabeth Street, Tower Bridge, Bermondsey. James Finlay & Co, a Scottish tea merchant, held a 30 percent stake in the venture.
George Payne & Co blended and packed own-label tea for J Sainsbury, a grocery chain, under the Red Label name, from 1903. George Payne & Co was the largest tea merchant business in the world by 1910.
George Payne & Co expanded into cocoa production from 1905, and this led to their entrance into the confectionery market from 1910. The Tower Bridge factory was extended to five storeys to accommodate increasing production.
Payne’s enters into mass production of confectionery
A new confectionery factory was opened at Croydon Road, Beddington in 1919. Built across one storey on a 55-acre site, it produced cocoa, chocolate and confectionery. It prospered by concentrating on a limited number of product lines.
The Croydon Road, Beddington site, c.1991
George Daniel Payne died in 1927 and left a gross estate valued at £81,491. Management of the business was taken over by Robert Henry Payne (1892 – 1946).
The Tower Bridge factory was rebuilt following a destructive fire in 1929.
One of the most popular product lines was the dragée, a bite-sized sweet with a chocolate coating, based on a confection popular in Vienna. The name was eventually anglicised to Payne’s Poppets, and the trademark was registered in 1936.
Poppets quickly became a leading product for the business. They were popular with cinema and theatre-goers as their cardboard-box packaging made them less noisy and more convenient to handle. Also, the “polished” chocolate coating did not readily melt, which reduced mess.
George Payne & Co employed 500 people by the late 1930s.
Robert Henry Payne died with an estate valued at £163,567 in 1946. Management of the business was taken over by his brother, Ronald George Payne (born 1910).
By the mid-1950s Poppets were available in a variety of flavours: Milk and Plain assortment, Brazils, Hazelnut, Almonds and All Nut assortment and Vanilla and Peppermint Creams.
Despite the success of Poppets, George Payne & Co continued as one of the largest tea blenders in Britain.
James Finlay & Co increased its stake in George Payne & Co to take overall control of the business in the 1950s.
The Tower Bridge site was closed in 1990 and tea processing was relocated to a new site at Elmsall, near Pontefract in Yorkshire.
Just Brazils was a top ten boxed chocolate by 1996, and Poppets was the eighth highest selling children’s confectionery.
Subsequent ownership
James Finlay & Co decided to focus on their tea and coffee interests. The George Payne & Co confectionery business was sold to Northern Foods for £10 million in 1998.
George Payne & Co was the 48th largest confectionery manufacturer in the world in 2000. It had an annual turnover of $120 million, and employed 500 people.
The Beddington factory had become outdated, and offered limited potential for expansion. It was closed with the loss of 157 jobs in 2002, and production was relocated to Leicester.
Northern Foods sold its confectionery arm, including Fox’s glacier mints as well as Payne’s, to Big Bear for £9.4 million in 2003.
The Leicester factory was closed in 2019, and production of Poppets was relocated to York.
Faire Brothers of Leicester operated the largest shoe findings factory in England.
Watkin Lewis Faire (1819 – 1892) was born in Kidderminster. He relocated to Leicester from 1850 to work as an agent for the Leicester Temperance Society. He visited 3,030 houses in 1851.
Faire established Faire Brothers, lace manufacturers, in partnership with his brother in 1855.
His son, Arthur Faire (1854 – 1933), established Smith Faire & Co, boot and shoe manufacturers, in 1876.
Watkin Lewis Faire retired from Faire Brothers in 1886, and the business was continued by his three sons, Joseph Louis Faire (1841 – 1898), John Edward Faire (1843 – 1929) and Samuel Faire (1849 – 1931).
Watkin Lewis Faire died in 1892, and his funeral took place immediately after that of Thomas Cook, travel agent and fellow temperance advocate.
Faire Brothers operated factories at Wimbledon Street and Southampton Street, Leicester by 1892.
Joseph Louis Faire was the head of Faire Brothers when he died in 1898.
Watkin Lewis Faire built a new factory at Rutland Street, Leicester in 1898. The firm acquired a factory at Borrowash, Derbyshire, in 1900.
Faire Brothers became a limited company with a capital of £250,000 in 1900.
St George’s Mills, Wimbledon Street, Leicester was the largest shoe findings factory in England by 1912. Faire Brothers employed 600 workers. Most of the factory machinery was built by the company itself.
St George’s Mills in Leicester
John Edward Faire was chairman by 1916.
Faire Brothers received a contract to provide around one million pairs of braces for the army in 1916. The firm also manufactured suspenders and garters.
Faire Brothers had seven factories across Leicester, Burton upon Trent and Borrowash in Derbyshire by 1917. They included the largest small wares factories in Britain.
During the First World War, the firm was able to take a large share of the shoe and boot lace market, which had largely been held by German manufacturers.
John Edward Faire died in 1929 and left a gross estate valued at £166,113.
Sir Samuel Faire died in 1931 and left £271,874. A Liberal Unionist, he had been a keen philanthropist throughout his life.
Ernest Alfred Lillie, company chairman, died in 1956. By this time Faire Brothers had factories at Burton upon Trent, Thorne near Doncaster, Mansfield, Borrowash and Leicester.
Faire Brothers was acquired by Phipps & Son in 1967.
Faire Brothers employed 1,000 people by 1970, including 400 at the Rutland Street factory. That year the unprofitable braces and suspenders manufacturing operation was closed down due to declining sales.
Phipps extensively streamlined the Faire Brothers operations, reducing eight factories to two large factories and two smaller specialist supporting factories.
Smith Faire & Co was liquidated in 1982.
Chamberlain Phipps entered into receivership in 1996 and was subject to a management buyout.
Thomas Vaughan of Middlesbrough was the largest manufacturer of pig iron in the world.
Thomas Vaughan (1836 – 1900) was the only son of John Vaughan (1799 – 1868), a partner in Bolckow Vaughan & Co, iron manufacturers of Middlesbrough, North East England.
Thomas Vaughan worked at Bolckow & Vaughan. His father gifted him half of his shares in the firm, to the value of £200,000. Using these funds, Thomas Vaughan established works at South Bank and Clay Lane, Eston, Middlesbrough.
Thomas Vaughan & Co was the largest manufacturer of pig iron in the world by 1869.
T Vaughan & Co opened two new furnaces in 1869 which could each produce 400 tons of pig iron per week. There were 16 blast furnaces by 1871.
700 blast-furnace workers went on strike in 1871, demanding an increase in pay. All of the strikers were dismissed.
In 1872 the firm had nine furnaces (7.5 of which were in use) at South Bank and six at Clay Lane. The firm had 36 puddling furnaces at Whessoe, Darlington and 30 at Bishop Auckland.
George Neesham, the general manager, was brought in as a junior partner to reflect his long service to the firm.
The loss-making business entered into administration in 1876. The gross liabilities of the firm amounted to over £1 million.
Vaughan was dismissed from his business in 1878. He suffered from ill-health in his later years.
Eight furnaces of the South Bank Iron Works were acquired by Bolckow Vaughan & Co for £125,000 in 1879.
Bolckow Vaughan was the largest manufacturer of pig iron and steel in the world.
Bolckow and Vaughan establish the business
Henry William Ferdinand Bolckow (1806 – 1878) was born in Germany and emigrated to Newcastle upon Tyne. He made a fortune in the corn trade as a partner in C Allhusen & Co.
Portrait of Henry Bolckow (1806 – 1878), c.1860
Bolckow entered into partnership with John Vaughan (1799 – 1868), a Welsh ironmaker, from 1840.The two men established a cast iron works at Middlesbrough, consisting of a foundry, two rolling mills and an engineer’s shop. Bolckow supplied capital of £10,000 and Vaughan provided the technical expertise. Profits were divided equally.
The site offered reasonable shipping costs, allowing for the convenient importation of Scottish pig iron from Fife, and a ready supply of fuel from the Durham coalfield via the Stockton and Darlington railway.
Bolckow Vaughan initially constructed engines, and supplied the engine for the English Rose, the first steamboat built on the Tees in 1843.
Bolckow Vaughan established four blast furnaces at Witton Park near Bishop Auckland in 1846. Iron was produced from ironstone, which was mainly sourced from nearby Weardale.
Bolckow Vaughan used 62,400 tons of ironstone, 104,000 tons of coke and coal and 20,800 tons of limestone in 1846. The Middlesbrough works produced over 400 tons of iron rails each week.
Cleveland ironstone is discovered
John Vaughan, together with mining engineer John Marley (1823 -1891), discovered the main bed of ironstone at Eston in Cleveland in 1850. Blast furnaces were erected at Eston in order to smelt the ironstone deposits and manufacture pig iron from 1851.
Strong growth ensued as a result of this discovery, and the business employed 4,000 people and produced over 120,000 tons of iron in 1855.
Bolckow Vaughan had 17 blast furnaces by 1864. The business was largely responsible for the growth of the town of Middlesbrough, as people relocated to the area in search of work.
Bolckow dedicated the 100-acre Albert Park to the town of Middlesbrough at a cost of over £20,000 in 1864. A staunch Liberal, Bolckow became the first mayor of Middlesbrough in 1853, and served as its Member of Parliament from 1868 until his death in 1878.
Bolckow Vaughan is registered as a limited liability company
Bolckow Vaughan & Co Ltd was registered as a limited liability company with a capital of £2.5 million in 1865. At the time it was the largest company to have been registered. Over 9,000 people were employed, with 2,000 to 3,000 tons of stone mined every day, and 160,000 tons of iron produced per annum.
Portrait of John Vaughan (1799 – 1868), c.1860
Vaughan had been raised as a Wesleyan Methodist, but became an Anglican in his later years. He had a hard-working man with a keen intellect and a natural instinct for management. He died in 1868, and his only son, Thomas Vaughan (1836 – 1900), inherited his fortune.
At one point it was believed that the rise of steel and the declining importance of iron would ruin the prospects of Bolckow Vaughan. Steel could only be produced from iron that was free from phosphorus, and the Cleveland ironstone had a high phosphorus content. Fortunately the company discovered that it could import hematite, and make steel of equal quality and at lower cost than that imported from abroad.
Bolckow Vaughan established a steelworks at Eston, on the outskirts of Middlesbrough, in 1875. It was the first steelworks in the North of England to utilise the Bessemer process.
Edward Windsor Richards (1831 – 1921), former manager of the Ebbw Vale Co Works, was appointed general manager of the firm from 1876.
Edward Windsor Richards (1831 – 1921) c.1894
Bolckow Vaughan produced 300,000 tons of iron a year with 20 blast furnaces in 1877. The company employed a workforce of 12,000 people.
Bolckow Vaughan had twelve collieries and produced one million tons of coal annually by 1878.
At the initiative of Richards the Thomas-Gilchrist process was used from 1878. It allowed steel to be made using the local iron ore, which had previously been unsuitable due to its high phosphorus content. Utilising the new method resulted in lower production costs.
Henry Bolckow served as chairman of the company until his death in 1878. He left an estate valued at nearly £800,000.
Bolckow Vaughan acquired eight furnaces at the Southbank Iron Works in Eston from Thomas Vaughan & Co, which had entered into liquidation, for £125,000 in 1879. The deal transformed the company into the largest manufacturers of pig iron in the world, with 28 blast furnaces, several of which were among the largest in the world. At full capacity the the company could produce over 11,000 tons of pig iron a week. Bolckow Vaughan possessed one sixth of all the furnaces in the North of England.
Bolckow Vaughan was one of the largest iron and steel manufacturing companies in the world by 1881. The business regularly employed 10,000 to 12,000 workers in County Durham and Yorkshire. The Cleveland Works were the largest steelworks in the world, capable of producing 4,000 tons of steel rails every week. Per annum the company manufactured 500,000 tons of pig iron and mined 1.5 million tons of ironstone and two million tons of coal.
Bolckow Vaughan ranked among the largest commercial enterprises in the world, and Teesside was the principal site for British iron production.
Bolckow Vaughan established two steel plate mills at Eston in 1885. The company could produce 1,000 tons of steel plates and 3,000 tons of steel rails per week.
Edward Windsor Richards resigned as general manager in 1888, but returned to Bolckow Vaughan the following year as chairman and managing director.
Bolckow Vaughan was the largest iron and steel company in Britain by 1891. The company had a capital of £4 million and employed 10,000 people.
Bolckow Vaughan had the largest number of blast furnaces in the United Kingdom for pig iron production, and was the largest producer of steel rails in 1898. The company employed 16,000 people.
The Clay Lane Iron Co of Middlesbrough was acquired in 1899. Its six furnaces were dedicated to the production of foundry iron (used to make cast iron).
Bolckow Vaughan was the largest British iron and steel producer in 1915, and employed 18,000 people. The steelworks had a productive capacity of 220,000 tons per annum. The company had 23 blast furnaces on South Bank and a further two in Middlesbrough. There were four ironstone mines in Cleveland, 13 collieries in County Durham and limestone quarries. An average of two million tons of ironstone were mined per annum.
Decline and sale to Dorman Long
Darlington Rolling Mills was acquired from George E Sisterton in 1920.
Redpath Brown & Co, constructional engineers of Glasgow, was acquired in 1923.
Bolckow Vaughan closed five uneconomic coal pits in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, with the loss of 2,500 jobs in 1926.
Bolckow Vaughan entered into serious financial difficulties following the post-war boom. It lost a total of £2 million between 1920 and 1927.
Bolckow Vaughan was acquired by its Middlesbrough rival Dorman Long in 1929. The purchase established Dorman Long as the largest steel, iron and engineering company in the British Empire. The combined business had a capital of over £17 million and employed 32,000 people.
Palmer’s of Jarrow was the largest shipbuilder in the world throughout much of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Jarrow became nicknamed “Palmer’s Town”.
The Palmer brothers establish a shipbuilding works
Charles Mark Palmer (1822 – 1907) was born in South Shields, the son of a merchant and shipowner.
Charles Palmer partnered with John Bowes to establish a coke-making business. John Bowes & Co grew to become one of the largest colliery concerns in the North of England, producing one million tons of coal per annum.
The growth of the railway network meant that coal from the Midlands could be supplied to the large London market at a lower cost than coal from the North. Palmer believed that coal could be shipped to London at a lower cost if steam-powered vessels were used instead of wooden sailing ships.
Together with his brother George Palmer (1814 – 1879), Charles Palmer leased a shipyard at Jarrow on Tyne from 1851. It had previously been used to make wooden frigates for the Royal Navy.
Palmer Brothers launched the John Bowes, the first successful iron-built, steam-powered, screw-propelled, water-ballasted collier, in 1852. The John Bowes became the first steam ship to transport coal from the North of England to London.
The launching of the HMS Queen Mary from Palmer’s shipyard in 1912
Palmer Brothers soon became known for the quality of its ships,and received its first Royal Navy contract in 1856. The HMS Terror was the first rolled-iron, armour-plated ship. The Royal Navy association would remain throughout the history of the company.
Four blast-furnaces were built in 1857, and rolling mills in 1859.
Palmer Brothers was the largest shipbuilder in the world by 1859.
The business employed 3,500 men, consumed 18,000 tons of iron, and produced over 22,000 tons of shipping every year by the early 1860s.
George Palmer retired from business in 1862.
Charles Palmer opened a Mechanic’s Institute for the education of the men of Jarrow in 1864.
Palmers is registered as a company
The business was registered as Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company Ltd in 1865.
The Jarrow works covered nearly 100 acres of land by 1869. Four blast furnaces had a capacity of 60,000 tons of pig iron per annum. Around 5,000 men were employed.
Rolling mills were established from 1874.
Sir Charles Mark Palmer (1822 – 1907) in 1899
Charles Palmer was appointed as a Member of Parliament from 1874. However the business suffered without his presence, and he was forced to return in 1876 to save the company. Various members of management were dismissed.
Palmers broke the record for the largest shipping tonnage (61,113) produced in a single year in 1883. Palmer was largely producing cargo-carrying steamships for the coal and iron industries of the North of England.
A steel works was established from 1885.
Charles Palmer employed over 20,000 people by 1891, and was one of the largest employers of labour in the country.
The shipbuilding works employed 7,600 people in 1893. The majority of the workforce consisted of Irish immigrants.
The works began to make a loss, and Palmer, facing bankruptcy, resigned as head of the company in 1893.
Palmers was the sixth largest shipbuilder in Britain, as measured by tonnage, in 1899. Just under 10,000 men were employed by the company by 1900. Between 1852 and 1900, nearly 1.25 million tons of shipping were produced, more than any other company.
A steel-producing plant, the third of its kind in England, was opened in 1903.
The company employed 7,500 people in 1908, and was amongst the top thirty largest British manufacturing employers. In 1910 the Jarrow works covered nearly three quarters of a mile along the River Tyne, and about 100 acres. The works included five blast furnaces.
Lord Furness, a local industrialist, became chairman of the company from 1910. Furness planned to extend and consolidate the firm. Under his impetus, in 1911 the firm acquired Robert Stephenson & Sons, with a shipyard at Hebburn. The Hebburn site included the largest dry dock on the East coast; the only one capable of accommodating the new dreadnought battleships. Hebburn would take on merchant work, and Jarrow would be largely dedicated to naval contracts.
Following a reluctance of shareholders to contribute further capital to the company, as well as his ailing health, Furness resigned in 1912. The national coal strike of 1912 cost the firm £30,000.
Palmer’s shipyard in the early twentieth century. Courtesy of the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.
The San Hilario was launched in 1913. Built for the Eagle Oil Transport Company, it was the largest oil tank steamer afloat.
By 1913 the firm had built 76 battleships at its Jarrow yard.
During the First World War Palmers docked and repaired 347 warships and merchant vessels.
Palmers built its thousandth vessel in 1930.
Palmers enters into receivership
Palmers shipyard entered receivership in 1934. It was taken over by National Shipbuilding Securities Ltd, a government company which acquired redundant yards.
Thomas W Ward Ltd of Sheffield, a dismantling firm, acquired the Jarrow blast furnaces and steel works in 1934. The company acquired the yard in 1935.
Vickers Armstrong Ltd acquired the Hebburn site in 1935, which continued to be operated under its old management.
The poverty that ensued among former Palmers workers led to the Jarrow March of 1936.
Manfield & Sons became one of the largest shoemakers in Northampton, and opened retail shops in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Moses Philip Manfield establishes the business
Moses Philip Manfield (1819 – 1899) was born in Bristol, the son of a poor shoemaker. He was raised as a Unitarian.
At the age of twelve he was apprenticed as a boot closer (one who sewed the uppers of boots) at a shoe factory. He eventually rose to the position of manager.
Manfield relocated to manage a business in Northampton in 1843. The business failed, but local Unitarians assisted Manfield to re-establish himself.
Manfield decided to target the lower-end of the market, and government contracts.The business employed 200 workers by 1851.
Manfield built a large factory on Campbell Square, Northampton in 1862.
Growth of the business and expansion into retail
Manfield became one of the leading shoe manufacturers in Northampton. The business employed a workforce of 688 people by 1871.
The introduction of mechanisation allowed Manfield to lower staffing levels. He employed 231 men and 20 boys in 1881.
Harry Manfield (1855 – 1923) and James Manfield (1857 – 1925) entered the firm as partners in 1883, and the business became known as Manfield & Sons.
Retail branches were opened in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Sheffield and Birmingham in 1884. A retail branch was opened in Paris in 1889.
A larger factory was built on Wellingborough Road in 1892, and the Campbell Square site was closed. The new factory was capable of producing 350,000 pairs of shoes a year. It was the first shoe factory in England to utilise the American system of keeping all the workshops on the ground floor.
Moses Philip Manfield used this juncture to delegate day to day management of the firm to his two sons.
Moses Philip Manfield was knighted in 1894. He was one of the best known boot and shoe manufacturers in Britain.
Moses Philip Manfield died in 1899. There were over 30 retail shops by this time.
Retail branches were opened in Belgium and the Netherlands in 1901.
By 1910 the firm employed over 1,300 workers at its Northampton factory, and there were over 70 retail branches across Britain and Europe.
Manfield & Sons was incorporated as a private company in 1920.
The company employed 2,525 people by 1944.
Manfield & Sons was converted into a public company with an authorised capital of £3 million in 1950. The business could produce 27,000 pairs of shoes and boots in a week. There were 102 retail branches, including eight in Belgium and one in the Netherlands. The company employed around 2,500 people.
Loss of independence and recent history
Manfield & Sons was acquired by the Charles Clore (1904 – 1979) controlled J Sears & Co for £3.37 million in 1956. Manfield operated 180 retail branches, as well as interests in France and the Netherlands.
The quality middle-market Manfield was merged with Saxone, another Sears subsidiary, in 1990. A new chain of 30 Manfield stores was established to cater to the over-40s market.
Sears divested a number of shops, including Manfield, to Fascia in 1995. Manfield in the Netherlands was subject to a management buyout in 1996. Facia entered into administration in 1997.
Manfield footwear and retail shops still exist in the Netherlands and France. In the Netherlands the chain has 69 stores and 620 employees. In France there are 33 Manfield stores.
Manfield shoes are still sold in Britain, where the brand is owned by the Jacobson Group, which also owns the Gola sportswear and Dolcis shoe brands.
How did an illiterate man establish the largest brickworks in Britain?
George Smeed
George Smeed (1811 – 1881) was born in Sittingbourne, Kent. He received little formal education. He worked for a period as a hawker, sleeping underneath roadside bushes at night. Eventually he saved enough money to buy a small public house.
Smeed acquired a plot of land at Sittingbourne and established a brickworks in 1845.
Smeed became one of the largest employers in Kent. He was the largest brickmaker in England by 1871.
Smeed succeeded due to his business acumen, energy and foresight. A John Bull-type figure, he was a colourful man, inclined to use strong language. He was illiterate, and long after he became wealthy he could barely sign his name.
Smeed Dean
Smeed was joined by his son-in-law, George Hambrook Dean (1834 – 1924), to form Smeed Dean & Co in 1875.
Smeed Dean was the largest brick manufacturer in Britain, and produced over 60 million bricks in 1877.
A portrait of George Smeed (1811 – 1881) by Eden Upton Ellis (1878). Image used with permission from Art UK.
Smeed was presented with a portrait, funded by public subscription, in recognition of his charitable works in 1878.
When Smeed died in 1881 he operated the largest brickmaking works in the world. His obituary in the Western Press hailed him as “the making of Sittingbourne”. He left a personal estate valued at £160,000. Dean succeeded him as head of the company.
Smeed Dean employed 1,400 workers by 1902, and paid up to £80,000 a year in wages.
Dean died with an estate valued at £184,929 in 1924. He left bequests to various Baptist organisations, and insisted upon a humble funeral.
Smeed Dean & Co
Following the death of Dean the business was registered as Smeed Dean & Co. The company estimated that three billion Smeed Dean bricks had been used in London alone by 1925. The company was the largest producer of stock bricks in Britain in 1926.
2,000 men at the North East Kent brickworks went on strike regarding pay in 1926.
Smeed Dean was acquired by Dunstable Portland Cement Company in 1927. The Sittingbourne site was modernised at a cost of nearly £100,000.
Dunstable Portland Cement Company was acquired by Red Triangle for £1 million in 1928. It created one of the largest cement and brick manufacturers in Britain, and was the largest supplier of general building materials.
An automated brickmaking plant had been installed at Sittingbourne by 1929. It was capable of manufacturing 20 million London stock bricks per annum, and was the largest of its kind in Europe. In total Smeed Dean produced 60 million bricks a year at Sittingbourne; London stock, red facing and multi-coloured. The company owned 80 barges for brick transportation.
J Sears & Co was the largest shoe manufacturer and distributor in the world.
John George Sears establishes his business
John George Sears (1870 – 1916) was the son of a Northampton leather seller. He was raised as a Congregationalist.
Sears began his working life as a clicker (one who cuts the uppers for shoes and boots from leather). He eventually rose to the position of factory foreman.
Sears established J Sears & Co with a small factory on Derby Road, Northampton, in 1891. He was able to win market share from the strike-affected Manfield of Northampton in 1895.
Sears was joined by his brother, William Thomas Sears (1877 – 1950), from 1897.
J Sears & Co opened its first retail outlet in 1897. A branch was opened on Fleet Street, London in 1900.
A large factory on Adnitt Road, Northampton, was acquired in 1904.
The J Sears & Co factory on Adnitt Road, Northampton (c.1913)
Much of the success of the business was due to extensive advertising, and the energy, bold application and sound judgement of J G Sears.
J Sears & Co goes public
J Sears & Co went public with a capital of £350,000 in 1912. 12,500 pairs of boots were produced every week from one of the largest shoe factories in Britain. The company had 80 retail branches, including 47 in London, which targeted the mid-range market and operated on a high sales, low-margin basis. The shops pioneered the establishment of attractive window displays, with clearly marked prices.
J Sears & Co produced boots for the army during the First World War. The company employed 1,000 people in manufacture, and 1,000 people in retail by 1916.
Sears was a generous, likeable and unaffected man. Shortly after the public offering his health broke down, “undermined by years of almost superhuman activity”, according to the Taunton Courier. He died in 1916 with a net personalty of £356,287. William Thomas Sears succeeded his brother as chairman and managing director.
J Sears & Co acquires Freeman Hardy & Willis
J Sears & Co acquired Freeman Hardy & Willis, probably the largest shoe retailer in Britain, for over £4 million in 1928. The merger created the largest shoe manufacturing and distribution business in the world, with 796 shops and a market value of over £9 million.
J Sears & Co operated eight factories and 800 retail outlets by 1934. Approximately 10,000 people were employed. Around eight million pairs of shoes were sold every year, supplying about 20 percent of the British market. The company operated a retail outlet in every British community with a population of over 20,000.
William Thomas Sears retired as chairman and managing director in 1948.
J Sears & Co is acquired by Charles Clore
Investor Charles Clore (1904 – 1979) had noticed that the J Sears & Co property assets were undervalued on the company balance sheet. His acquisition of the company for £4.5 million in 1953 represented the first successful hostile takeover in British history.
Clore immediately sold around half of the freehold and leasehold shop properties to gain over £4.6 million. He later commented, “In some businesses the profits earned show that existing assets are not being employed in the fullest capacity… [no] business can afford to have its resources remaining stagnant”. He also announced plans to modernise the business, update branches and increase export sales.
Clore acquired Dolcis, with 250 shoe shops, in 1956.
By 1959 Clore controlled 1,500 shoe shops, and accounted for 25 percent of all footwear sales in Britain. Sears manufactured footwear accounted for around one third of sales.
Saxone-Lilley & Skinner, with 475 shoe shops, was acquired in 1962. Sears became the largest shoemaker in Europe, and with 2,000 shops, controlled over half of the footwear retail trade in Britain. Charles Clore was reputedly one of the richest men in the world.
J Sears & Co divested its shoe factories in a management buyout in 1988.
J Sears & Co had exited the shoe retail business by 1998.
