End of an era – wood turners Brettell's leaves Chestnut Avenue

- the last active member of a five-generation-firm dies

A piece of local industrial history slipped by, almost unnoticed, last month. The Chestnut Avenue factory of H Brettell & Sons Ltd, woodturners, stair and handrail manufacturers, closed for the last time.

Getting ready to close the doors for
 the last time at Brettell's in Chestnut Road

In a downsizing move, the company, now branded as 'Brettell's', transferred their local business to a railway arch in Winchelsea Road – just a couple of doors along from the Wanstead Tap – thus returning near to a previous Forest Gate location.

Busy workshop in Chestnut Road,
 just a few months ago

The company started life in Haggerston, around 1830, when Henry Brettell, a 14-year old descendent of Huguenot French cabinet makers, began to produce handles for tools and turnings for local traders, next to a sawmill.  He was able to use their off-cuts and scrap as the basis for his raw materials.

Eighty years after establishment, the firm – then run by the founder's son (also Henry) and grandsons – moved to larger premises in Bethnal Green, and soon began war work – making munition boxes and handles for trench periscopes for the army during World War 1. There was no electrically powered machinery -  everything was driven by wide leather belts from pulleys on overhead line-shafting and run from a neighbour's motor through a hole in the wall.

Henry Brettell with second son, Will

In the age before handles for almost everything were made of plastic, companies like Brettells' contributed to a bewildering range of products and supplied numerous occupations: jewellers, for their rosewood engraving tools' handles; glass merchant's cutter handles; handles for paint brushes and most hand tools; boxwood post office date stamps; publicans' beer pump handles; judges' wig stands; lighter bases for Ronsons; ceremonial sword scabbards for Wilkinson: chair legs for furniture.

Henry James Brettell, Rob's grandfather
 and third generation of the family
 to work at the firm

Lignum pucks for deck quoits on the great Cunard liners, were made by Brettell's, as well as mallets for croquet, fids for plaiting rope in the Royal Navy, collars for GPO transatlantic telephone cables, morticians mallets, police truncheons, floggers for hammering bungs into beer barrels, lemon cutting boards for pubs, stone masons mallets and lead dressers for roofers. The list is almost endless and in its heyday, extended to every part of British industry and enterprise.

Inter- war price list from Brettells

 The third generation Henry, and his brothers, continued to run the business after the death of their father, in 1921 – although closed briefly during the depression of the early 1930's.  By the end of that decade they were back in business, concentrating on “war work” and their employees were designated to be in a “reserved occupation”, and thus exempt from military service.

War damage in Bethnal Green

Although bombed, the company survived the blitz and continued working from their Bethnal Green base on civilian work, post war, until its premises was CPO'd by the London County Council in 1955, to make way for housing.

And, so began its almost 60-year relationship with Forest Gate.  James Brettell moved the business to four railway arches and 10,000 square feet of space at 350 Winchelsea Road - where it would remain until 1980.

Surviving company documents show that Brettell's took over an existing Forest Gate firm of wood turners – H Oliver and Sons Ltd, when they moved in. Not only did it acquire their arches' lease from British Rail, it also took Oliver's wood turning machinery – some of which was still in use, until recently, in Chestnut Avenue. The buy-out cost Brettell's a mere £500.

Goldstein hand turning lathe being put
 through its paces, in Brettell's heyday

Brettell's website describes the local setting soon after their move:

Winchelsea Road during the 70’s was surrounded by a fascinating mix of interesting characters with a variety of occupations with, it seemed, the woodturning factory at its heart. There was the car mechanic; the blacksmith; the women bottle washers; the sprayer; the seed merchant; the tinsmith and the stone masons. We all got sandwiches from Alec’s corner café (ed: now a Caribbean Cafe)with a juke box, Bev coffee and a pin ball machine jacked up on wooden blocks to make the ball run faster. There was the corner shop; the brush makers; the clothing factory and the printers. The street seemed to be full of cars all tied together with string.

When a free coffee machine was installed outside the office this often became a focal point and an excuse for people to visit and of course at some point everyone needed a piece of wood or some wood chips. The company supplied the whole road with wood chips for their chip burners. Every so often they would bring back some charred spanners that had been swept up and bagged with the chips. A lot of trading went on within this small community under the barter system and it became known as “The Mill”.

Jim Brettell, James' son and the last surviving member of the family, who has never played an active part in its production, says that his father was well known for giving local characters in search of work, or who had fallen on hard times, a break and a job at the company. He employed many a released prisoner on the advice of Probation Officers, together with one of the first black immigrants in the area from the Dominican Republic.

James Brettell, fourth generation
 family member and father of Rob,
 the last in the active line

The business continued to prosper, under family control, and in 1980 moved to more convenient freehold premises,  8,500 square foot of industrial space in the midst of the otherwise residential Chestnut Avenue, less than a mile away. These premises had been vacated by Messrs Westgate Grafton, dealers in woodworking machinery. Control of the firm had passed successively through the third and fourth generation Brettells, until fifth generation, Rob (Jim, above's brother) took over in 1995.

Rob, as a youngster at the workshop

The company began to diversify in the early years of the present century, moving into production of large turnings for staircases and complex hand-railing in order to supplement general woodturning which was becoming less profitable as demand fell.
  
It has been from Chestnut Avenue that highly skilled craftsmen, using a variety of machine tools and lathes have been able to produce bespoke products to the very highest of standards for a wide range of customers – from building merchants to high-spec jobs in some of the most prestigious locations in Britain, such as Mayfair and Knightsbridge (see photographs).

Chestnut Road workshop, recently, as it
 is cleared out, before house building
commences (above and below) 

At its peak, the company employed up to 20 people. With the departure of some of them, and the move away from woodturning, we have lost some of the most skilled turners and woodworkers in the country, whose craft and techniques have been forever lost.

Recently deceased Rob Brettell,
 last in the family active in the company

With the fifth generation, Rob's, death this Spring, there is no longer an active member of the family employed on the manufacturing side of the business.  The company has decided to downsize and move back to its former stomping ground in Winchelsea Road railway arches – just occupying one, this time, about 50 yards away from its earlier base.

Back home? inside the new
premises in Winchelsea Road

So much for the history, what of the practice, and present?

The company still produces staircases and fittings to the highest order and maintains the tradition of hand-crafted production, spurning the growing use of computer-controlled 5 axis CNC machines.

Fork lift truck entering the new premises

They continue to believe  that it's only by the use of old-style techniques that the very best results can be achieved and when required, especially in sensitive historic locations. A look at their website: www.brettells.co.uk shows the high quality workmanship and range of products and customised goods made and supplied.

A recently produced and  customised staircase

Although the closure of Chestnut Avenue feels like the end of an era, the firm is still producing locally. If you have specialist joinery needs, why not pop in, have a chat and see if they can match your specification?

'The Wanstead' - one of the
company's standard products

The vacant premises on Chestnut Avenue will become the site of six new houses and the bulldozers will be in soon to demolish the old (and frankly crumbling) workshops currently standing there.

For details on the fascinating  history of the rest of Chestnut Avenue, see next week's blog, when local historian Peter Williams produces another of his historical Forest Gate street guides.

Footnote. There is a great selection of photographs of Brettell's, as a small woodworking factory, in an edition of Spitalfields Life from June 2014 (see here), to whom we are indebted for the use of some of the photographs in this article (as indicated). Brettell's own website (see here) provides more information and photographs about the firm, to whom we are also indebted for their use.

The Trebor story: Forest Gate's sweet success

In 1907 four young men set up an enterprise to boil sugar, and make sweets, in Forest Gate - from sugar bought from Henry Tate in Canning Town.  They established a company called Robertson and Woodcock on Katherine Road. The four were: Thomas King, a wholesale grocer from Limehouse, William Woodcock, also from Limehouse and a sugar boiler, Robert Robertson, a retail grocer from Canning Town and Sydney Herbert Marks, a sweets salesman from Leytonstone.



Co-founder, Robert Robertson

They were to turn it into Forest Gate's most successful, ever, business and rename it Trebor. This is their story.


Co-founder, William Woodcock

The business was originally named after its two full time employees, the other two moonlighted for it, while employed by others, at first. There is a widespread misconception that the company later renamed itself as the reverse spelling of Robertson's christian name, Robert (Trebor). This, however, is merely a co-incidence.  There was already a Trebor House (built in 1891) and a Trebor Terrace on the Katherine Road site, on which they founded the firm (see photo).





Co-founder, Sydney
Herbert Marks

Trebor Terrace, predated the building
of the factory in Katherine Road

The original rent for the premises was £1 per week.  The year after the company was established the founders purchased their first horse and cart van (see photo) and paid the driver 23/- (£1.15, today) a week and his van boy 6/- (30p).


1908 staff photo of Robertson and Woodcock

One of first delivery vans for
Roberston and Woodcock, c 1910

The company was, in many ways, very forward looking - as will be shown, and it became one of the first businesses in London to purchase its own motorised transport, in 1915 (see photo).


One of earliest company motor
vehicles in London c 1915

The war was, of course, a challenge for the company - which had 16 employees in 1916.  It faced rationing of sugar, in 1917, but it rose to the challenge. It even produced products aimed at the troops, one called Army and Navy Paregoric Tablets (see photo), contained tincture of opium (!), for its soothing qualities. Other sweets produced at the time included Mixed Fruit Drops, Rock Allsorts, Pineapple Drops and Pear Drops.

Opium-laced product for
World War 1 soldiers!

The partners registered the name Trebor as a trademark four days after the end of the First World War, which effectively became its new trading name, after the retirement of William Woodcock, who was perhaps more interested in alcohol than sugar.

 Sydney Marks, son of one of the firm's founders ,also joined the company that year, on leaving the army, and was to be its driving force for over 50 years. Once sugar rationing ended, trade picked up, and the company quadrupled its workforce in a couple of years - to 60.

Trebor adopted electricity as its power source around 1920, which brought the end to hand production.  Marks visited Germany in 1925, amid much criticism of trading with the recent enemy, and returned recommending the firm bought very advanced production equipment from that country.

This revolutionised the business. It considerably improved the capacity of the business and the quality of its output.

One major effect was to enable to company to introduce products from compressed powder, rather than simply boiled sugar, and helped launch and establish the company's two most iconic products - Extra Strong Mints and Refreshers.


1935 label of consistent number
1 product: Extra Strong Mints

The company simply took off. By the mid 1930's it rebuilt its Forest Gate premises, by knocking down the existing one and four adjacent houses and built the Art Deco factory, in what is now converted loft apartments. (see photo).

Not satisfied with the rapidly expanding British market, lead by Marks, the company began to develop its huge export potential. In an extremely innovative step - that almost sounds commonplace today - the company became one of the first to develop "tie in" products to movies.  In 1937 they bought the rights from Disney to launch a range of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sweets, following the launch of the film - for £150! - plus a price per ton on goods sold with the label.


Early, 1930's "tie-in" product

Soon, even the doubled size Forest Gate factory wasn't big enough to cope with massive demand, so the firm, again fairly innovatively, took advantage of some inward investment incentives (dare we say sweeteners!) to build a new production facility in Chesterfield, on the site of an old brewery.

Again, with a glance at the future, the company felt the Chesterfield plant would provide a production insurance policy in the case of bombing, expected in WW2.

Just as WW1 had proved a challenge, so did the second World War. The company faced sugar rationing, but fared rather better than most other companies in the industry, for a number of technical reasons, and some aggressive acquisition of other firms, thus being able to acquire their sugar quotas, as part of the takeovers.

The anticipated, and almost inevitable, happened on 18 April 1944, when the Katherine Road premises was hit by a bomb - see photo.  Fortunately it was mainly the warehousing, rather than the machinery and production side that was affected, but according to contemporary reports ""Luckily, few people were killed"!

WW2 bomb damage, note policeman
guarding premises from "sugar looters"

One minor consequence is that the bombed premises were guarded by the police for some days, as a deterrent to looters seeking sugar. The blow of the bomb, however, knocked confidence by the company in Forest Gate as a longer term centre of production.

As we have suggested, the firm was very forward looking, on many fronts, but the directors were extremely hostile to having a trade union presence within it. They could best be described as benign, paternalistic employers - so were an early developer  of company pensions schemes for manual workers (1930's), and set up a sickness and death insurance company for employees as well as a forward profit sharing scheme for all staff.  They were one of the first UK companies to make major use of external consultants to assist with a whole range of managerial issues, including so called "time and motion" matters.

Their take-over activity gained apace post war, acquiring more than 50 other firms in the late 1940's.

In the early 50's they built a new facility on the site of an old coachworks and warehouse on Woodford Road, Ilford - and established the company HQ - Trebor House, there.  It remained so until the firm was taken over by Cadbury's in 1989. By now Forest Gate was a very minor part of an increasingly large British confectionery company.

Following the reconstruction of the Forest Gate premises after the war, after the bomb damage, the building was painted white and the distinctive green 'Trebor Quality Sweets' lettering, that survives today was added to the facade. In 2003 the building was converted into 51 loft-style apartments.

The firm's directors continued to exploit every opportunity to advance the company's standing, and became one of the first confectionery companies to use the new and effective opportunity that TV advertising offered, when ITV was established in the late 1950s'.

Their huge export drive continued after World War ll, and in 1961 the company bought its largest UK competitor, Sharp's Toffees, of Maidstone. The two firms were only formally merged in 1968, to become Trebor-Sharps.


1960's aerial view of the Forest Gate factory

In 1978 a £15m major investment was made in a new production facility in Colchester, with a turnover 10 times that of the Katherine Road plant - it was to be the death knell of sweets production in Forest Gate, and the factory closed three years later.
 
At that time Trebor had 3,000 employees nationwide, at 4 factories and 16 distribution depots.  Forest Gate was but a sugar crystal in a large bowl - though unfortunately we do not have details of precisely how large it was, or how many it employed at the time of its closure.

Within seven years of the closure of Forest Gate, Trebor's was sold to Cadbury's for £146m, with its paternalistic owners continuing their tradition of taking care of the workforce, by distributing £20m of that to employees in loyalty payments - upto a year's wages. The gesture came too late, however, for Forest Gate workers to benefit from this final treat.

Cadbury's, themselves, were subsequently taken over by the American food giant Kraft, which in turn has been gobbled up by some faceless hedge fund.

In another sign of how times have changed, in 1936 the very much smaller Trebor outfit produced an astonishingly large range of 452 products, today what's left of the brand produces just four: Extra Strong Mints, Softmints, Softfruits and Extra Strong Mint Gum - which between them, today form a larger share of the UK confectionery market than the 452 lines did 80 years ago.


Just some of the 450+
product range from 1930s

On a final note, the loft apartments in the old Forest Gate works  are currently trading at around £250k each - valuing the development at just a little less than Cadbury bought to entire company for, 25 years ago.


Trebor factory, Katherine Road

We are wholly indebted to an excellent company history: The Trebor Story, by Matthew Crampton, published in 2012, for the information in this article. We would love to hear reminiscences from any former employees there - particularly their views on the working conditions and the paternalistic/innovative/anti-union management.