Granny Berry, c.1880
(An Addlestone Album, copyright Jocelyn and David Barker)
Granny Berry, seen outside the Duke’s Head, Addlestone, c. 1880. The 1861 Census records her as a widow, living in Church Road with her 7-year-old son, and her occupation as hawker. She is reputed to have lived to the age of 104.
Marsh Lane, Addlestone, c. 1910
(An Addlestone Album, copyright Jocelyn and David Barker) Marsh Lane was still a country lane in the early years of this century, with open land on either side. The northern end was built up by the mid-1930s.
The first motor omnibus through the Addlestone district, c.1914
(An Addlestone Album, copyright Jocelyn and David Barker)
This 26-seater bus of the Guildford and District Motor Services is outside the White Hart, New Haw. Their 30 h.p. Dennis vehicle was taken over by the Aldershot and District Company in 1915.
A. J. Norris’s Delivery Cart, Addlestone, 1920s
(An Addlestone Album, copyright Jocelyn and David Barker)
Day Trippers, Station Road, Addlestone, c. 1921
(An Addlestone Album, copyright Jocelyn and David Barker)
Residents of Alexandra Road starting out on a charabanc outing.
Addlestone Carnival Float c. 1929
(An Addlestone Album, copyright Jocelyn and David Barker)
Typical of the decorated vehicles prepared for the procession was this “coster” cart. The slogan urging support for home industries reflected the prevailing economic situation.
Barge passing through lock on the Wey Navigation, 1950s
(Transport, copyright Michael Palmer)
The horses are resting while the barge passes through the first lock on the Wey Navigation. The tow path can clearly be seen.
Plan of the site of Taylor and Penton (John Lewis Partnership) drawn 1946
Copyright: John Lewis Partnership
The Taylor and Penton furniture factory in Addlestone (formerly a leather factory). Note the position of St. Augustine’s Church. This is the second St. Augustine’s (the “Tin Church”) on the site of the present Mormon church. The present St. Augustine’s Church building in Albert Road is now Surrey Muslim Centre.
Taylor and Penton (John Lewis Partnership), Addlestone, 1957
Copyright: John Lewis Partnership
Wood cutting in the wood factory, Addlestone.
Expansion at Addlestone
The following is an extract from the John Lewis Partnership Gazette, 30th June 1962:
JONELL BEDDING; Jonell kitchen furniture; Jonell quilts; all these are made at Addlestone.
Just after the war, the Partnership bought a seven-acre factory site there (and recently sold a small part of it for more than the original price). It had a variety of old buildings on it, including a “chapel”, a factory that had made Vickers parts during the war, and a sort of shed at the back that had mass-produced darts for the N.A.A.F.I. Some 40 Partners moved out there, mainly from Clearings, and began to make bedding; one man and two boys were employed m making wooden divan frames.
Rebuilding
Now, there are about 40 Partners working in the wood factory alone; the same number on bedding, 25 on quilts, and about 30 on soft furnishings. This sort of expansion has quickly outgrown the existing buildings; and Addlestone has recently been celebrating a rebuilding milestone in its short history. A completely new factory has just been completed for the Wood section; quilts and soft furnishings have moved in there too from their cramped temporary quarters; some of the old buildings have been demolished altogether, and the Bedding factory has had a face-lift.
Last Thursday the Chairman and other Central Management Partners visited the site to see the factories in operation; the previous Saturday. Addlestone Partners were invited to bring their families and friends to see round. The whole site was open to the visitors; 2 display of the latest products had The new factory has been arranged in the new factory; and some of the Partners there had turned their skilful hands to cake-making in honour of the occasion.
Wood factory
The new wood factory, where Jonell kitchen furni:ure is made, represents a big investment of Partnership money (about £75,000). lt was specially designed by a factory architect; it is built in attractive soft yellow brick, with weather-boarding under the ridge roofs, and Ilex green (Partnership green, to the initiated) on the woodwork. Very streamlined and elegant it looks, too. Inside, it is open, spacious and clean-all the dust and waste from the various processes is sucked into pipes that swirl it away for safe disposal outside: dust can be explosive if it is allowed to collect.
The progress of the work inside is streamlined too, to save time and effort. Wood from all over the world arrives in the receiving dock at the front: Parana pine that has been floateddown the Parana river in Brazil, Yugoslavian beech birch from Finland and Russia, mahogany, and many more.
The next stage is to saw it up; then it goes to machines that plane it, shape it, and whirr it into dovetailing for drawers or mortice-and-tenon joints for strong frames – all automatic, and all accurate at least to 1/32 of an inch. It then goes to the sanding machine which has a continuous belt 6 inches wide and 26 feet long to smooth down the surfaces.
Then the carcases are assembled. with glue, or with the new pneumatic tacker that staples panels on to a frame, more accurately, quickly and evenly than can be done by hand. Next they pass through the spray shop and emerge in gay modern colours, looking suddenly recognisable as Jonell kitchen furniture. In the final assembly bay they are finished off; and by this time they have reached the back of the building, are keenly inspected, and then out through the back doors on to the vans for Clearings.
It’s not quite so simple as it sounds, however: production is in lots of a hundred at a time; with thirty-five articles in
the complete range, each with drawers, shelves, tops, handles and so on, and each produced in several colours, the operation takes a good deal of organisation.
Quilts at speed
The quilting and soft furnishing sections are also housed in the new building; they too have modern mechanical aids, like the automatic quilter which will complete a Terylene quilt with a diamond pattern in three and a half minutes. Addlestone sends out some two hundred quilts a week, and up to seven hundred cushions; and is making a name for itself in the art of making-up curtains.
The bedding factory, still in the old building, has been transformed: the old gloomy corrugated frontage has been
yellow-washed and re-faced to match the new factory. Here mattresses and divans are made, in a series of intricate processes, from coils of apparently ordinary wire, lengths of fabric, and rolls of stuffing.
Spring song
One machine, the Swiss-designed coiler-and-knotter, sucks in wire from a flat coil, chops and twists it noisily inside, and spews out electrically-tempered shaped springs, neatly knotted top and bottom; it gets through over a ton of wire a day. Next to it, the assembler arranges these springs in rows and feeds another wire in and out through them in a long coil to hold them together.
These are “open-unit” springs; upstairs, they make the more expensive pocketed springs, for ‘ clipped-pocket” mattresses. For these the wire is coiled into all unknotted “barrel” spring which is the same width all the way down. Each spring is then stitched by machine into its own little pocket in a long strip of material. These are then clipped together, but the springs each act independently – which means that the whole mattress doesn’t sag when you sit on one bit of it.
Or there are honeycomb. springs they are much smaller and are sewn by hand into individual bags to make the most luxurious mattress of all. It was one of these mattresses that recently prompted a grateful customer to write that he was at last sleeping soundly after years of wakefulness, and had even thrown away his sleeping pills.
Finishing off
Whatever the type of springs the next stage is to put the mattress cover, or the divan, round them, sewing the edge down so that they will stay firm through years of use. Then the automatic buttoning machine takes over to put in those little buttons top and bottom that hold the filling firm. The needle and twine automatically shoot up, round and down gathering up two buttons en route and tying them down with bowline knots, all in a matter of seconds-you could watch it for hours.
The compression tufter gets the same result in a rather different way: it clamps the mattress tightly so that a 17-inch needle threaded with a short metal-ended tag can be jabbed through. The needle is then twisted to release the tag, and in one movement the “jiffy tuft” is in place and is held firmly by its metal ends on either side of the mattress.
With their factories, their machines and their no less impressive manual skills. Addlestone Partners may seem far removed from retailing; but (provided you know the road, it isn’t far to Clearings, and every day they send up two van- loads of Jonell products that go from there to Partnership shops all over the country. They are doing an important job and we wish them the best of success in their new factory.
Taylor and Penton (John Lewis Partnership), Addlestone, 1974
Copyright: John Lewis Partnership
The main gates of the factory during the flood of 16th November 1974.
