Bradshaw and Lloyd Fine Shoe Blog

Winter boots

2012-02-10T07:25:00.001-08:00

Now were are in the midst of winter there is no better time to be sure of having have some really good boots. Here are a selection which are worth having a look at on the Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

From Loake shoes:
Loake's Premium Grade 1880 Collection * Style: Bedale * Derby Brogue Boot in Dark Brown Calf * Goodyear Welted Rubber Soles with Storm Welt * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Leather Heels with Rubber Top Piece * Fitting: G(Wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes + 12 and 13 * Brand: Loake (shoemakers of Northamptonshire since 1880) * Made in England * ******************************************************************************* Price includes a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only. ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10.

Loake's Premium Grade 1880 Collection * Style: Burford * Brogue Boot in Black Calf * Goodyear Welted Leather Soles with Storm Welt * Leather Heels with Rubber Top Piece * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Last: 024 * Fitting: F (Medium Wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes + 12 and 13 * Brand: Loake (shoemakers of Northamptonshire since 1880)* Made in England * ******************************************************************************* Price includes a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only. ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10.

From Sebago shoes:
Style: Sebago 73000/Knight * Rugged Blucher Moccasin Construction Boot in Waxy Brown Full Grain Leather * This boot can handle anything you throw at it * Rawhide laces stay tied in any weather * Leather socklining keeps your feet comfortable in any weather condition * EVA midsole and Vibram rubber outsole ensure that every step will be both comfortable and confident * Fitting: W (Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago (Established 1946) ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10

Style: Sebago 19657/Tremont * Dark brown full grain leather chukka boot * Leather quarter lining * Cotton vamp lining * Full length leather-covered laytex rubber comfort control footbed * Vibram® Rubber Pluribal™ Slip-resistant Sole * Fitting: W (Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago (Established 1946) ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10.

From Tricker shoes:
Tricker's Country Collection * Style: Grasmere * Brown Zug Grain Leather * Goodyear Welted Commando Rubber Soles * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Last: 4497S * Fitting: G(6)(Wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes + 12 * Brand: Tricker's (Shoemakers of Northampton since 1829) * Made in England * ****************************************************************************** One pair of Tricker's solid wood, full length, shoe trees is included in the price and will accompany these shoes, UK deliveries only. *******************************************************************************

Tricker's Country Collection * Style: Malton/1 * C Shade Gorse Calf * Goodyear Welted Commando Rubber Soles * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Last: 4497S * Fitting: G(6)(Wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes + 12 and 13 * Brand: Tricker's (Shoemakers of Northampton since 1829) * Made in England * ****************************************************************************** One pair of Tricker's solid wood, full length, shoe trees is included in the price and will accompany these shoes, UK deliveries only. ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10

From Sanders shoes:
Sanders' Regent Country Collection * Style: Thirsk * Chelsea Boot (high cut) in Brown Calf * Goodyear Welted Leather Soles * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Leather Heels with Rubber Top Piece * Last: Stet * Fitting: G (Wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes + 12 and 13 * Brand: Sanders (Shoemakers of Northamptonshire since 1873) * Made in England ******************************************************************************* Price includes a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only. ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10

Sanders' Regent Country Collection * Style: Kelso * Plain Derby Boot in Brown Calf * Goodyear Welted Commando Rubber Soles + Heels * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Last: M265 * Fitting F (Medium wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes and 12 * Brand: Sanders (Shoemakers of Northamptonshire since 1873) * Made in England ******************************************************************************* Price includes a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only. ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10

From Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes:
Bradshaw & Lloyd's Grosvenor Collection * Style: Holborn * Chukka Boot in Snuff Suede * Goodyear Welted Dainite Rubber Soles and Heels * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Last: Stet * Fitting: G (Wide)* Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes and 12 * Brand: Bradshaw & Lloyd * Made in England ******************************************************************************* Price includes a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only. ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10.

Bradshaw & Lloyd's Grosvenor Collection * Style: Highgate * Chukka Boot in Black Calf * Goodyear Welted Leather Soles * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Leather Heels with Quarter Rubber * Last: Stet * Fitting: G (Wide)* Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes and 12 * Brand: Bradshaw & Lloyd * Made in England ******************************************************************************* Price includes a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only. ******************************************************************************* Free postage throughout the UK and Europe. Postage worldwide £10.

The Bradshaw and Lloyd shoe repair service

2012-02-03T02:30:00.000-08:00

If you are in central London we offer a FREE collection and returns service from/to any business address. These are our shoe repair prices for men’s shoes per pair (inclusive of courier service and VAT):

½ leather stitched sole & rubber heel * £39.00
½ rubber stitched sole & rubber heel £39.00
½ leather stitched sole £29.00
½ rubber stitched sole £29.00
Stick-on rubber sole £17.00
Rubber heel £10.00
Rubber heel with quarter iron £12.00
Leather heel with quarter rubber £13.00
Re-line heel upper £10.00
Steel toes tip £3.00
* Standard repair.
Minimum repair price per collection is £39. Turnaround usually within 5 to 10 working days.

If the free collection service in London is not an option then for £8 our courier (UPS) will collect up to 5 pairs from any home or office within the UK mainland at your convenience and deliver them securely to us. We shall then repair them and return them to you. UPS charges £8 whether you send in 1 pair or 5 pairs so the more shoes you send in the cheaper it becomes. We do not charge a courier fee for returning the repaired shoes to you.

Just let us know your address if you would like a courier sack posted to you. Requesting the courier sack does not commit you to using the service: repairs@bradshawandlloyd.com.

We offer the very latest shoe styles on the www.bradshawandlloyd.com website from: Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes. Additionally we now offer the Bradshaw and Lloyd collection which offer extraordinarily good value for the very finest quality footwear.

Loake shoes - The best sellers

2012-01-27T06:44:00.000-08:00

Loake shoe sales continue to go from strength to strength. The recent best-sellers include many of the heavy welted shoes (e.g. Chester, Bedale, Ashby, Edward, etc.) and more new styles will be added to this group for 2012.

TOP 10 Loake 1880 STYLES
1 Bedale Tan 6 Churchill Brown
2 Chester Tan 2 7 Pimlico Dark Suede
3 Aldwych Black 8 Churchill Black
4 Kempton Suede 9 Thirsk Tan
5 Bedale Mahogany 10 Buckingham Black

TOP 20 Loake SHOEMAKER STYLES
1 Cagney Black 11 Eton Black
2 Princeton Black 12 805B2
3 Princeton Burgundy 13 Royal Brogue Burgundy
4 290B 14 771B
5 Royal Brogue Black 15 Rome Burgundy
6 Eton Suede 16 747B
7 McQueen Black 17 Siena Black
8 Woodstock Black 18 McDowell Black
9 Grant Black 19 Bogart Black
10 Mitchum Black 20 Rome Black

TOP 10 Loake DESIGN STYLES
1 Sharp Black 6 Gunny Tan
2 Gunny Black 7 Stitch Black
3 Powers Black 8 Bryant Black
4 Harrison Black 9 Vincent Black
5 Stitch Tan 10 Powers Dk Brown

TOP 10 Loake L¹ STYLES
1 200B 6 258B
2 202B 7 251B
3 205B 8 202DS
4 201B 9 Sahara Brown Suede
5 202T 10 Sahara Sand Suede

All these styles and many more can be viewed at www.bradshawandlloyd.com. We are including a free deluxe zip-up leather shoe cleaning kit with most Loake shoes.

Do visit Bradshaw and Lloyd and also have a look at the latest styles from Sebago shoes, Trickers shoes and Sanders shoes.

Our best selling Sebago styles

2012-01-20T01:50:00.001-08:00

Listed here are some of our best selling Sebago shoes:

Sebago Classic/76671. Our price: £143
Style: 76671 Sebago Classic Leather Soled Loafers in Black Leather * Sebago's unique handsewn welt construction provides maximum flexibility and comfort, and incorporates a steel shank for arch support, therefore eliminating the stiffness of a midsole. A single piece of leather cradles the foot that is then stitched to the welt. The upper is handsewn on the last and the sole is then stitched directly to the welt * Fitting: W (F/Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago (Established 1946) *

Sebago Clovehitch/24367. Our price: £105
Sebago Clovehitch/24367 in Walnut * Three-eye handsewn features premium nubuck upper with Drilex Hydrofil mesh side panels. Ventilated footbed, concealed EVA midsole and side-stitched Sebago Marine Tack rubber sole * Fitting: W (F/Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago

Sebago Docksides/72722. Our price: £95
Style: 72722/Docksides in Navy Leather with White Sole * Sebago's original handsewn Docksides with genuine moccasin construction * Classic moulded rubber non-slip sole * Fully functioning rawhide lacing system provies optimum fit * Fitting: W (Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago *

Sebago Endeavor/7234. Our price: £100
Style: 72343/Endeavour in Brown * Sebago's original handsewn Docksides with genuine moccasin construction * Classic moulded rubber non-slip sole * Fully functioning rawhide lacing system provies optimum fit * Fitting: W (Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago (Established 1946) *

Sebago Foresider/76959. Price £114
Style: 76959 Foresider in Brown * Handsewn Docksides with genuine moccasin construction * Leather lined and padded tongue * Extended counter for lateral stability * Steel shank for arch support * Double sole construction with EVA midsole * Soft, natural moulded outsole for slip resistance * Fully functioning rawhide lacing system provides optimum fit * Fitting: W (Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago (Established 1946) *

Sebago Grant/70767. Our price £95
Style: B70767/Grant * Comfort Soled Loafer in Black Leather * Sebago's rubber soled loafers incorporate the latest comfort technology that brings state of the art innovation to its handsewn loafers. The result is a remarkable blend of comfort engineering, rich leathers and contemporary styling * Fitting: W (F/Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago

Sebago Schooner/75943. Our price £100
Schooner/75943 in Brown Oiled Waxy with Brown Sole * Handsewn Docksides with genuine moccasin construction * Moulded rubber sole has EVA cushioned insert in forepart for comfort * Genuine rubber provides superior slip resistance * Fully functioning rawhide lacing system provies optimum fit * Fitting: WW (G/Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago (Established 1946) *

Sebago Spinnaker/72995. Price £95
Style: 72995/Spinnaker in Brown/Brown * Sebago's original handsewn Docksides with genuine moccasin construction * Classic moulded rubber non-slip sole * Fully functioning rawhide lacing system provies optimum fit * Fitting: W (Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago (Established 1946) *

We offer these Sebago shoes and Sebago's entire 2012 shoe collection at www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

Also available are all Loake shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes.

The new Loake shop in London

2012-01-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

Loake have just opened their first shop and it's very conveniently located in London's west end:

8 to 10 Princes Arcade
Piccadilly
London SW1Y 6DS

Do visit if you are in the area and view Loake's entire collection. These are some of their best sellers:

Loake TOP 20 SHOEMAKER STYLES
1 Princeton Burgundy 11 Woodstock Black
2 McQueen Black 12 Elland Black
3 Princeton Black 13 Ayr Black 2
4 Bogart Black 14 Eton Black
5 Rome Black 15 Braemar Tan
6 Eton Suede 16 Mitchum Black
7 Cagney Black 17 Oban Black
8 747B 18 805B2
9 771B 19 290B
10 Siena Black 20 290T

Loake TOP 10 DESIGN STYLES
1 Stitch Black 6 Sharp Black
2 Bryant Black 7 Magnum Black
3 Gunny Tan 8 Titan Black
4 Stitch Tan 9 Mason Black
5 Webster Black 10 Vincent Black

Loake TOP 10 L¹ STYLES
1 200B 6 205B
2 202B 7 200CH
3 201B 8 202T
4 202DS 9 204B
5 Sahara Brown Suede 10 251B

You can of course view the entire Loake range at the Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com. Here you can also view all the shoes from:
Trickers shoes
Sanders shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Boat shoes

2012-01-06T05:48:00.000-08:00

The different types of casual footwear that is widely used by many individuals, is known as either boat shoes, topsiders, or deck shoes. Thes shoes are designed to provide good traction in most slippery surfaces. They are also perfect day to day footwear, as they are quite rugged and tough, perfect for doing everyday chores. They are hugely popular especially during summer. Boat shoes are also popular among sailors due to their effectiveness on slippery decks, especially in wet weather. Many believe that the modern traditional boat shoes were actually derived from the Native American moccasin, which explains the slight resemblance in appearance.

In modern history, boat shoes have become so popular among men and women that it has become a part of our fashion accessory and are so popular that you will find them in almost every home. Even individuals who do not own or has never stepped on board a boat, most likely own a pair of boat shoes. That is how popular this type of shoe has become over the years. Because of the popularity that deck shoes have gained over the years, boat shoes or topsiders have become a footwear fashion essential in modern history.

The quality of the boat shoes, however, can vary. Boat shoes that are specifically designed for sailors may be tougher than the ones that are made just for fashion. There are fashion boat shoes out there that are made with high quality materials, but are just as tough as deck shoes for sailors. All you need to know is that, a perfect pair of boat shoes is comfortable, flexible, and fits snugly on your feet.

When shopping for a pair make sure that your foot does not slide around inside the shoe. When you are wearing deck shoes a perfect snug fit is essential to avoid any foot injuries. Your feet should not feel cramped inside the shoes, nor should they be too loose, to ensure comfort and foot support.

Arguably the best of all boats shoes are made made by Sebago. The classic Sebago Dockside has become the preferred choice of the serious sailor as well as the follower of fashion. At Bradshaw and Lloyd we offer the entire range of Sebago styles. Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the entire range.

Here you can also view the comprehensive range form Loake shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes.

Our best selling boots

2011-12-23T05:55:00.000-08:00

With winter soon upon us now is a good time to look at some of our best selling boots:

The Sebago Beacon boot is really a boot version of their classic Dockside deck shoe:
Style: 72552 * Sebago's Beacon Boot in Brown Leather * Handsewn Blucher Moccasin Construction * Suede Upper * Functional Rawhide Laces * Corrosive-resistant Sebago® Eyelets * Three-quarter Length Leather Socklining * Littleway Stitched Sebago® Docksides® Boat Sole with Slip-resistant, Non-marking Rubber Soles * Fitting: W (Medium Wide)* UK sizes: 6-11 including half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sebago (Established 1946). Bradshaw and Lloyd price: £119 which includes postage throughout Europe.

The Loake Gatcombe chukka boot can be worn with jeans or goes equally well with a jacket and tie:
Loake's Shoemakers Collection * Style: Gatcombe * Chukka Boot in Brown Waxy Leather * Goodyear Welted Dainite Rubber Soles * Full Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Leather Heel with Rubber Top Piece * Last: Jockey * Fitting: G (Wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes + 12 and 13 * Brand: Loake (shoemakers of Northamptonshire since 1880) * Made in England Bradshaw and lloyd price: £119 which includes postage throughout Europe. Bradshaw and Lloyd price: £155 which includes postage throughout Europe as well as a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only.

The Sanders Hi-Top is a high fashion version of the classic chukka boot and comes in an amazing range of fun colours:
Sanders' Casual Collection * Style: Hi-Top/6480AS * Chukka Boot in Navy Suede * Fully leather lined + Leather Insoles * Plantation Crepe Rubber Soles * Last: Joel * Fitting: F (Medium Wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes + 12 * Brand: Sanders (Shoemakers of Northamptonshire since 1873) * Made in England
Bradshaw and Lloyd price: £165 which includes postage throughout Europe as well as a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only.

The Bradshaw and Lloyd Holborn chukka boot is perfect for keeping out the winter chill as well as looking great.
Bradshaw & Lloyd's Grosvenor Collection * Style: Holborn * Chukka Boot in Snuff Suede * Goodyear Welted Dainite Rubber Soles and Heels * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Last: Stet * Fitting: G (Wide)* Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes and 12 * Brand: Bradshaw & Lloyd * Made in England
Bradshaw and Lloyd price: £170 which includes postage throughout Europe as well as a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only.

The Tricker's Grasmere is the ultimate winter boot for taking you anywhere cross country:
Tricker's Country Collection * Style: Grasmere * Brown Zug Grain Leather * Goodyear Welted Commando Rubber Soles * Fully Leather Lined * Leather Insoles * Last: 4497S * Fitting: G(6)(Wide) * Sizes: 6-11 in half sizes + 12 * Brand: Tricker's (Shoemakers of Northampton since 1829) * Made in England *
Bradshaw and Lloyd price: £340 which includes postage throughout Europe as well as a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather pouch, UK deliveries only.

Do visit our website www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the entire range from these great brands:
Trickers shoesSanders and Sanders shoesLoake shoes
Sebago shoes

Shoe sale

2011-12-16T04:58:00.000-08:00

Christmas is coming and with what could be a cold winter approaching what could be a better time to buy a loved one a special pair of shoes? We are currently offering a free shoe cleaning kit in a leather case worth £30, with each shoe order on our most popular styles from Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes and also from our Bradshaw and Lloyd collection.

We continually monitor our prices to ensure that they are unbeatable, but with this special promotion you are eligible to a 10% discount off any pair of shoes and a 15% discount if you order 2 pairs+. You also benefit from a free returns service as well as free delivery - UK deliveries only. Do visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest collections from: Loake, Sebago, Sanders and Sanders, R.E. Tricker and our own Bradshaw & Lloyd range.

Please quote offer code FTF747 in the 'Order Comments and Special Requests' box at the end of the online ordering process. You will initially be charged the website price however we shall email you confirmation of any discount on receipt of your order and refund the discount to your card/PayPal. This offer will end on 31st January 2012. Alternatively please telephone 01273-841946 quoting the offer code. For your benefit we maintain detailed records of any previous orders.

How to care for your shoes

2011-12-09T03:28:00.000-08:00

The shoes you purchase can be expensive and therefore keeping your shoes in top condition is worth a little extra effort. The facts and tips below are ways to help you look after and even extend the natural life of your shoes.

Leather shoes:
Dirt and other debris can easily embed into leather. Therefore, your leather shoes or boots need to be cleaned before you start polishing. Shoe brushes and wipes can easily be used to remove excess dirt and debris.
To polish your shoes effectively, always remove the shoelaces from your shoe before you start polishing your shoes. This is the best way to get to clean the tongue of the shoe and avoid staining the laces.
For best results using shoe polishes or creams firstly apply the shoe polish or cream evenly to leather shoes and boots with a brush or soft cloth. Once the polish has properly dried, simply buff to a brilliant shine using a natural bristle brush. Note that it is important to use a separate brush and cloth for applying and buffing different coloured shoes.
If you prefer a more convenient alternative there are instant shine liquids. Simply remove excess dirt and then apply the liquid evenly to your shoes. The formulation restores colour and dries to an instant shine - without the need to buff.
Use Protector to help waterproof your shoes thoroughly so as to protect them from common stains caused by water, mud, dust and snow or salt.
Store leather shoes using a shoe tree, this will help retain the shape of the leather. If you can’t use a shoe tree (e.g. for strappy shoes), stuff the toe cap with newspaper or tissue. Never store or dry leather shoes near direct heat.

Suede & Nubuck shoes:
Your suede shoes deserve special attention. Make sure they are cleaned and waterproofed regularly.
If your suede shoes get wet, stuff them with newspaper while they dry to keep their shape.
Always allow them to dry naturally and never put them near direct heat.
Suede and nubuck shoes will look their best when brushed. You can use Suede and Nubuck bushes and cleaning blocks for this purpose.

Sport shoes:
To extend the life of active or outdoor shoes (golf shoes, football or hiking boots), make sure you polish and waterproof them regularly.
Before polishing, first knock off the loose mud and allow your boots to dry naturally.

Other interesting tips & tricks:
To keep your shoes lasting longer, rotate your shoes with another pair.
When you buy a new pair of shoes, protect them before you wear them for the first time.
If your shoes get wet, allow them to dry completely before wearing them again. Once your shoes have dried, waterproof them again with a multi-purpose protector.
Use a shoe horn to assist with putting on your shoes, to keep the heel from losing its shape.
When you travel, always place your shoes inside a shoe bag or wrap your shoes in a soft material.

At Bradshaw and Lloyd we offer a free comprehensive smart cleaning kit in a leather zip-up bag with most of our English made shoes, worth £30. The ever expanding Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com offers the entire range of shoes from Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes, Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes and Sebago shoes.

A history of Sebago shoes

2011-12-02T04:33:00.000-08:00

Bradshaw and Lloyd have been selling Sebago shoes for over 20 years and they are as popular as ever, being both attractive and extremely well made. In particular Sebago's classic Dockside, Spinnaker as well as the Classic handsewn shoes are by far and away the best sellers. You may be interested in a short history of the Sebago brand!:

The 1940's: The Sebago-Moc Company is founded in 1946 by three New England natives: Daniel J. Wellehan, Sr., William Beaudoin and Joseph Cordeau. Their first shoe, the hand-sewn penny loafer, was styled after the popular Indian moccasins and pioneered what would become the company's patented welt construction. Two years after the initial founding, Sebago-Moc would sell its breakthrough leather boat shoe to Uniroyal.

The 1950's: In 1950, Sebago-Moc sales reaches $1,000,000. During these early years, the company's strength is in the private label footwear business. Although the Sebago-branded business is still very young, sales to retailers like Sears and Montgomery Ward are rising quickly. To keep up with the demand of 2,000 pairs a day, in 1952 Sebago-Moc begins construction on a new plant in Maine. By 1954, Sebago-Moc celebrates the production of its 1,000,000th pair of shoes.

The 1960's: Sebago-Moc truly goes international when Sr. Francisco Gaudier purchases a pair of classic loafers in Switzerland and, impressed, soon after signs a contract to distribute the footwear throughout Europe. Sebago-Moc shoes are unveiled at Semaine du Cuir, the international exhibition in Paris. Stateside, we debut our women's hand-sewn loafers, Jolly Rogers and build a new Maine plant for the production of our popular women's penny loafers.

The 1970's: In 1970, Sebago-Moc introduces our own branded boat shoe by the name of Docksides®, in the process dropping "Moc" from our name and becoming the brand known today as simply Sebago. Beloved Docksides would eventually come to define the entire boat shoe category. A year later, we would launch our machine-sewn casuals, Jesse Janes.

The 1980's: The arrival of the 80s brings about a resurgence in timeless style, making Docksides a hit on campuses everywhere. In '81, Sebago Campsides make their debut. Three years later, Sebago becomes the first US company to sponsor a boat in the O-Star race, to be followed by other notable sponsorships. Not surprisingly, we become the official supplier of yachting footwear for the US Sailing Team.

The 1990's: Sebago remains true to its core, sponsoring a variety of sailing team and races, becoming the main sponsor of the 1992 America's Cup syndicate "Defender" and later the 1995 Young America team. Prior to, in 1994, Sebago launches its waterproof Drysides®.

Today: Along with the authentic classics, Sebago are introducing new, innovative footwear to consumers in the 85+ countries where Sebago is sold. Plus, through global collaborations, we're also developing exclusive footwear, such as the multi-colored Docksides® we produced with French retailer, Colette, and the colorful, limited edition boat shoes we created with VANE New York City. Showing that while Sebago is always mindful of our legacy, as a company we will forever keep moving forward.

At Bradshaw and Lloyd we offer every Sebago shoe on the market. Visit the website where you can swiftly filter out just the style you might be looking for.

Also available are the carefully selected shoes available from Tricker's shoes, Loake shoes, Sanders shoes and our own Bradshaw and Lloyd collection.

Shoe care essentials

2011-11-25T04:32:00.000-08:00

Shoe trees:Shoe-trees are essential. Without them the shoes will not hold their shape. Plain, unvarnished cedarwood trees are the best. These will absorb perspiration from the lining.

Shoe Polish:A good beeswax-based shoe polish is best such as Kiwi. The specialist ones produced by Loake, Tricker's etc are also very good.

Shoe Creams:Shoe Creams are good for those shoes or boots for which you do not want a high shine. Dasco shoe cream is good for this. However, it does tend to settle in the bottle. The problem with this is that if the cream is too thick it can collect in the creases of the shoes and leave a fine white deposit, which spoils the look of the shoe.

Make sure the shoe cream is at room temperature. The colder it is the harder it is to work and the harder it is keep a white film from appearing.

Shake the cream vigourously to loosen it up

Apply the cream in the point of a clean cloth. You can spit onto the shoe and mix the cream into the spit, it becomes easier to work and may give a deeper shine.

Buff vigourously with a very soft cloth.

Cloths:
You need these both to work the polish in and for the final buffing after the shoes are polished.

Ideally you need two sets of cloths, one for polishing in the wax and one for buffing. You also need to differentiate between those cloths that you use for black waxing and any others. This is very important, as black wax can really stain shoes of other colours.

Brushes:
These are mostly used for polishing off. If you have boots then you might want a brush for polishing on.

Once again, differentiating your brushes is important. If you consistently use a brush which has been used on black shoes on brown shoes, you will ruin them. Black brushes turn brown shoes into an in-between colour with a dirty muddy-looking finish

Shoe RacksShoe racks are invaluable. Put your shoes on a rack and let air circulate around them. Shoes on a rack will dry naturally and more quickly than shoes on a floor or flat surface.

A comprehensive selection of shoe care accessories is avaiable at the Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com. here you can view the extensive range available from: Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Tricker's shoes, Sanders shoes and of course the Bradshaw and Lloyd range.

Repairing quality hand-crafted shoes

2011-11-18T01:28:00.000-08:00

Whether your shoes are from Lobb, Churches, Crockett and Jones, Loake, Sanders or Bradshaw and Lloyd you have two options: Either return your shoes to the factory where they were made or find a really good quality local repairer.

When the shoes go back to the factory they are re-fitted to the original last that they were make on. They will be steam-moulded back to the last, restoring the original shape that they had when they were made.

The craftsmen who repair the shoes will know the characteristics of that style of shoe and will look for damage and flaws that need to be repaired.

Finally they will put on a new sole which will be precisely fitted back to the welt it was made for. You are getting back an almost new shoe.

However there are real disadvantages of returning the shoes to the manufacturer:
1 Cost. You can buy a middle-of-the-road replacement pair of shoes for the price it can cost.
2 Delay. You can loose your shoes for almost a month with some manufacturers.

These days it's not easy to find a good generic shoe repairer however when you do, treasure him. I would never advocate a generic repairer do a long sole and re-heel as this involves taking the shoe apart and of course he won't be repairing the shoes on the lasts on which the shoes were originally made. Consequently the shoe can loose its shape slightly. However done properly a good repairer can carry out a 'half sole' which just replaces the sole leather which wears. Consequently this is much cheaper than a long sole. The other huge advantage is that you will only loose your shoes for a few days. But do be careful as there are many shoe repairers who are not true professionals and can do a shoddy repair.

If you haven't yet done so you should try our Bradshaw and Lloyd shoe repair service:

For just £39 (per pair) we can collect your shoes from any ofice in central London and our skilled cobbler will expertly repair them using the best materials and traditional methods and then return them, usually within 5 to 10 days. If you live/work outside central London for the cost of posting your shoes to us we shall repair them to you for no extra postage charge, UK mainland only.

If you would like us to attend to your shoes please email repairs@bradshawandlloyd.com or telephone 0870-2406990 and we shall post you a courier sack and instruction sheet.

Men's repair prices per pair (inclusive of courier service and VAT):
½ leather stitched sole & rubber heel * £39.00
½ rubber stitched sole & rubber heel £39.00
½ leather stitched sole £29.00
½ rubber stitched sole £29.00
Stick-on rubber sole £17.00
Rubber heel £10.00
Rubber heel with quarter iron £12.00
Leather heel with quarter rubber £13.00
Re-line heel upper £10.00
Steel toes tip £3.00
* Standard repair.
We also repair womens' shoes but due to their diverse nature we do need to see them before we can quote a price.
The courier sack will take up to 5 pairs of shoes. Our minimum repair price per sack is £39.

For our new shoes please visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com where delivery throughout the UK is FREE plus we now offer a FREE RETURNS service should you wish to return shoes for any reason. We offer an ever expanding range of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Wearing your shoes

2011-11-11T03:58:00.000-08:00

If the shoes are simply wet (the uppers are wet) put the shoes on their trees and if you have one, put the shoes on a shoe rack and let them dry. The frame allows the air to circulate around the shoe and dry out the sole, which is important.

If you do not have a shoe frame, then place the shoes on several sheets of newspaper in a well-aired place. Once again, drying out the sole is important

If the shoes are soaked (the inner linings and the inner sole of the shoe are wet) fill the shoes with newspaper, and, as before, elevate the shoes on a shoe rack. Drying out the soles is even more important if the shoes are soaked. If placed on newspaper and the nrewspaper becomes wet, change it.

If the shoes are soaked through then when dry again I would advise waxing them and resting them for 24 hoours before wearing them again.

Never heat the shoes to dry them, there is a good chance that the sudden expansion of the leather will crack the uppers. It will certainly dry them out and that is nearly as bad. If your feet sweat heavily and you heat the shoes when wet you are liable to get a salt stain which is almost impossible to remove.

Never wear shoes for two days running. Once you have worn a pair put them back on their trees and give them at least a day to rest.

To view an extensive range of quality shoes visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website at www.bradshawandlloyd.com:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers shoes
Sanders shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Wearing in new shoes

2011-11-04T04:31:00.000-07:00

For the first wearing, wear the shoes only for a few hours, not for a whole day. Just long enough to break down the stiffness of the leather. If you can, wear the shoes indoors the first time. If you wear the shoes outdoors for the first time, do not do so in the rain or snow.

The soles of your shoes will be new and slippery. This becomes less of a problem once you have worn them a few times. However there is an old British Army trick for those who want to use it. Take a reasonably sharp knife (a penknife will do) and lightly score the new soles. Score only the sole, in a cross-hatch pattern. The shoes will grip much better.

If your shoes are dirty, wipe them off with warm water and a soft cotton cloth. Never use any cleaning solvents on quality shoes, it will destroy them.

If the shoes are muddy, wait until the mud dries and brush it off with a firm-bristle brush. Never scrape the upper with metal implements.

Use a cloth to apply the polish. Using a brush to apply polish can put too much polish on the shoe and it becomes difficult to polish off. If you do this often enough the shoes get a cloudy, waxy finish which is unpleasant to look at. It is also very difficult to get rid of.

The longer you can leave the shoes waxed, the better. Once I have polished-in my shoes I leave them for 24 hours. This helps the leather absorb the polish and preserve the finish of the shoe.

Use a medium-firm brush to polish off the shoes, followed by a buffing from a soft cloth.

Shoes should be polished once every two weeks. Do it consistently and the process becomes easy, the shoes become beautiful.

If you have a collection of good shoes, there will be some that you do not wear for a long period of time. Wax these shoes with a leather feed which will nourish the uppers while they are in storage such as Chelsea Leather Food. But do not use Chelsea with combination shoes (such as canvas and leather) it is likely to stain the non-leather surfaces.

See the latest range of Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes at www.bradshawandlloyd.com from:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Caring for your shoes

2011-10-27T02:43:00.000-07:00

Stage 1: Once you have bought them

Immediately after you have bought your shoes they are most vulnerable. Though they look new and shiny, they will be dry, having spent the recent part of their lives in a storeroom. At this stage the leather uppers will mark easily, with the potential to leave permanent scars on the shoes. Treat them as follows:

Put the shoes on their shoe trees.

Open the shoe polish you intend to use on the shoes.

Take a soft cotton cloth, drape it over your hand and make a point of your fore and index fingers.

Work the shoe polish with your finger, making it warm and pliable. The softer the polish the easier the process and the better the result. Do not heat the polish, as it will warm unevenly and you will get an uneven shine on the shoe upper.

Once the polish has softened enough to work (you will get a feel for this), use your finger “point” to gather up some polish and polish it into the shoe.

Now polish the shoe all over in this way. The trick to this is to work the polish into all the seams of the shoe, especially the heal seam and the welt seam (where the upper meets the sole). Be generous here, because you want to lubricate and seal these seams against the elements. Do not worry how the shoe looks at this time, because you will polish them off later.

Continue until you have polished the whole shoe. When you are done place the shoes in a cool dry place, preferably out of direct sunlight and leave them for 24 hours, for the polish to soak into their shoes.

At the end of this time polish them off as follows:

Take a medium bristle shoe brush which is appropriate for the colour of the shoe (if you have a brush that you have used for black shoes do not use it on brown shoes, for example). Do not use a hard brush as this point.

Brush the shoes gently, to brush off the polish residue.

Get a soft cotton cloth. Do not use the cloth you applied the polish with. Once again, make sure it is appropriate; do not use a cloth that you have used for black shoes on brown shoes.

Buff the shoes gently but firmly with the cloth. Buff them across the long axis of the shoe (across the toe) and also with the long axis of the shoe, along the vamp and facing.

You will get a soft shine as the leather polishes up. This is an appropriate finish at this stage of the shoe’s life. Over time you will (if you want) be able to buff the shoes to a high shine.

This may sound like a lot of work, but you only do it once and it is important to do this for many reasons.

Firstly it will add years to the life of the shoes. By waxing the shoes and leaving them to rest you give the leather a chance to absorb the oils of the polish and become more supple. The shoes will keep their shape much better and be much less likely to tear along points of tension and especially around the stitching.

Secondly, if you do this the shoes will be so much easier to wear-in. New shoes that have been waxed properly have so much more “give” in them and are easier on the feet from the outset.

This advice applies to all leather shoes. To view the huge range on offer from Bradshaw and Lloyd visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com where you will find:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers shoes
Sanders shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes.

A brief history of English shoemaking

2011-10-21T01:32:00.000-07:00

The history of the English shoe deserves a short re-telling. The modern English shoe first emerged in the early 1800s, probably from a variety of shoe types that were then prevalent in Europe and England. At that time shoe-making was primarily a craft industry, with the bulk of the industry based in Northamptonshire, in the north of England. Northamptonshire was then a rural area, and provided both high quality leather and the oak and charcoal that were necessary for the tanning of the shoe leathers.

As industrialisation progressed and the population of England grew, so the original craft shops became large industrial factories in their own right. Out of these beginnings came the classic English brands that we have today, such as Grenson, Crockett and Jones, Sanders and Sanders, Trickers and Loakes etc.

Goodyear welting revolutionised English shoemaking. Welting is the practice of stitching a strip of leather to the insole and upper of the shoe and then stitching it in turn to the sole (in America it is called the outsole). This made the shoes stronger, more durable, and more flexible. It also meant that shoes could be resoled, extending their life.

This process really took off when Christian Dancel, a German immigrant to America, invented a machine which could stitch welted shoes. The Goodyear company bought process in 1864 and it came to England in the 1870′s. All quality English shoemakers now use Goodyear welting and it has become the distinctive feature of English shoes. Shoes became artefacts that could be made on a production line and from those beginnings we got the historic shoe brands that we have today.

There is no denying that English shoe-making had a rough ride in the 20th century. As industrial processes for making shoes became simpler and cheap shoes multiplied, quality shoe-makers found it hard to compete and a number of great brands simply went under. The sixties saw the influx of cheap poor quality shoes from Eastern Europe. Oddly enough, there was a tradition of quality shoemaking in Czechoslovakia and Hungary but communism virtually killed it. This was followed more recently by cheap shoes from China, which also cut into the market.

However in the last twenty years the market for English shoes has grown and there are two factors that have had a considerable influence on the market for English shoes.

The first of these is that London has become the foremost financial market in the world. English bankers have always dressed well and there are now more of them and they all need good shoes. The great shoe makers have grown on the back of their support.

The second factor has been the increase in American visitors to England and American men’s sophisticated appetite for quality luxury goods. Brands like Barkers and Church’s have become synonymous with good taste and luxury.

Visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the huge range of shoes from:

Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Shoes and style

2011-10-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

“If you want to know the measure of a man look at the shoes he wears“

Aristotle Onassis

Onassis was a smart guy, one of the cleverest entrepreneurs ever to become a multi-millionaire.

Good suit, cheap shoes? It says that this man will probably not go the final mile. When a man tells you that he will not “pay good money for shoes, they’re not worth it” is telling you he is not worth it. A lot of men will not understand this, but the women they are trying to date will.

Good shoes clean and well polished say that at some level this man is disciplined and has a pride in his appearance. Like all such visual clues, it goes straight to our subconscious, becoming part of our initial assessment of a person. It may not be fair, but it is how the human psyche works.

You can either wear good shoes and amplify your style or wear bad shoes and detract from it. Bad shoes on good clothes stand out like a beacon, shouting I do not really care about how I look.

Good shoes put a man in touch with wealth and luxury. Buying a quality pair of English shoes is one of the cheapest ways to enter the world of craftsmanship and luxury. Cheap, because the price of good shoes is low compared to other luxury goods. Cheap, because good shoes are a great investment and with care will last a man many years.

For the very best in English shoemaking have a look at the Bradshaw and Lloyd premium Collection at www.bradshawandlloyd.com made by the Trickers factory in Northampton. Here you can also view the latest shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers Country shoes

Jeffery West

2011-10-06T05:40:00.000-07:00

Jeffery West are now over twenty years old. Jeffery West do not advertise but have grown by just this kind of word-of-mouth.

Jeffery West are actually Mark Jeffery and Guy West. They make classic English shoes redesigned for the stylish modern man. Their shoes are characterised by long vamps, elaborate and clever brogueing, hidden eyelets, high facings and other beautiful design elements. The leathers of the uppers are often glossy and ostentatious. Every style has a uniqueness about it that catches the eye. The end-result is a sleek eye-catching, sexy shoe.

Like other quality English shoe brands Jeffery West shoes are comfortable, hardwearing and well made, but these are really shoes for being seen in. They are manly, sexy and improve your look with their extreme stylishness. They are made to be a dandy in, a well-dressed man about town. Think Michael Caine in Get Carter, Terence Stamp in Modesty Blaise, hip English actors of the sixties.

Jeffery West shoes start at around £200. You can buy them from the Jeffery West website but I would recommend going to one of the shops, just for the experience. The colour scheme is black, with red velvet and lots of gold-gilt, like a slightly seedy brothel. The shops are small and packed with more shoe styles than you could count and all of them are timelessly stylish. Their shop in the Piccadilly Arcade is style central.

To view the entire range on offer from Bradshaw and Lloyd visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Grenson

2011-09-30T01:36:00.000-07:00

For a while in the nineties Grenson seemed to be a bit lost. However the new millennium brought new management, new confidence and a return to being one of the best quality shoemakers in the world. They have returned to producing some of the best traditional bench-made shoes.

Grenson were founded by William Green in 1874. Green was a skilled shoemaker who built one of the first brands (Grenson was a contraction of Green and Sons).

Grenson have almost achieved the holy grail of shoes, a synthesis of English and Italian shoes. English shoes are beautifully made but generally the leathers (especially the soles) make them much heavier than Italian shoes. Grenson’s shoes are lighter and more supple (and incredibly comfortable) than many other benchmade English shoes. The soles are lighter and the uppers slightly softer than those of Church or Crockett and Jones. However they have lost none of their superb craftsmanship in doing this, the shoes are still well-structured benchmade English shoes

The shoe designs have more than a nod to Italy. Shoes are slimmer than those of their rivals, the vamp of the shoe is longer (though not as long as the vamp on Jeffrey West shoes) and the shape of the toe is sharp, even on their plain Oxfords. Like John Lobb they have updated classics with some very colourful and distinctive leathers. They are particularly good at tans, deep browns and off-brown shades. These are business shoes but are also playful enough to be night-time fun-time wear.

I once had a conversation with a Church’s salesman who told me, “We have got the best blacks but Grenson have some really good browns”. Unsolicited compliments are the best.

Grenson have two ranges. The Rushden range are their entry level shoes, classic shoes with modern designs. These retail around £140 making them (along with Loake and Barkers) the lowest priced quality English shoes and a good place to start. The Rose collection are their premium brand, costing around £220. These are beautifully made shoes, using very supple, high quality leathers.

Visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latestrange of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers shoes
Sanders shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd

Oliver Sweeney

2011-09-23T05:33:00.000-07:00

Sweeney took the classic shoe shapes and English shoemaking and gave them both a creative twist. Sweeney took basic shapes like the Derby and changed the shape of the toe, the length of the vamp, to alter the silhouette of the shoe. His shoes have a sleek, streamlined shape that suggests they are Italian but their details and finishes are edgy British street fashion. He is a new classic brand.

Oliver Sweeney shoes are well made, using traditional British techniques, but usually use softer, smoother leathers, giving his shoes more of an Italian look and feel. Beyond that he experiments with the shape and look of the shoe to produce something unique. His current collection includes shoes with a sole shaped as an extended hexagon, which sounds weird but works well. Sweeney’s shoes are always risky and sometimes they do not work for me. But Oliver Sweeney’s creative re-forming of classic types produces shoes that stand out and are widely admired.

Sweeney shoes really come to life and look so good on one’s foot. Also how comfortable they are. Oliver Sweeney have pioneered an “anatomical last” and shoes built on it have a gently curved arch which supports the foot. You can feel it the first time you put a pair of their shoes on.

Sweeney’s staff are passionate about their shoes and will definitely give you an opinion about whatever shoes you try on. Wonderful guys to talk to about shoes and clothes, very stylish and very friendly at the same time. They know their shoes and will even help you accessorise the shoes from their business accessories range. They are the only shoemaker who will give definitive advice on whether a pair of shoes will suit particular clothes.
The Sweeney effect

Oliver Sweeney proudly make classic shoes with a difference. They are a young man’s classic, full of fun and style.

Visit the Bradshaw & Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Bradshawand Lloyd shoes

Cheaney

2011-09-16T06:25:00.000-07:00

Cheaney are another classic shoe brand undergoing a metamorphosis. Founded in 1886 by two brothers, Joseph and Arthur Cheaney, Cheaney quickly became one of the premier shoemakers of England. Like the other classic companies, they are based in Northamptonshire.

Cheaney have less of an obvious presence in the market, having for many years sold their shoes through the stores of other English brands. In 1964 they were bought by Churches, who to their credit have kept Cheaney as a distinct brand. Now, under their chairman Stephen Etheridge, they are building their brand identity anew.

This re-invigoration of Cheaney automatically feels right. Cheaney shoes have a very distinctive style and shape and stand out from their peers and it is right that is acknowledged. Cheaney shoes are more rounded and have a softer line than Churches or Barkers. Their classic shoes are characterised by a graceful swooping vamp which curves into a very rounded, almost bulbous toe.

There is an aristocratic beauty about Cheaney shoes that is visible in the shape, the leather, the grain and the finish. They are one of a kind and men who wear them understand that implicitly.

Visit Bradshaw and Lloyd's website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range from:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Barkers

2011-09-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

Barkers produce English shoes of superb quality. Barkers, like Loakes, are at the affordable end of the quality English shoe spectrum. They are famous for the rugged wearability and the large amount of hand-crafting that goes into the making of their shoes. Barkers shoes have the spirit of the North of England about them, well-made, with integrity and craftsmanship. Handsome and manly.

Until recently Barkers were famous as the traditionalists of the English shoe craftsmen. They excelled at producing shoes in the classic styles Oxfords and Derbys. Their moccasins and slip-ons are not as successful, looking a bit seventies. However, for classics, especially oxfords, they are hard to beat.

Recently Barkers have become more contemporary, with some very nicely designed modern shoes, with lighter styling and clever designs such as two-tone leather uppers, long-toed Derbys and unusual broguing. They also have a new shop in London’s financial district, which showcases many of their newer designs. Barkers are clearly aiming at the new designer shoe market, which is flourishing amongst London’s financiers.

Barker also have a recently launched US venture, Barker Black. Barker Black shoes showcase the superb craftsmanship of Barkers with classic shoe types in fine leathers. The collection appears to be aimed at stylish modern man who wants a shoe that he can wear both to work and for leisure. This collection includes some very racy monkstraps and a fine town-boot. In England, as far as I am aware, this collection is only available at Harrods.

Visit the Bradshaw and lloyd website to vue the entire range of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Crockett and Jones

2011-09-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

Crockett and Jones, along with Trickers and Loakes are another true success story of English quality shoemaking. They have an illustrious history as one of the oldest and best shoemaking companys’ in England. They remain an independent family firm, still managed by members of the Jones family. They are now in the fourth generation of the Jones family, having founded the company in 1879.

Crockett and Jones are passionately traditional and have produced superb English shoes throughout the ups and downs of the English economy. They use traditional methods, to the extent that they buy up old shoe-making machines from defunct companies, which they then rebuild to produce their shoes in the traditional C & J way. They limit their expansion to the output that their factory can produce and refuse to compromise their shoes by adopting modern factory methods.

Crockett and Jones are the style-masters, their classic shoes are just a little longer and little slimmer than the other English brands. This flatters the foot and complements modern suits very well. Of all the classic English shoe-makers, C& J shoes match up Italian suits the best. There is slightly Italianate curve to their shoes which makes them catch the eye.

The leathers are of superb quality, fine-grained and very supple. When polished up, the shoes have a soft silky shine. Crockett and Jones use leather from herds on the Swiss/German/Austrian borders, which traditionally supply some of the best hides in Europe. They have a saying, which is that “a cow must be able to moo in three languages for Crockett and Jones to want their hides”

C&J make fine classic shoes, from around two hundred and fifty pounds. They also have a handgrade range, which are made of finer leather, with more hand-work and a slightly slimmer shape, from around £400.00. These shoes were originally a range made for John Lobb and strikingly handsome, once again with an Italian influence.

They are also one of the few English shoemakers to still have a cordovan range. Cordovan is horse leather and shoes made from it are supple and less prone to wrinkling and stretching.

Visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the entire range from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers shoes
Sanders shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Trickers

2011-08-26T04:20:00.000-07:00

Trickers are one of the oldest English shoemakers, originally founded in 1829. They have many similarities to Church’s. The difference is that Church’s are known world-wide, whereas Trickers are a bit of an English secret.

Trickers make the same classic shoes as the other shoemakers but their styling is more traditional, probably the most traditional. By comparison to the other brands listed here their shoes have a wider, heavier look to them and the leather feels more substantial, the soles feel heavier. Their Derby brogues are classic and absolutely beautiful, something else that they share with Church’s.

Only Trickers and Cheaney still produce a true country shoe. Trickers country shoe are a heavy, durable and very handsome Derby shoe (either plain or brogued) with strong and stylish stitching and double leather soles. These are must for outdoor events, especially in England, where weather is synonymous with rain.

The Trickers shop in Jermyn street is an experience of the best of English service, polite, informed and friendly. If you are a first-timer to quality English shoes these gentlemen will look after you, they did me when I first went there years ago. The secret of Trickers is often passed down from father to son and taking your son to buy a pair of shoes there is a bit of a coming-of-age ritual. A friend of mine, aged 18 was taken to Trickers by his father, and bought a pair of Chestnut Oxfords. They are now over twenty years old and, have aged beautifully and look wonderful.

Trickers shoes work well with country clothes, tweeds and woollens. They look superb with corduroys.

To view Trickers shoes and a comprehensive collection from Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Sebago shoes and the Bradshaw and Lloyd own brand collection visit the website www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

John Lobb Shoes

2011-08-19T04:13:00.000-07:00

John Lobb have the most illustrious and celebrated history of any shoemaker and have won countless awards for their shoes. They were founded in 1849 by a Cornishman, who was of course, John Lobb. The ready to wear part of the company is owned by Hermes, but continues to use classic English methods to produce quality shoes.

Lobb ready-to-wear are surprisingly adventurous shoes, with more than a touch of Italian styling. Their shoes are sleek, with modern designs giving a radical look to old favourites such as Oxfords and Monk-straps. If you run your hands over a pair of Lobb shoes, the leather is cool, perfectly smooth, perfectly finished. The shoes are a thing of beauty.They use laser cutting machines for brogue-ing and this makes superb finely etched patterned shoes. The laser-cut brogue-ing is mesmeric, it makes you want to look at the shoe from every angle, it is strange and beautiful and luxurious, all at the same time. John Lobb also use unusual and sophisticated colours in their leathers, with reds, plums and very pale tans (amongst others), producing beautiful and original shoes.

In truth, Lobb entry level shoes are the equivalent of other brand’s handcrafted ranges, with the finest of leathers and superb finishing (the stitching on Lob shoes is very fine). As with other shoemakers there is a hand-crafted range and these typically have a slimmer shape across the instep, making the shoe neater and flattering the foot. There is of course a price differential. Lobb ready-to-wear shoes start at around £550 and go up over the £1000 mark.

To view the latest range on offer from Bradshaw and lloyd visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com. Shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes

Loakes

2011-07-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

Loakes are one of the oldest and most well-loved of English quality shoe brands. Founded by the three brothers Loake in 1880, Loake produce shoes of excellent quality. Loake are obsessed with producing shoes of superb quality. They do not have their own stores and sell through other retail shoe stores. Similarly their advertising is quite low-key compared to other English shoe brands. Their focus is entirely on their shoes and making the best.

Loakes are often the first quality shoes that Englishman buy, possibly because of the price (Loake’s entry level shoe, the Loake Shoemaker range, retail for around a £100.00). So Loake fans often start young.

Loakes quickly develop that classic and beautiful worn-in look, while retaining their shape and sparkle. Loakes often look better than shoes twice the price and half the age.

Loake have an amazing variety of shoe styles, though no one shop stocks the whole range. They have the following ranges, amongst others:

The Loake Shoemaker range are the Loake entry-level shoe, starting at around £100.00. These are classic styles, Goodyear welted, with good quality leather uppers. In terms of style they are traditional and have quite a broad foot, so they look a little heavy, much like Trickers shoes. Shoemaker has a “comfort” sub-line, with wider width fittings, which also make them suitable for older men.

Design Loake are Loake shoes with modern designs, the squared toe, raised leather piping etc. They are contemporary styles and of the same excellent quality as Loake Shoemaker styles. These also start at around £100.00

Loake 1880 These are some beautiful shoes. These are classic English styles, Derbys and Oxfords, in high quality leathers, fine stitching and traditional broguing.

Men buy Loakes because they are stylish, (every generation of London men seem to “re-discover” Loakes as they are growing out of adolescence), well-made and affordable. For some men Loakes are the first quality shoes they buy, for some men Loakes are the first and only shoes they buy, so greatly do they prize them. Loakes inspire pride, loyalty and affection.

For the entire range of Loake shoes visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

Here you can also view an extensive collection from:

Sebago shoes

The great English brands

2011-07-22T01:36:00.000-07:00

Church's

Church’s are the best-known of the quality English shoe brands. They epitomise English shoemaking to the world, with their classic, handsome, hard-wearing shoes. They are the reliable choice of English businessmen. In recent years they have become one of the most widely-known iconic brands in the world, with a big presence in America, Germany and the Arab world. They were recently bought by Prada and are now truly multi-national, and Prada’s influence is beginning to be seen in Church’s shoe designs.

Church’s shoes are a rite-of-passage for English businessmen; you know you have arrived when you can afford your first pair of Church’s. In England Church’s have a fiercely loyal professional clientele and many refuse to wear any other shoe.

At their factory in Northamptonshire Church make classics, Oxfords, Derbys, Monkstraps and Slippers (both loafers and moccasins) and town boots, using traditional techniques. They have two primary ranges, “Last 73″ this being their entry level shoe and their Custom Grade collection, which uses finer hides and more hand-finishing. Church’s make a well-structured shoe, not as heavy as some, suitable for just about everyone. By not as heavy I mean that the shoes are relatively slim, the shoe leather is of a medium thickness and the styling is classic but not old-fashioned. They excel at brogues and some of their brogue Derbys are simply beautiful.

Church’s provide superb service in their shops. They excel at introducing the English shoe experience to newcomers and are passionate about making sure their customers get the right shoe.

The careful structuring of their shoes (both the sewing of the uppers and the joining to the soles) means that they take a little bit of wearing-in but they mould to the foot quite quickly and become comfortable after a few wears. The uppers seem to glow with a warmth and sparkle that few other brands can match.

Visit Bradshaw and Lloyd's website www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

The importance of good shoes

2011-07-15T02:50:00.000-07:00

It was Aristotle Onassis who said:
“If you want to know the measure of a man look at the shoes he wears“
Cheap shoes on a man say that does not understand the message he is sending to the world. Good suit, cheap shoes? It says that this man will probably not go the final mile, and maybe he is like that in his dealings with others, in his business. When a man tells you that he will not “pay good money for shoes, they’re not worth it” he is telling you he is not worth it. A lot of men will not understand this, but the women they are trying to date will.

Good shoes clean and well polished say that at some level this man is disciplined and has a pride in his appearance. Like all such visual clues, it goes straight to our subconscious, becoming part of our initial assessment of a person. It may not be fair, but it is how the human psyche works.

Good shoes are a vital part of looking good. That you can either wear good shoes and amplify your style or wear bad shoes and, well, screw it up. Bad shoes on good clothes stand out like a beacon, shouting I do not really care about how I look.

Quality English shoes are superb. ust by pulling them on you look elegant, confident and worldly.

Good shoes put a man in touch with wealth and luxury. Buying a quality pair of English shoes is one of the cheapest ways to enter the world of craftsmanship and luxury. Cheap, because the price of good shoes is low compared to other luxury goods. Cheap, because good shoes are a great investment and with care will last a man many years.

The history of the English shoe deserves a short re-telling. The modern English shoe first emerged in the early 1800s, probably from a variety of shoe types that were then prevalent in Europe and England. At that time shoe-making was primarily a craft industry, with the bulk of the industry based in Northamptonshire, in the north of England. Northamptonshire was then a rural area, and provided both high quality leather and the oak and charcoal that were necessary for the tanning of the shoe leathers.

As industrialisation progressed and the population of England grew, so the original craft shops became large industrial factories in their own right. Out of these beginnings came the classic English brands that we have today, such as Grenson, Crockett and Jones, Loakes etc.

Goodyear welting revolutionised English shoemaking. Welting is the practice of stitching a strip of leather to the insole and upper of the shore and then stitching it in turn to the sole (in America it is called the outsole). This made the shoes stronger, more durable, and more flexible. It also meant that shoes could be resoled, extending their life.

This process really took off when Christian Dancel, a German immigrant to America, invented a machine which could stitch welted shoes. The Goodyear company bought process in 1864 and it came to England in the 1870′s. All quality English shoemakers now use Goodyear welting and it has become the distinctive feature of English shoes. Shoes became artefacts that could be made on a production line and from those beginnings we got the historic shoe brands that we have today.

There is no denying that English shoe-making had a rough ride in the 20th century. As industrial processes for making shoes became simpler and cheap shoes multiplied, quality shoe-makers found it hard to compete and a number of great brands simply went under. The sixties saw the influx of cheap poor quality shoes from Eastern Europe. Oddly enough, there was a tradition of quality shoemaking in Czechoslovakia and Hungary but communism virtually killed it. This was followed more recently by cheap shoes from China, which also cut into the market.

However in the last twenty years the market for English shoes has grown and there are two factors that have had a considerable influence on the market for English shoes.

The first of these is that London has become the foremost financial market in the world. English bankers have always dressed well and there are now more of them and they all need good shoes. The great shoe makers have grown on the back of their support.

The second factor has been the increase in American visitors to England and American men’s sophisticated appetite for quality luxury goods. Brands like Barkers and Church’s have become synonymous with good taste and luxury.

During this period the definition of what makes a quality English shoe has hardened. English shoes are now defined by the use of Goodyear welting and hand-finishing (especially in the visible stitching), classic styling and good leathers.

However the struggle seems to be over. Having preserved the English craft tradition of benchmade shoes, English shoemakers are thriving and reaching new markets. Both the bespoke and the ready-to-wear traditions are thriving, long may it continue.

For the latest range of quality English goodyear welted shoes visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website at www.bradshawandlloyd.com where you can view:
Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes.

1980 onwards

2011-07-08T03:51:00.000-07:00

In 1981, enough footwear was manufactured in the UK to satisfy nearly half of the country’s sales of 256 million pairs and direct employment in the industry was 57,400. Imports accounted for 53.5 per cent of the total. Exports accounted for 13 per cent of sales volume, 16.8 per cent by value.

Over the next twenty years the industry collapsed. The labour force fell to 15,100 in 1999, a year in which 92 per cent of the footwear sold in the UK was made abroad. UK manufacturers’ output totalled 63 million pairs. By 2001 things were even worse with 99 per cent import penetration of the home market. UK output was 34 million pairs, with 212 million pairs supplied from abroad. The UK had become a minor producer within the European Union, well behind Italy, Spain, France and Portugal. Globalisation saw UK wholesale and retail distributors acquiring their footwear supplies from overseas and the UK manufacturers’ inability to resist imports left just 4,759 footwear workers in Northamptonshire in 2001.

Amongst manufacturers, in the labour union, and at the Kettering-based Technology Centre, there was an awareness of changes in the sales environment. Answers were sought. There were requests for government assistance including trade protection, partly granted and applied without much success. In 1992 the UK had a tough national limit on shoe imports from the Chinese People’s Republic but the Irish Republic had no limit. As a result, Chinese-made footwear crossed the Irish Sea in large quantity. Product innovation was attempted. So were ‘fast response’ whereby local companies attempted to provide repeat orders within four weeks compared with four months from Brazil or six months from Taiwan, and ‘flexible technology’ to enable rapid development of new models and small batch output.

From 1985 computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacture (CAM) systems were being offered to footwear manufacturing firms. As a target for the early twenty-first century SATRA advocated CIM (computer integrated manufacture) in which a central computer database controlled the whole design, production, financial and management information in a factory. Such systems were too expensive for small manufacturers, but in the 1980s AMT (advanced manufacturing technology) provided a means for lower skilled labour to be used for more complex tasks. In the 1990s British United brought out its Crispin CAD/CAM system incorporating the same technology used by Hollywood special effects companies: it enabled shoe designers to develop two- and three-dimensional designs on screen in real time. Individual firms sought different sales niches for their products.

Largely conceptual, but not fanciful, the schematic used building blocks then largely available for computerised manufacture, such as automated stitching machines, roughing, lasting and injection moulding equipement, computerised tracking systems, robotics and automatic tranfer devices

In the end, none of these things managed to stop the rot. UK shoe manufacturers, including those in Northamptonshire, closed at such a rate that by 2003 the former Shoe and Allied Trades Research Association, renamed the Technology Centre, was trying to protect the jobs of its own two hundred technologists and support staff by advising Asian footwear manufacturers how to succeed in Western markets, running seminars in the shoe manufacturing districts of China on comfort, last assessment and fitting and product reliability.

There were 217 footwear manufacturers in Northamptonshire in 1921; by 2001 there were 26. By the latter date it was no longer possible to write about footwear manufacturing districts within the county because only a handful of firms remained, a mere remnant of what had previously existed. In 2001 there were six footwear manufacturing firms in Northampton compared with 48 in 1956. In Kettering the number had fallen from 29 to three; in Rushden from 37 to 5, and many of the traditional centres of production had lost the industry altogether. A lopsided size distribution of firms, with a large number of small back street enterprises and a mere handful of big firms, has long been a characteristic of the footwear industry. In the 1980s business failures were most frequent amongst the former group but during the 1990s large shoe manufacturers, big component firms and sizeable shoe distributors were casualties too.

Some individual cases may illustrate the process of change. On the manufacturing side came the collapse of the Burlington International Group (BIG) in 1992. Burlington had taken over former British Shoe Corporation (BSC) factories in 1988, including two large ones, in Northampton and Kettering. By Spring 1992 Burlington was in receivership and neither of these two plants continued in footwear production. Indeed the very large Kettering factory, built for Timpsons’ in 1922, was demolished in 1996 because a buyer could not be found. Then came the collapse of the Sheffield-based Facia Group, for a short while the second-largest private retail concern in the UK. Among its businesses were several hundred shops employing 1,700 people trading under the Freeman Hardy Willis, Saxone and Curtess names, sold to Facia by the Sears group in August 1995. Sears were the parent of BSC. There were too many shoe retail outlets in the High Street. Facia collapsed in June 1996. Two months later, in August 1996, so did shoe component manufacturer Chamberlain Phipps, employing 430 people in Northamptonshire. This happened two years after the company’s flotation on the Stock Exchange. The firm owed £30 millions and Arthur Anderson, the receivers, blamed the insolvency on competitive conditions in the footwear components market, aggravated by a second successive abnormally quiet summer trading period.

Until 2003 Totectors (UKS Group) were a major producer of safety boots and footwear for the armed services. In 1944 the firm became the first UK manufacturer of steel toe-capped boots. It was bought by F.H. Tomkins in 1985 for £13.5 millions and in 1993 moved into a big new factory on the outskirts of Rushden. It could produce 25,000 pairs of footwear a week, with annual sales worth £45 millions. In 2001 the firm was bought by the investment capitalists Alchemy Partners. It went into receivership in July 2003, with the loss of 230 jobs, blaming competition from abroad ‘where production costs are lower’.

White and Co. (‘Tredair’ and ‘Gripfast’) was established in 1890. In 1990 the firm won the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement and in 1991 employed 380 people, in its Earls Barton and Daventry plants, with a closing unit in Rushden. It ceased manufacturing in February 2003, moving production abroad.

As the firms disappeared the buildings they occupied were either demolished or reused often for non-manufacturing purposes.. The Wellington Works, on the corner of Montagu Street and Wellington Street in Kettering was opened as an apartment block in 2002. It had been built in 1887 for footwear manufacturer Henry Hanger who employed 500 people there in the late 1890s producing 6000 pairs of boots and shoes a week, with a steam boiler as the power source.

In February 2003 plans were drawn up to develop the former Borough Shoes’ factory in Commercial Street, Higham Ferrers, as maisonettes. In 2000 T.Groocock Ltd., the last remaining footwear firm in Rothwell, applied for planning permission to build one hundred and fifty houses on its land, including the firm’s two factories, with a move to Parkway, Kettering proposed for 2004. At the beginning of 2003 the Paradigm Housing Group was given planning permission to build housing on a former Totectors site in Rushden.

Amongst the catalogue of business failures the brightest light seemed to shine from R. Griggs and Co., Ltd., makers of Dr. Marten’s (DM) footwear. According to some observers, this company had devised a conspicuously successful and profitable business strategy. Griggs had been making Dr. Martens since 1960 but prospered particularly from the mid-1980s when DMs became fashionable. By the mid-1990s Griggs and Co. Ltd. comprised a number of separate companies all situated within a few miles of Wollaston. Wollaston was the head office, design centre and incorporated a clicking factory and main assembly unit, the heart of which was a conveyor track system with workers stationed at a dozen points to perform specific processes. It was a system well suited to flexible small batch production. Also in Wollaston were other Griggs units including G.B. Footwear, providing items such as lace hole eyelets and insoles; Wollaston Vulcanising, which produced all the PVC injection soles for the company; Philips Bros., who handled UK wholesaling activities for the group, and Luther Austin, responsible for fashion-orientated DMs destined for export. In Finedon, the Tower Boot Co. produced DM safety boots, including ones with steel toecaps, in direct competition with Totectors. Three closing units, including GP Closers in Wellingborough, were in operation at different localities to utilise pools of skilled female labour but leather uppers were sourced, too, from China, Vietnam and Romania. AirWair International was an export division opened in 1989. There was a self contained production unit in Kettering, a branch at Whetstone in Leicestershire, Gunn and Co. manufactured and maintained the firm’s machinery, laces were obtained from a subsidiary in Lincolnshire. At Earls Barton, White and Co. (Tredair) operated as a licensee. There was another concern belonging to the company in Shepton Mallet. The group made record sales worth £38 millions in 1988 and by 1989 employed 1,100 people in twenty factories across the East Midlands producing 85,000 pairs each week.

This structure enabled Griggs to hold an enviable position in the mid-nineties as the most profitable UK shoe manufacturer. Technically the PVC injected sole provides the key to the construction of Dr. Martens. Hard wearing, it incorporates sealed cavities, adding to the wearer’s comfort through an air-sprung effect and keeping down the weight of the sole. A sewn-on plastic welt is welded to the sole using an electrically heated blade. The final stage in the process is a special form of edge trimming using a multi-fluted cutter capable of removing a large quantity of excess PVC in a single pass and giving the sole its distinctive Doc Marten appearance. The resulting construction is sturdy. However, it was neither the construction detail nor the firm’s organisation which gave the company a strong position in the market place but the fact that the product became a cult fashion item in the youth market. Shaven-headed skinheads holding up their jeans with red braces took up ‘DMs’ as ‘bovver boots’, together with punk rockers and feminists, dancing to bauhaus music. They remained in favour when ska, two-tone and new wave music became popular in the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties. The left wing progressive and student movement, His Holiness Pope John Paul II and leading fashion models took them up: ‘Doc Martens’ were seen as chic fashion items. The music connection and exports kept DMs fizzing off the retailers’ shelves but a crucial element, too, was the way in which Griggs controlled the selling of its products. Company policy restricted individual distribution chains to a maximum of 10 per cent of their output which prevented high mark ups on prices. Moreover, 80 per cent of its products were sold overseas, especially the USA and Japan.

The virtual end of Griggs’ manufacturing operations in Northamptonshire came in 2003 when the firm announced that it was to transfer its manufacturing capacity to Guangdong province in China. The company had lost profitability because music- related youth fashion had turned away from the product. Gangsta rap became the youth music of the early 2000’s and its adherents wore trainers, not DMs. China offered the company labour costs amounting to one-tenth of those in the UK. So the firm closed down its UK manufacturing capacity leaving just 123 people in Wollaston to handle marketing and sales, design and to staff a small quick response production unit.

Knock-on effects of Grigg’s departure and that of other footwear firms on small suppliers in associated industries have been clear. Parker Thorne Ltd. in Kettering used to supply Griggs with insoles and shovers (cardboard inserted into a shoe to help keep its shape before sale); it lost 20 per cent of its business in 2002. In Higham Ferrers, Grade One Components used to send 60 per cent of its output of shoe socks to Griggs. Blenkinsop Leathers, also in Higham Ferrers, had to reduce its labour force of 30 people in 2002; it had been contracted by Griggs to ‘alter’ imported leather and to supply linings. Glenn Leathers of Rectory Road, Rushden, imported leather to sell on to other companies. It employed 40 people in 1980, but was down to four in 2002.

Thus, whilst the direct effects of closures in footwear were redundancies, including around 820 accompanying the final phase of Grigg’s departure, there have been predictable losses, too, amongst the component suppliers, including those involved with the leather industry. Elsewhere there have been changes in ownership, which have sometimes made definition of a ‘British’ footwear manufacturing firm problematic. A good example is John Church and Co. right at the top end of the market. The firm was founded in 1873 and run as a family business thereafter. It was sold in 1999 to the Italian fashion house Prada for £106 millions. In 2003 Prada sold 45 per cent of its holding in the company to Equinox, a private Equity fund. Equinox is owned by a consortium of Italian banks and industrial groups. The public face of Church’s product range is quintessentially English, offering fine stitched all leather calf brogues and loafers which in 2003 retailed at between £200 and £500 a pair. A similar story applies to another firm operating in the same part of the market. Barkers of Earls Barton was founded in Arthur Barker’s cottage in 1880. During the recession of the 1980s the firm’s output halved and in 1995 it was sold to Bloomsbury Trading PTE, a subsidiary of Phoenix overseas, an Indian conglomerate.

Despite innovations in manufacturing processes footwear production has remained labour-intensive and labour costs have consistently accounted for between a third and a quarter of production costs. Labour, however, has become a world-wide commodity with a labour pool of around 1.6 billion workers. Assessment of total costs involved in the transaction of making and selling a pair of shoes have impelled businesses to produce their goods in mainland China, India, Taiwan, Indonesia - anywhere where direct and indirect labour costs are significantly less than in Britain. The retail price of a pair of trainers can exceed £100 but the labour component of a pair made in Indonesia in 1995 was estimated by Nike to be 11 per cent. Other clothing industries have been affected in like manner but in footwear production the process has been facilitated by the separation of footwear manufacturing from footwear wholesaling and retailing. The distribution agencies - the wholesaler and retailing chains present in the UK - have no like counterparts in Italy, France or Portugal. They have been able to source abroad, to control the marketing process, and as imports made massive inroads, the Northamptonshire shoe manufacturers had little control over the big wholesale/retail concerns who were articulating and facilitating the import streams. Short of moving manufacturing operations abroad, as Griggs did, the best that many manufacturers have been able to do has been to use imported uppers closed abroad.

Fashion, too, has not always helped. It may well be that too many of the local manufacturers concentrated on what they felt they could make rather than what they could sell, and that insufficient attention was given to design and style as factors shaping consumption. Even manufacturers who were radical in technology could prove conservative in other ways. Some went out of business as a result of poor financial control or a lack of marketing energy. In 1976 a report on the industry by the Economists Advisory Group stated that, ‘…amongst the small family concerns there appears to be a pre-occupation with the task of making the business simply provide a living for its owner which shuts out all thought of new investment and a new aggressive approach to marketing and re-organisation’.

There were, of course, adverse forces quite outside the control of the firms: the rise of new footwear production centres in Brazil during the 1970s and later in China, Indonesia, Thailand; decline of the US dollar and of Far Eastern currencies linked to it which enabled low cost South East Asian producers to become even more competitive; periodic bouts of US protectionism which prompted Far Eastern producers to channel exports to Europe. For the last twenty years or so, however, the two most profitable footwear firms in the UK market place have been Nike and Adidas, foreign manufacturers of sports trainer shoes assembled mainly in ‘third world’ countries. Heavily advertised, with images of world famous athletes, their aspirational products came to be seen as highly desirable across a wide range of age groups in Britain and other countries. For these firms there is no handicap in wide geographic separation of markets and production units. Communication, contact and feedback by computers is worldwide and instantaneous. Pumped up with air, reinforced with high-tech materials borrowed from the aerospace and transport industries, sculpted to the foot and manipulated to eliminate excess weight, training shoes became the footwear of choice for consumers all over the world, from Sheffield through Saigon to San Francisco. With one or two exceptions, such as Gola Sports (W. Botterill) in Bozeat and Earls Barton, Scorpion Sports in Northampton, and Mitre Sports in Kettering, the Northamptonshire manufacturers were left behind in this sales revolution, with traditional leather-uppered men’s footwear in black or shades of brown. The sports shoe market in Britain doubled in size from £130 millions in 1982 to £280 millions in 1987 but the leading British firm Inter Footwear, trading as Hi-Tec, held a UK location in Southend, not Northamptonshire, and sold shoes made in Taiwan and South Korea. Moreover, south east Asia even in the late 1980s was churning out large quantities of traditional footwear as well. From 1987, South Korea became one of the world’s biggest leather buyers, and China now consumes 60 per cent of the world’s leather output.

The end result of this constellation of causes was the deindustrialisation of the Northamptonshire footwear manufacturing district, of exclusion for the old industry from a new production system. By 2004 the reputation for footwear manufacturing, built up since the seventeenth century, was hardly matched by the pale reality of what was left on the ground. The demise of the industry had become part of a new economic landscape in Northamptonshire, one in which the so-called industrial estates and business parks provided space for large warehouses storing consumer goods manufactured by people working at the far side of the world. They were temporarily safeguarded in such stores by a handful of local people prior to being distributed along motorways for sale in the country’s supermarkets and multiple retail chains. School leavers in the county no longer looked for jobs in the footwear and leather factories where their parents and grandparents once worked but instead to motor car racing and its offshoots, IKEA warehouses in Thrapston and Northampton, call centres, hotels, restaurants, shops and leisure centres. Such is the face of the process of globalisation: trades will go to where they see their maximum gain leaving behind places which once they made their own. But a sense of loss at the passing of the old order should be coupled with a recognition that shoe factories were often not very healthy places in which to work. Leather dust and solvent mists in the air, the presence of aggressive chemicals like isocyanates, made for a potentially hazardous environment. The work was hard, often unremitting physical labour and pay was low compared to many other occupations. So it is perhaps to be welcomed that Northamptonshire school leavers are no longer expected to work in such places. Globalisation, moreover, has the benefit of boosting living standards in the developing countries which provide the manufacturing capacity whilst holding back inflation and satisfying consumers in the more developed nations that provide most of the markets.

Visit Bradshaw and Lloyd's website www.bradshawandlloyd.com wo view the latest range of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Trickers shoes
Sanders shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

The Northamptonshire shoe industry from 1957 to 1985

2011-07-01T03:01:00.000-07:00

Changes in shoemaking technology became a recurrent theme from the 1950’s onwards, sometimes using techniques known before World War II but not widely adopted until after the war. Lasting initially was the most affected process. Slip lasting involves the upper being stitched to a soft sock, the last being forced into it and the sole cemented to the bottom. As a low-cost method method suitable for short-lived fashion shoes and summer sandals the process spread widely in Leicestershire, the home of women’s fashion shoes, but had less impact in Northamptonshire, the home of men’s footwear. In Northamptonshire in the late 1950s ‘hot process’ direct moulding had a bigger effect than slip lasting. In this process uncured rubber blanks are inserted into a sole-shaped mould onto which the shoe is clamped and heat applied for several minutes to cure the sole. Then, during the late 1970s came the introduction of direct PVC and then Thermoplastic Rubber (TPR), widely taken up by 1980.

These technological changes reduced the number of discrete operations in lasting. Also, conveyor systems capable of moving shoes from one shoemaking operation to the next in a controlled fashion took over from the traditional twelve pair trolley or ‘rack’ system. In the 1980s some firms adopted computerised sewing machines.

Improved productivity resulted from these changes. Between 1971 and 1975 output per employee increased by nine per cent. It increased by 24 per cent from 1982 to 1986. However, over the period 1957 to 1985, increasing productivity was set in the context of low demand elasticity in the home markets, modest exports, and steadily rising import penetration of the UK market. The combination provided difficult trading conditions. The total U.K. footwear market grew from around 150 million pairs in 1957 to 225 million pairs in 1965 but thereafter remained static at 225 to 260 million pairs per annum until 1983, when there was an increase to 280 million pairs. Between 1984 and 2000 the market oscillated around 280 – 290 million pairs per annum. Whilst yearly exports remained fairly constant at 15 to 18 million pairs between 1957 and 1982, imports climbed from 20 million to 135 million pairs. Combined with increasing productivity, the UK manufacturers’ decreasing market share inevitably meant contraction in the labour force and an average yearly net loss nationally of around 1,600 footwear manufacturing jobs occurred between 1950 and 1981

In the county as a whole footwear manufacturing employment fell by 42 per cent. In Northampton the fall was 49 per cent and the number of factories halved. The broad swathe of plants running across the town from west to east in 1957 was much less evident in 1975, simply because there were fewer active establishments.

Similar trends were evident elsewhere. In Rushden the number employed fell by 35 per cent between 1957 and 1975, from 5,360 to 3,502. The number of footwear workers in Kettering was reduced by 48 per cent over the period, from 5,084 to 2,225. The main concentration of factories in Kettering, to the east and north-east of the pre-1875 core, suffered badly, as did the comparable clusters in Rushden and Wellingborough. Wellingborough saw a 60 per cent loss in its footwear labour force, from 2,347 to 952. The number of workers in Raunds went down by 52 per cent, from 1,671 to 811, and Rothwell experienced a 38 per cent reduction, from 1,024 to 618. In the core of the footwear manufacturing district, wherever one looked in the late 1970s, factory buildings which two decades previously had been busy places of employment stood empty, with estate agents’ boards on their walls. Some had been turned to different uses, and the demolition gangs had knocked down others altogether. Some of the enterprises still extant had lost their independent existence through mergers and takeovers. Some of the firms who took a leading role in acquisition activity did so to acquire retail outlets, or to reduce competition but the patterns and motivations in acquisition activity were complex. The process was widespread, however. In Kettering, for example, only three of the 27 separate shoe manufacturing firms present in 1957 did not undergo some kind of merger or acquisition activity and associated change between that year and 1980.

Another feature that made itself very obvious during the period was the jettisoning of the less suitable factory premises, with a retreat from the older medium-size multi-storey premises occupying inner town sites. Such buildings raised problems for work organization: floor areas punctuated by floor-support pillars, floors with low load-bearing capacity, difficult access to upper floors, limited vehicular access. Modern horizontal work flow production processes strongly favoured single-storey premises rather than work carried out in the rooms of multi-storey plants. Even so, by 1980 less that 10 per cent of the factories in use had been built in the previous fifteen years; the surviving firms were still operating in old buildings.

Perhaps the most powerful changes in the environment of footwear manufacture after 1957, however, occurred in the distribution and marketing of the product. In 1957 there were different configurations of organizational units amongst the manufacturers, but long-established family firms, employing between 100 and 200 workers, were numerically dominant. They sold through wholesalers, to independent retailers, through footwear retailing multiples competing with one another. The specialist retailing chains dominated sales. From the late 1950s, however, the situation changed as large corporate structures arose on the distribution side. The biggest was the British Shoe Corporation (BSC), whose retail outlets in 1975 handled over one-fifth of the country’s £862 millions-worth of footwear sales. BSC was created in the nineteen-fifties when Sir Charles Clore, in a series of well-publicised takeovers, acquired a chain of 1,800 retail outlets on prime city centre sites. Names such as Dolcis, Lilley and Skinner, Freeman Hardy and Willis, Trueform, Manfield and Saxone became part of his empire. Other companies with a significant High Street presence by 1986 included C and J Clark (Clarks, Peter Lord, Kay), Marks and Spencer, Storehouse, Timpson (acquired by Oliver), Oliver, Stylo Matchmakers (trading as Barratts), Stead and Simpson and Leonards (owned by Great Universal Stores). Many companies on the distribution side sourced their footwear internationally to maximise profits and UK manufacturers felt left with little leverage in negotiating their sales as the concentration of distribution into fewer and fewer hands took place. The control of manufacturing and of selling had become detached and only firms with a better-than-average exporting record could feel sanguine about the future, simply because this gave them a degree of independence in marketing.

By the late 1970s, therefore, as a result of a mixture of different but often related causes, the industry was much reduced from what it had been in the 1950s. There had been heavy losses in the number of factories. The labour force had been reduced by firms going out of business, by firms shedding labour in situ, by the closure of branch factories. Closing rooms were being discarded in favour of closed uppers brought in from abroad. The labour force was ageing and recruitment of younger workers proving difficult.

Even in a slimmed down state, however, the industry remained significant, both in the county and in the country. In 1975 Northampton’s 5,100 shoe workers produced 5.8 million pairs of footwear with an ex-factory value of £24 millions and there were 14,000 workers elsewhere in the county turning out 18 million pairs valued at £78 millions. Men’s footwear of one kind or another continued to be paramount. Long-established firms such as Crockett and Jones, John Church and Co. and R.E. Tricker in Northampton, Barker’s in Earls Barton, W. Green (Grenson) in Rushden and Loakes in Kettering retained a niche at the top of the ready-made market using traditional materials and construction methods. Kettering, Rushden and Wellingborough still emphasised men’s medium-quality footwear but after 1964 two firms in these places changed to producing women’s shoes by injection-moulding and another moved into the production of football and cricket boots. Rothwell, Finedon and Irthlingborough continued to make cheaper varieties of shoes for men, together with boots, but the output at Wollaston changed from protective footwear and heavy boots to men’s wear of medium quality and golf shoes. Wollaston saw R. Griggs and Co. innovating in 1960 with Doc Martens PVC injected soles to begin thirty years of prosperity for the family firm. At Raunds the emphasis remained on army boots and heavy boots for industrial work. At Bozeat the production of working boots was phased out in 1968 and by 1978 only sports shoes were made.

At the end of the 1970s, therefore, the industry was still present in Northamptonshire, though much reduced from its one-time pomp. On 26 February 1981, after an extended Parliamentary debate on the industry’s problems, the responsible government minister of the day, Sir Keith Joseph, wound up the debate with the statement: ‘a combination of design skills, marketing flair, management flair and modern technology can produce triumphant success. In all the gloom, there are dramatic success stories. The really dramatic loss of manufacturing capacity to prove him wrong was still to come, in the last two decades of the century.

Visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of premium leather shoes from:

Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

The Northamptonshire shoe industry from 1900 to 1957

2011-06-24T04:58:00.000-07:00

Most of the elements of Northamptonshire’s twentieth century footwear industry were in place by 1900 and whilst the final two decades were ones of dramatic decline, some statistics might suggest the first half of the century to have been a period of relative stability - of consolidation and capital accumulation following technological innovation. For the manufacturers there was a long period of prosperity from 1890 to 1912, when exports boomed and modest fortunes were made. The first and second World Wars increased the demand for military footwear. Northamptonshire firms maintained their position within the national picture, producing 32 per cent by value of the country’s total footwear output in 1924, 34 per cent in 1930 and 34 per cent in 1935.

The industry benefited from an experienced labour force using effective machinery housed in factories of varying size which were mostly purpose-built. By 1911 much of the machinery was driven by gas engines using gas produced from anthracite, usually in a suction gas plant, or by steam power. The opening of the Midland Railway Company’s line through the Ise valley in 1857 had halved the price of coal in the townships through which it passed. Capital needs were increasing but it was still possible for men of modest means to enter the industry. In the 1890s several production co-operatives were formed in the villages and in such cases the beginning was small; a few men might pool their savings, find premises, elect a manager and begin production. From 1899 any compelling need to buy machinery was removed by the fact that the British United Shoe Machinery Company made their products available on lease. There was a productivity increase in the industry nationally of 28 per cent per man hour between 1924 - 1935 but Northamptonshire’s footwear manufacturing labour force as reported in the Census tables remained reasonably steady with the 1951 figure being almost the same as that for 1891; (1891, 36,134; 1901, 41,989; 1911, 41,928; 1921, 42,283; 1931, 39,585; 1951, 35,034).

Labour unions and manufacturers’ associations were in place to ensure orderly negotiations over wages and conditions of employment. The manufacturers’ associations had emerged in the late 19th century partly in response to the birth of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives in 1874. A manufacturers’ association of a kind was formed in 1859 in Northampton but did not become really active until 1879. Kettering formed an association in 1886, Rushden in 1890 and similar associations emerged in the 1890s at Burton Latimer, Desborough, Earls Barton, Finedon, Raunds and Rothwell. Together with Kettering and Rushden these were amalgamated into the Northampton County Federation in 1916 but the local manufacturers’ associations and local union branches had developed the habit of making local agreements on payment rates for particular classes of work, typically with higher rates prevailing in Northampton than in the other places. One consequence was the continued drift of contracts towards the country districts where labour costs were lower than in Northampton. But with one or two minor exceptions the geographical distribution of the industry within the county in 1921 was similar to that of 1911. In 1894/5 came a major confrontation between manufacturers and workers in which a lockout was followed by a Settlement which governed the relations between employers and employees for more than a hundred years. The Shoe and Allied Trades Research Association was established in Kettering in 1919 specifically to provide the industry with technical support through science based research.

Below the surface, however, were perturbations in the environment in which the manufacturers had to operate. These varied through time in their mode of expression and significance but they included temporal variations in the national economy, increasing competition in foreign and home markets, innovations in production technology, changes in the organisation of footwear marketing and sales, labour shortages, fashion changes and the ultimate internationalisation of production.

Northamptonshire firms shared in the inter-war depressions. A brief boom in the industry after the 1914-18 War was followed by trade depression in the 1920s, and from 1930 to 1933. Periods of short-time working resulted.

Serious competition in home and foreign markets had begun with the ‘American Invasion’ of 1894-5 when the style and appearance of American shoes proved attractive in the UK market. By adopting American methods and machinery the Northamptonshire manufacturers were able to turn the tables, sending exports to the USA, and colonial populations provided a basis for growth in exports which reached a pre-war peak in 1911. During and after the first World War, however, there was a sharp fall in exports as countries which pre-war had been good markets developed their own footwear industries and put in place tariff barriers to protect them. There was, too, increasing competition from European firms both in home and foreign markets in the 1920’s. In the early 1930s shortime working in the industry was common and the demand for military footwear during World War II was less than it had been in World War I, partly because of pre-war stockpiling.

The imposition of clothes rationing and purchase tax precipitated a twenty five per cent fall from the 1938 figure in the home sales value of civilian footwear for 1943. In 1941 the government devised a ‘concentration scheme’ under which some footwear factories were closed, their production transferred to others, and the vacated premises turned over to wartime production. The Barratt works , in Northampton, for example, was used to manufacture components for RAF bombers.

The settlement of 1895 proved robust during the twentieth century and really serious confrontations between manufacturers and their labour force did not occur: there were stoppages from time to time, but no big strikes. There were, however, labour shortages in the post-war period. In 1950 the Northamptonshire County Council Planning Department conducted a questionnaire inquiry into the nature and state of industrial establishments within its area of jurisdiction (the whole county, except for Northampton). Included were returns from thirty-eight footwear manufacturing establishments. The great majority of these indicated a shortage of women closers and juveniles to train.

One attempt to solve the problem was the establishment in the early post-war period of a number of small closing rooms. Most of the places chosen were small townships and villages without much female-employing industry, within an hour’s run by car of the main factory. They had to be sufficiently near to ensure reasonable control of quality and work flow, and to minimise the cost of transporting the cut out leather upper pieces and the sewn uppers back again, but sufficiently far to draw on workers who could not conveniently travel daily to the parent plant.

In the early part of the century improvements in productivity were related more to the organisation of production in the factory than to new machinery. The early 1950s through to the late 1970s was, however, a period of radical re-equipment, increasing the need for quality control within factories. The establishment of branch closing rooms had been a response to the very limited technological changes in closing procedures: at the time the only way to obtain more closed uppers was to employ more closers. In clicking some changes had occurred; by the middle of the century a great deal of clicking was carried out with a swing beam which could be positioned over any part of the hide or skin on the cutting block and then depressed to strike the knife below. Increased speed was the main advantage over the traditional method, but the clicker still had to use skill and experience in ‘reading’ the variations in thickness, colour and flexibility of the material before him. Much more radical changes were taking place at mid-century in lasting, soling and finishing.

In the Northamptonshire footwear factories of the first half of the century men’s footwear dominated output and the products were mainly, but not exclusively, machine sewn and welted. Rivetted boots were made, too, and turnshoe construction used for sports footwear. After the end of the second world war, however, in lasting and making, automatic machinery came in to replicate former hand movements and heat shrinkage methods of leather moulding lent themselves to newer types of construction such as slip lasting. Both of these things reduced the amount of labour needed in lasting rooms. Perhaps even more significant was the widespread adoption of new soling processes. In most factories the sewing, riveting and pegging of soles to uppers gave way to sole attachment using cement adhesives, rubber vulcanising, injection moulding and eventually, deep into the century, moulded sole units. Until about 1959 leather soles were the norm but vulcanization and the direct injection of soles using polyvinylchloride (pvc) eliminated the need to cut, mould, attach, edge trim and burnish leather soles and reduced by two thirds the number of soling and finishing operations formerly required. The use of pneumatics and hydraulics in machine construction also increased productivity by speeding up production.

An atmosphere of technical change became part of the behavioural environment for both management and workers; the industry was becoming more an assembly industry than one requiring traditional craft skills. Technical changes in production methods enabled factories to specialise by production process as well as product type (men’s, women’s, maids’, children’s). They also weakened the attraction of labour pools skilled in traditional methods except for the firms retaining welted sewn production. The need to match the output of one set of machines with that of other sets had previously established a technical optimum of around 1,200 pairs a day, depending on the type of output. Thus at mid-century a factory size of about one hundred and fifty employees was common and larger plants differed from these smaller ones mainly through running additional batteries of production machines rather than in making large scale economies. The fact that the leading supplier of footwear making machinery, the British United Shoe Machinery Co. Ltd., with headquarters in Leicester, continued to offer equipment on lease as well as for sale also favoured smaller concerns through limiting the amount of capital required in the acquisition of machinery.

Despite vicissitudes over the preceding half century, the footwear industry was still a substantial presence in the county in the 1950s and it had few rivals in the employment structures of those Northamptonshire settlements where it had become established. At the 1951 Census it provided jobs for 26 per cent of the county’s employed males and 28 per cent of the occupied females. In some of the Ise valley townships, taking both sexes together, the dependency was nearer 50 per cent. There were 201 factories present in 1956, compared with 217 in 1923. The health of the workers in these factories had improved significantly. In the 1890s phthisis had been a common cause of death and during the following decades pulmonary tuberculosis in the Northamptonshire shoe industry was significantly higher than in many other factory industries. Mass radiography immediately after World War II made a real difference to this situation. A healthier labour force was a more productive one: the average production of equivalent pairs per person employed was 772 in 1930 and 1,030 in 1945; by 1948 it was 40 per cent higher than in 1939.

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The 20th Century

2011-06-17T03:41:00.000-07:00

By 1956 the footwear factories in Northampton were concentrated in an east-to-west belt across the town, mostly to the east of the original urban core and in the part of the town built between 1875 and 1914. There were three large factories outside this zone; that of C.E. Lewis Ltd. to the west, in Greenwood Rd. and those of W. Barratt and Geo. Webb to the north. Footwear factories, sometimes with leather dressers nearby, dominated the scene in Wellingborough, Rothwell and Desborough. In Kettering they were located mainly in the north-eastern part of the town, a pattern determined largely by land ownership at the time they were built. In Wellingborough they ringed around the pre-1875 core and in Rushden they were mainly in the north-west.

The movement from workshop to factory took several decades and was not complete by 1905, but within the factories division of labour had produced specialised gender-specific departments:

1. Clicking, and Cutting Bottom Stock.

On arrival from tanners, curriers and leather dressers, leather had to be cut up into requisite shapes and sizes. Clicking is the name given to the cutting out of the pieces of a skin, hide or other material to be used for the ‘uppers’. A natural hide varies in thickness, strength, colour and flexibility throughout its area. Figure 11 shows a textbook layout of pieces that could be cut from a medium-sized calfskin for a man’s Oxford shoe. The task has always required skill and experience. It has been a male preserve and in the hierarchy of factory work the clickers have held a prestigious position. The men at their benches were provided with the best possible natural light, whether working in the traditional way with hand-held knives and patterns or, more speedily, with swing beam presses.

The rough stuff or bottom stock department is where all the bottoming parts - soles, insoles, heels - were cut from leather or other materials and then prepared for attachment to closed uppers in the lasting department. The most important and demanding operation was the actual cutting from the bends, bellies and shoulders of the hide in the most economic and suitable manner. The cutting of bottom stock was carried out by a press and in multi-storey factories the heavy presses were placed on the ground floor and operated by men.

2. Closing.

The preparation, fitting together and attaching together of the various cut out sections used to make complete uppers is known as closing. It is a labour intensive set of small and often delicate operations, varied and in different sequence for different types of uppers. One of these is skiving, the reduction in thickness of certain edges of the upper parts to allow seams to be fitted together without bulkiness. Closing has been invariably dominated by women and girls and within the industry good supervision of closing rooms has been regarded as a demanding task.

3. Lasting and Making.

A closed upper has to be fitted to a foot-shaped last ready for sole attachment. Early in the twentieth century this was a hand operation using a variety of pulled and twisted pincers and was seen as a task for men with strong wrists. Included in the making department were processes whose variety depended on the type of footwear but essentially they were all concerned with sole attachment by sewing, riveting, pegging, screwing, tacking or nailing. In small factories lasting and making often occurred in the same room but in larger plants took place in separate departments.

4. Finishing, cleaning and packing.

Heel attachment could take place in either the Making or Finishing rooms but finishing in general involved scouring, edge trimming and heel burnishing. The Shoe Room held responsibility for sole stamping, removal of insole tacks, polishing and pigment finishing. Women and girls carried out final cleaning and packing.

This is a brief and therefore simplified summary of the processes housed in the footwear factories. The labour intensive nature of the manufacturing process is clear. The twentieth century pattern soon became one of rows of manually-controlled machines with each machine geared to a specific task; cutting, stretching, pleating and stitching leather, shaping soles, fixing the uppers to the soles. Multi-storey premises depended upon vertical circulation of work using trolleys, stairways and occasionally lifts. Generally smoking was prohibited but snuff taking was not with the result that nose cancer was an occupational disease amongst male workers. The major problem for management was the fact that closing even with sewing machines was still the most labour intensive operation and difficulties were found in matching the output of the closers with the processes further along the production sequence. A partial solution was provided through the activities of the independent closers and homeworkers. Other ancillary activities were generated, too, by 1900. One was heel building. Originally each heel, or ‘lift’, was made in one piece. Then it was realised that small bits and pieces of waste leather could be cut in such a way that they could be pieced together to form a heel and specialist producers emerged. Welt-making, too, became work often carried out by independent enterprises.

In this way, by a process of trial and error, of accretion and specialization, a distinctive regional ensemble of industrial activities had emerged in mid-Northamptonshire to support footwear, the basic industry. Tanned upper leather often had to be ‘improved’ - altered by curriers and leather dressers to fit the shoe manufacturers’ needs. Cardboard boxes were required to contain the product; being awkwardly bulky to transport they were often produced locally. Laces, metal hooks and eyelets, patterns, needles and threads generally came from further afield but waxes, inks, stains, polishes, collectively known as ‘findings’, were locally sourced. Firms involved in these support industries were frequently small but did not always remain so. By 1987, for instance, W.W. Chamberlain and Sons’ component factory in Northampton was one of the largest suppliers of footwear materials and components (cut materials, preformed insoles, counters, soles, rands and welts) in Western Europe and Mobbs-Millers’ factory in Kettering was one of the world’s leading shoe last manufacturers.

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The footwear industry in the urban landscape

2011-06-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

The factories which began to emerge were built into the fabric of the streets: a run of terraced brick homes, then a small factory, then more houses, then another factory. Turn a street corner and the pattern was repeated. The houses had small brick workshops at the rear, the alleyways providing access to them indicated on the street by an extra door between the normal front doors opening into the vestibules or front rooms of adjacent houses. The local industry had been bricked-and-mortared into the domestic architecture. So, too, the public houses and chapels of all the leading non-conformist denominations.

The very earliest factories, such as Gotch’s in Kettering, were centres of organization rather than manufacturing but things had begun to change with the introduction of machinery from the 1850s. The most labour intensive shoemaking process was closing, the sewing together in a multitude of small and often delicate processes of the cut out bits of leather comprising a shoe upper. By 1855 Isaac Merritt Singer’s New York company was marketing a sewing machine in Britain suited to this task. A clumsy machine, worked by hand or treadle, it made only slow progress at first, but improvements followed to the point where, from 1857 onwards, sewing machines came into wide use. In some cases and especially where a high standard of workmanship was required, manufacturers found it best to bring their closers into the factory but an equally common procedure was for sewing machines to be rented out to the closers, thus allowing them to continue to work at home. The main consequence for the organisation of closing arising from the introduction of the sewing machine was the need to have two ‘fitters’ to prepare and position the cut pieces of leather in order to keep pace with the machinist. This brought many more women and girls into the industry. It also created a new branch of the industry in the form of independent closing workshops who contracted their specialist services to shoe manufacturers.

The introduction of closing machines was initially resisted by shoe workers in Northampton who went on strike from March to July 1859. But the opportunities to produce and sell boots had been demonstrated by the Crimean War (1854-6), the Indian Mutiny (1857 -9) and were followed up by the Austro-Hungarian War in 1859, the American Civil War in 1862 and the Franco-German War in 1870-71. Following the introduction of the sewing machine, other processes were mechanised. The Blake sole sewer was introduced in 1859 and had made considerable headway by 1861: it sewed right through the inner and outer sole, taking in the edge of the leather uppers. By the late 1860s rivetting machinery was in general use for bootmaking and army boots were normally riveted, screwed and stitched. Turnshoe machinery followed in 1868, and, most important of all, American Goodyear welting machines, also in 1868. The Screw Machine, to attach soles and uppers, by pegs, came in 1876. Thus most footwear factories were equipped with machinery in time for the Franco-German War (1870-71), for the Boer War (1889 -1902) and for the killing fields of France and the Low Countries (1914 -18).

To properly articulate the work of one set of machinery with another, the machines clearly had to be housed under one roof. The main objective determining the layout of factories from about 1890 was for work to flow without obstruction or hold up. The factory architecture became progressively more ambitious as business confidence grew and profits accumulated in the hands of the family firms. The small brick boxes of 1860s and ‘70s became much bigger brick boxes in the 1880s and 1890s and then, in the early twentieth century the exhuberant frontages of firms such as Geo. Webb Ltd. and William Barratt Ltd. aped the appearance of big houses owned by county landowners. R.E. Tricker covered the front of the factory in St. Michael’s Road with glazed brown tiles and leaded glass windows. In 1894, following rather than leading events, employers and the workers’ union agreed that all work except closing should be carried out indoors. Manfield and Sons built the biggest Northampton footwear factory at Monks Park Spinney in 1894, with an Art Deco flavour. Many of the factories, of course, consisted of blocks built at different dates but ultimately their size and shape were to become significant in determining the ease or difficulty with which new production technologies could be adopted by firms in the late twentieth century

By 1956 the footwear factories in Northampton were concentrated in an east-to-west belt across the town, mostly to the east of the original urban core and in the part of the town built between 1875 and 1914. There were three large factories outside this zone; that of C.E. Lewis Ltd. to the west, in Greenwood Rd. and those of W. Barratt and Geo. Webb to the north. Footwear factories, sometimes with leather dressers nearby, dominated the scene in Wellingborough, Rothwell and Desborough. In Kettering they were located mainly in the north-eastern part of the town, a pattern determined largely by land ownership at the time they were built. In Wellingborough they ringed around the pre-1875 core and in Rushden they were mainly in the north-west.

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The footwear industry at mid-19th century

2011-06-03T03:35:00.000-07:00

In 1851, boot and shoemaking was the third largest source of manufacturing employment in Great Britain. The 1851 Census reported 470,000 people employed in the manufacture of cotton textiles; 420,463 in dressmaking and tailoring, 274,451 in boot and shoemaking, with 94,175 ‘shoemakers’ wives’ in addition. The latter were designated thus because they had an active role in making footwear, often working at home, alongside their husbands and sons. It is justifiable, therefore, to accept a total of 368,626 in the footwear industry. The manufacture of woollens and worsted employed 241,875; 219,015 people were directly employed in coal mining; 106,677 in iron and steel, including 25,008 iron miners. Shipbuilding accounted for a mere 25,201.

Of the shoemakers, 17,204, including ‘shoemakers’ wives’, were to be found in Northamptonshire, eight per cent of the national total. There was a different situation by 1951, when there were 35,034 footwear workers in the county, approximately 28 per cent of the total. The end of the century was different again; in mid-1999 the industry provided direct employment for 16,987 people in England and Wales, 4,759 of them in Northamptonshire but still 28 per cent of the total.

Bates portrays a craft industry in which handstitchmen worked at home with their own tools but in truth the configuration of the footwear industry in the county in 1851 was quite complex. In Northampton, traditional master craftsmen working alone or employing a few journeymen and apprentices existed side by side with individuals described in the census schedules as manufacturers and who employed between twenty and two hundred workers. The status of the manufacturers is hinted at by the fact that one of them, Francis Parker, was mayor in 1851 and another, J. Groom, an alderman.

The craft shoemakers could obtain necessary materials quite cheaply and owned their own tools, so an unemployed or independently-minded individual could set up on his own, working with his family and hawking the products on his own account. He might produce six or seven pairs a week.

A third category in the county comprised the still-widespread village cobbler earning a living by making and repairing what was often cheap low quality footwear and sometimes ‘translating’ i.e. buying up small lots of second-hand boots and patching them up for re-sale. It was rare for even the most deeply rural hamlet to be without such a shoemaker.

There were, too, one or two garret masters in Northampton but they were nowhere near so important to the local industry as in London where they supplied poorer families and took in sub-contracted work for the ready-made market.

Mid-nineteenth century Northampton was not a big place, growing to around 60,000 inhabitants by 1881 but it was the first manufacturing town encountered when travelling north from London and contact with the capital was vital for growth in the local economy. There were just two major domestic markets for Northampton’s manufacturers. The two and a half million people in London comprised one, the other being the army and navy, supplied through their London-based Boards. In London existed three kinds of producer. One was the established cordwainers’ workshops where craftsmen served long apprenticeships, their payment regulated by custom and trades union enforcement. E.P. Thompson estimates that they comprised about ten per cent of the total numbers employed in making footwear in the capital. (6) The second, more numerous sector comprised the ‘dishonourable’ workplaces of the non-society men, whose payment was determined by competition. By 1840 there was a clear distinction between these two elements in London, the ‘honourable’ part serving the high-quality and luxury end of the market whilst the ‘dishonourable’ sector served the whole range of ready-made demand. There were, too, some manufacturers. (7)

For Northamptonshire manufacturers, with their large squads of outworkers, continued penetration of both markets was essential.. In the 1830s the ‘honourable’ men of the metropolis were surrounded by scores of ‘dishonourable’ workshops where shoes were made up cheaply, often by translators. However, rural depopulation in the 1820s and 1830s displaced hundreds of people in Northamptonshire. They became a labour source for the local footwear industry so cheap that even the ‘dishonourable’ workshops of the capital found themselves undercut. The low labour costs in Northampton and nearby settlements depended on outworking and subcontracting. Some folk were in factories but most of those counted by the 1851 census enumerators were true outworkers rather than artisans, a distinction drawn by J.H. Clapham in the following terms:

‘Capitalist outwork may be said to be fully established only when the material belongs to the trading employer and is returned to him after the process for which the outworkers’ skill is required has been completed.’
Some of the Northampton outworkers were engaged in stitching uppers together, others were attaching soles and so, by 1851, division of labour was well established with closers, clickers and shoe binders frequently distinguished in the census as specialised occupations.

The significance of the military orders is illustrated by Roy Church’s description of the fortunes of the firm of Thomas Gotch, in Kettering. The firm was founded in 1777 and in the late ‘eighties and early ‘nineties experienced annual increases in profits stemming from growing tension in Europe and stockpiling of army and navy boots. In 1793 war broke out with France and Gotch’s business boomed but the signing of the Amiens peace treaty in 1802 caused profits to halve. In January 1813 an order came in for 25,000 pairs of seamen’s shoes to be sent abroad and 20,000 for office store, also 10,000 pairs of marines’ and 2,000 pairs of boys’. This was a three-month order. Over the following three months the Navy Board ordered 60,000 seamen’s, 10,000 marines’ and 6,000 boys’. In 1815, however, Europe was at peace and profits dropped immediately. The end of the war saw the re-importation of 30,000 army pairs per week. They came onto the market as army surplus for several months, the residue being disposed of by a series of government-sponsored auctions taking place over several years. By 1825 Gotch was searching for new civilian markets in London, in the Americas, and in the West Indies.

In 1851, those county shoe manufacturers employing over a hundred people each, with the exception of Gotch, were all in Northampton and, like Gotch, used buildings which would be recognisable today as small factories. When Gotch went bankrupt in 1858, the main factory was put up for sale. It was described as a building measuring 27 yards by 6 yards, three stories high. But in 1851 there was little or no machinery in such buildings. The rough stuff cutters and clickers worked in the factories, under the watchful eye of their employer, because a bad error in cutting on the soles or uppers could cost the business the profit on a particular hide or skin. The factory-cum-warehouses were also the places where the leather was stored. The other processes depended on outwork for which the factory served as an organising and distributive focus where the boots and shoes were examined at the various stages of manufacture and stored before despatch. Closing and making took place both in the homes and in workshops, also without benefit of machinery until the arrival of sewing machines in 1856.

There was much coming and going of people, materials and products between the warehouse-factories, sheds and home workshops. Yet it was a system which, with the employment of enough labour could fulfil large orders. In 1813 Gotch’s firm alone supplied the Navy Board with 64,000 pairs of seamen’s and marine’s shoes over a period of two months. Depending upon the circumstances of an order, including the type of shoe output per adult worker involved in this kind of production in 1851 was probably between fifteen and twenty pairs a week, twice the average achieved by the traditional individual shoemaker.

In sum, therefore, at the middle of the nineteenth century the Northampton manufacturers were producing for London, the armed services and for export but a spill-over effect was that cheap ready made footwear became available to local country populations, too, thus limiting the trade available to country cobblers. Until 1857 the county town was the dominant centre of organization as well as production. With a relatively modest population in 1851 of 26,894, its function as an entrepot was enhanced by the presence of shoe factors, leather merchants, wholesalers, carriers for local and long-distance movement of materials and finished goods. The wholesale manufacturers were not limited to the town’s outworkers but reached out to involve workers in surrounding districts, too.

All this activity was enhanced by developments in transport. The Grand Junction Canal was linked to Northampton in 1815 but the London to Holyhead highway had been much improved by Telford in 1819. There was a very frequent daily coach service between Northampton and London and ten firms were engaged in the carriage of goods, including boots and shoes packed into wicker hampers, to London and Birmingham. The London to Birmingham railway was opened in 1838 but it passed through the county to the west of Northampton with stations at Roade, Blisworth and Weedon, where thousands of pairs of army boots were stored at the ordnance depot. (13) Northampton was linked to the London-Birmingham line by a loop in 1838 and the town’s ancient castle demolished to make way for storage and handling facilities for leather and footwear in transit at Castle station. Perhaps the most significant transport link of all, however, was the opening of the Midland Railway main line through Wellingborough and Kettering in 1857. This rendered the Ise valley settlements independent of Northampton and substantially stimulated their involvement in footwear production and population growth.

In 1851 Northamptonshire was the leading provincial centre of footwear manufacturing in the country. Until the mid-19th century the growth of the industry in the county town was faster than elsewhere in the county. Production of ready made boots had taken root at other places but only after mid-century did the rate of growth of the industry in these centres, particularly in the Ise valley settlements, come to equal, and sometimes overtake, that in Northampton. (14)

From 1801 to 1851 the population of Northampton more than trebled and by 1841 nearly a quarter of the people in the town had been born outside the county. (15) The 1831 Census Report commented, ‘ The Borough of Northampton has increased in population, chiefly attributable to the extension of the manufacture of boots and shoes, upward of 1,300 men being engaged in the trade.’ (16) The population growth in the other settlements of the county where shoe manufacture had become established was fastest in the period 1851 to 1901. The population of Kettering, which had increased comparatively slowly from 3,011 in 1801 to 5,198 in 1851, experienced a rapid rise to 28,653 in 1901. Between 1851 and 1901 Wellingborough increased from 5,297 to 18,412, far more than it had risen in the previous fifty years. A number of the smaller settlements along the Nene and Ise valleys also increased, notably Burton Latimer (175 per cent), Irthlingborough (173 per cent), Desborough (165 per cent), Irchester (140 per cent), Earls Barton (128 per cent), Higham Ferrers (123 per cent) and Raunds (103 per cent). Footnotes in the 1861 Census Report attribute the increases directly to footwear manufacture and, in the cases of Finedon and Irchester, the increases are stated to be a consequence, too, of the new Midland Railway line. (17). The most dramatic increase was at Rushden, where the population rose from 2,122 in 1871 to 12,453 in 1901. The fortunes of the Northamptonshire settlements had become closely identified with footwear. The growth of the places where the industry had been established was thrown into stark relief by decreasing or virtually static populations in most of the places where it was absent or only had a feeble hold. In Daventry, for example, a decrease between 1841 and 1851 is explained in the Census Report for the latter year by the closure of two shoemaking enterprises.

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Development and Decline of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Northamptonshire, England, from 1851 to 2004.

2011-05-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Strung like beads along watery threads, for the most part following the valley routeways created by the rivers Nene and Ise but avoiding the lowest ground of the flood plains, are situated the former footwear manufacturing settlements of mid-Northamptonshire. The largest is Northampton, situated at a point where a south-flowing tributary joins the river Nene, some seventy miles north-west of London by rail. To the west are Long Buckby and Daventry. Eastwards occur Earls Barton, Bozeat and Wollaston. A mile or two further on from these are Wellingborough, overlooking the confluence of the Ise and Nene, Irchester, Rushden, Higham Ferrers, Irthlingborough and Raunds. From this cluster, extending north-westward, occur Finedon, Burton Latimer, Kettering - on a ridge of slightly higher land, Rothwell and Desborough. These are small industrial towns and industrial villages, the built up inner areas of which are peppered with late nineteenth-century red brick factory buildings set into grid ironed streets of red brick terraced houses. They do not form a conurbation. Each place is individual and separated from its neighbours by gently rolling countryside. But the settlements are in large part the creation of Victorian enterprise capital and labour devoted to one basic industry, the manufacture of boots and shoes, with its necessary ancillary trades and for many decades these places provided one of the clearest examples in Britain of a regional concentration of specialised industrial activity. (1)

Until well into the nineteenth century the hand-craftsman or ‘stitchman’ was the dominant figure in footwear production, with the work done at home. Just such a craftsman is described by the Northamptonshire writer H.E. Bates, in the first volume of his autobiography. He writes of his maternal grandfather, George William Lucas, at work in High Ferrers:

‘[He] could after the fashion and tradition of centuries, create a boot or shoe from the sole upwards, stabbing and stitching, with his own hands. The world in which he plied his craft knew no machines for shoemaking, except perhaps treadle machines for stitching uppers. Consequently I am able still to see him to perfection in the mind’s eye: shoemaker’s last between his knees, tossing handfuls of tacks and sprigs into his mouth, to my extreme consternation; his awls, thread and leather, files, hammers all about him.’(2)
For the men who lived and worked in the shoemaking settlements during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the surrounding fields and woods played an important role:

Shoe makers were a law unto themselves, mostly getting rousing drunk on Saturdays and Sundays, never by long tradition working on Mondays. Either out of duty to their patron saint St. Crispin or in a pursuit of a cure for mountainous hangovers, they sought solace in the surrounding countryside rabbiting, coursing, mushrooming, following hounds, walking or riding mules by devious routes to secret hideouts where barefisted bruisers bloodily battered themselves to pulp before crowds of gentry and poor alike. With Monday behind them, shoemakers returned to their lasts, madly stitching and hammering away until midnight and even into the small hours in pursuit of cash that would, when Saturday came again, be riotously squandered.’

Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoesTrickers shoes
Sanders shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Loake have been making shoes for 130 years

2011-05-20T02:15:00.000-07:00

The Loake family has been producing fine, handmade men's footwear for longer than anyone can remember.

The tradition began in 1880, when three brothers - Thomas Loake, John Loake and William Loake - opened a factory in Northamptonshire in the heart of the English shoemaking industry. The aim was to provide the most handsome, comfortable and durable gentlemen's shoes possible.

Today, more than 125 years and five generations later, Loake is still family owned and operating in the same town in Northamptonshire. Loake shoes have become a favourite with discerning customers worldwide and are exported to over 30 countries.

Loake is most famous for its Goodyear Welted footwear, an intricate construction with origins that can be traced back over 300 years. Loake estimate that they have made over 50 million pairs.

Loake's premium Goodyear Welted shoes continue to be made in England and take eight weeks to produce. Some 130 skilled craftspeople, up to 75 shoe parts and approximately 200 different operations are involved. Only the very highest quality materials are used.

While Loake remain passionate about the quality that only time-honoured skills and a family heritage can achieve, in other respects Loake has a very modern approach.

The range of footwear on offer has been extended to include new constructions and a choice of both classic and contemporary designs. Loake also place special emphasis on fit and have developed unique comfort technology.

Loake's modern outlook can also be seen in a number of recent collaborations, including the remake of an iconic shoe for international sports brand Puma.

Loake was awarded a Royal Warrant of Appointment to the Queen in 2007.

Loake offer a full repair service at their Kettering factory. All their Goodyear Welted shoes (including rubber-soled) are designed to be repairable and experienced craftsmen will resole the shoes on the original lasts. Moccasins can also be repaired with a leather or rubber sole. The service, which can normally be completed within 21 working days, includes a full refurbishing treatment. Customers should return their shoes to Bradshaw and Lloyd to arrange the repair, or alternatively send them direct to the factory.

Loake also offer aromatic Cedarwood shoe trees which help preserve the shape of the shoe, as well as absorb moisture and impart a pleasant natural aroma to the leather.

To view Loake's extensive range of shoes do visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

At the Bradshaw and Lloyd site you can also view the extensive range of shoes on offer from: Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes, Sebago Shoes and also Bradshaw and Lloyd's ever expanding own brand range which are made for us by the same factories in Northamptonshire.

Goodyear welting. The traditional method of making shoes.

2011-05-16T03:29:00.000-07:00

Goodyear welting is the traditional and very best method of constructing mens shoes as used by Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes, Sebago shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes. With this method, there are four major parts of the shoe: the upper (the portion of the shoe that forms the parts normally observed when a shoe is being worn, including the basic design of the shoe and the lacing), the insole (the piece of leather at the bottom of the shoe that the foot comes into contact with when the shoe is being worn), the outsole (the piece of leather that forms the bottom of the shoe and that comes into contact with the ground while the shoe is being worn), and the welt (a thin strip of leather that runs around the perimeter of the outsole.

The first step in Goodyear welting is to prepare the insole for stitching. This is done by creating a rib perpendicular to the face of the insole through which shoemaker's twine can be stitched. There are three major methods for doing this. First, the rib can be carved out by hand from the face of the insole using specialized shoemaker's cutting tools. Second, a cut can be made into the edge of the insole and the rib turned back and stabilized with linen tape or other mechanisms. Third, a rib made of stiffened linen tape can be glued (gemmed) onto the insole. When done properly, the gemming is extremely secure and long-lived, and the linen rib can take as many reweltings as a cut-and-turned rib.The second step is in lasting the shoe. This means that the upper (with its lining) is pulled tightly over the last and secured to it, along with the insole. Lasting can either be done by hand using shoemaker's pliers and elbow grease, or it can be done by a machine. Most ready-made welted shoes use the machine.The third step is the actual welting. Here, shoemaker's twine is sewn through the welt strip, the upper, and the rib of the insole. This is done with a lockstitch, which means that all of the stitching won't unravel if one stitch becomes abraded or comes undone. Finally, another row of lockstitching connects the other side of the welt to the outsole. Both rows of lockstitching can be either done by hand or by machine.

The machine is called a Goodyear welting machine and was invented by Charles Goodyear, son of the man who invented the process for vulcanizing rubber, in the 19th Century. His invention revolutionized shoe construction because it made mass manufacturing of shoes possible. Hand welting shoes is time-consuming, back-breaking process that can take more than 20 hours per pair of shoes. Operating a Goodyear welting machine takes skill, but a pair of shoes can be welted in minutes.

Today, very few ready-made shoes are still hand-welted (RE Tricker is one of these). Are hand-welted shoes superior to machine-welted ones? Well, it depends on what you mean by superior. It is possible to have a more sculpted, beveled, narrow waist with hand-welting than it is with machine-welting. Waist appearance is important in shoes, but it is only an aesthetic consideration, not functional. It's doubtful that machine-welted shoes are any less durable than hand-welted ones, and it is possible that the converse is true.

There are two principal advantages for Goodyear-welted shoes, both emanating from the same aspect of construction. First, they are relatively water-resistant. Because nothing goes through the face of the insole of the shoe, groundwater doesn't have an easy path into the interior of the shoe. In contrast, with Blake construction, there is a row of stitching through the face of the insole connecting it to the outsole, which allows groundwater to wick into the interior of the shoe. Second, they are relatively comfortable (assuming that the last fits the wearer's foot well) because there isn't a row of stitching on the face of the insole to irritate the bottom of the wearer's foot. In addition, most makers of ready-made shoes put a layer of cork amalgam in the void between the ribs on either side of the insole; and this cork amalgam molds to the bottom of the foot, which sometimes enhances comfort.

Prominent makers of Goodyear-welted shoes include Loake, Allen-Edmonds, Edward Green, Sanders & Sanders, Vass, Grenson, Tricker's, JM Weston, and Alfred Sargent. In addition, many Italian manufacturers can do Goodyear-welted shoes, although they can also use many other construction techniques. Sebago use their own unique construction methods.

Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of shoes from:

Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Shoe repairs service now nationwide

2011-05-06T02:27:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to extend the Bradshaw and Lloyd shoe repair service throughout mainland UK. For a fee of £7.64 our designated courier (UPS) will collect up to 5 pairs from any home or business address within the UK mainland and we shall repair them to the highest possible standard and using the finest materials.

We continue to offer a FREE collection service from any business address within central London.

The following mens' repair prices include the return courier service throughout mainland UK:
½ leather stitched sole & rubber heel * £37.00
½ rubber stitched sole & rubber heel £37.00
½ leather stitched sole £28.00
½ rubber stitched sole £28.00
Stick-on rubber sole £16.00
Rubber heel £9.00
Rubber heel with quarter iron £11.00
Leather heel with quarter rubber £12.00
Re-line heel upper £9.00
Steel toes tip £2.50
All prices are per pair.
* Standard repair.
Minimum repair price per collection is £37. Turnaround normally 5 to 10 working days. Prices include VAT.

To arrange collection of your shoes for repair please email repairs@bradshawandlloyd.com or telephone 0870-2406990.

For our new shoes please visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com where you can view the latest range from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Bradshaw& Lloyd shoes

Sale

2011-04-28T02:38:00.000-07:00

For one month only we can offer you either a 10% discount off any pair of shoes (15% off if you order 2 pairs+), or a free pair of full length cedarwood shoe trees for each pair of shoes you order.

You will also benefit from free delivery and a free returns/collection service should you wish to return an item - UK deliveries only. Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the entire range of Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes, Tricker shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes.

Please quote offer code ZU476T in the 'Order Comments and Special Requests' box at the end of the online ordering process at www.bradshawandlloyd.com and specify whether you require the discount or trees.
You will initially be charged the website price however we shall email you confirmation of any discount on receipt of your order
and refund the discount to your card/PayPal.
Please note that this offer supersedes any of our website special offers. This offer will end on 28th May 2011.
Alternatively please telephone 0870-2406990 quoting the offer code.

Care for your shoes

2011-04-21T00:39:00.000-07:00

Do not neglect your shoes! High quality leather shoes will provide you with good service for many years but you must give them a little tlc (tender loving care). Do feed the leather with a good quality wax shoe polish eg Kiwi, on at least a weekly basis. Make sure plenty of wax gets into the welt, where the upper leather meets the sole. This will keep your feet dry by preventing rainwater finding its way along the stitching. Try to alternate your shoes so they have the opportunity to dry out naturally between outings. Never force dry shoes on radiators.

Shoe trees are a good idea but they should be made from an absorbent material, cedarwood is ideal and provides a naturally pleasing aroma. Metal, plastic and polished hardwood trees do little more than keeping shoes in shape. Alternatively just let air circulate naturally through the shoes.

Visit our website to view the latest range of shoes offered at Bradshaw and Lloyd including:

Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Tricker shoes
Sanders shoes
Bradshaw& Lloyd shoes

The Bradshaw and Lloyd shoe repair service

2011-04-15T03:26:00.000-07:00

The Bradshaw and Lloyd shoe repair service is proving ever more popular in central London. For an unbeatable £37.00 we will collect a pair of shoes from your office, repair them in the traditional way using the best materials and return them to your office, usually within 7 working days. The price includes the courier cost. Just e-mail repairs@bradshawandlloyd.com for further details.

Also visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website to view the extensive range from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers shoes
Sanders shoes

Shoes for the summer

2011-04-08T03:36:00.000-07:00

Now is not the time to wear heavy shoes and socks. Get those shorts on and some summer deck shoes from Sebago. Get 10% discount on Sebago shoes before 31st August 2009. To qualify please quote offer code ZU476T in the comments section at the end of the online ordering process. The discount will not appear in the on-line ordering process, we shall e-mail you confirmation of the discount on receipt of your order and credit your card/PayPal accordingly. Alternatively telephone 0870-2406990 / 01273-841946 quoting the offer code.

To view a comprehensive range of the following shoes please visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website;

Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes

Caring for your Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

2011-04-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

Leather is a living material, which adapts to your feet, whilst absorbing and dispersing moisture produced during wear. As your shoes will be subject to some adverse conditions, we would make the following suggestions on care, to help you obtain a long and comfortable service from your Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes:

Always use a shoe horn and use shoe trees to keep them in good shape.
Avoid, if possible, wearing the same pair of shoes every day – foot perspiration and moisture may take up to 24 hours to dry out.
If your shoes become wet, they should be dried at normal room temperature.
Never leave shoes in front of a fire or on a radiator, as the heat will dry out the leather’s natural oils and encourage the leather to crack.
Cleaning shoes is most important. Dirt and mud is best removed with a damp cloth or sponge. It is essential to remove all dirt before polishing, otherwise the dirt may discolour the leather.
Ensure that you have the soles or heels repaired by a reputable repairer before they are completely worn out, or return to us (see repair service).
The following suggestions may be helpful:

Leather shoes should always be polished with a good wax polish of the correct shade.
Suede shoes should only be cleaned with the correct suede brush. Suede protector and suede shampoo may be helpful.
Patent shoes should be wiped with a damp cloth and polished with a soft duster.

To view the full range of shoes from the following visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website:

Loake shoes
Sanders and Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes
Bradshaw & Lloyd shoes

The Sanders Collection

2011-03-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

Sanders & Sanders Ltd was established in 1873 by brothers William and Thomas Sanders of Rushden, Northamptonshire. They had a vision of offering outstanding quality footwear to discerning members of the public throughout England. They had their five craftsmen, selected the finest English hides, the best local oak-bark tanned soles and began to design and make boots. This vision has since been passed down from father to son and the company is currently in the fourth generation of family management, employing over one hundred craftsmen. Most of the footwear is made using the Goodyear Welted construction method, where the upper, insole, welt and sole are entirely stitched together. Although a very labour intensive process, this is acknowledged to be the finest construction for formal footwear.

For the extensive range of Sanders shoes offered by Bradshaw and Lloyd visit the website. Where you can also view the ever expanding range from Trickers shoes, Loake shoes, Sebago shoes and the Bradshaw and Lloyd collection.

The Sebago Collection

2011-03-18T03:43:00.000-07:00

In 1946 the Sebago heritage of crafting quality handsewn footwear nearby Lake Sebago in Maine, USA, was initiated by three veteran shoemakers. Since then Sebago Inc. has become the world’s most recognised brand for producing premium, American, casual footwear. From the beginning, the company has been known for the highest standards of hands-on manufacturing techniques, proprietary processes, timeless styling and quality materials. At Sebago, styling has always gone hand in hand with comfort. Great-fitting handsewn loafers and oxfords are built around comfort-based lasts, and Sebago created and patented the welt construction method used in many of these handsewns to provide maximum fit and comfort. Sebago obtained worldwide popularity for its Docksides boat shoe, representing the best in leisure lifestyle and great performing casual footwear.

To view the entire range of Sebago shoes visit the website, www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

You can alos view the latest range fom Loake shoes, Trickers shoes, Sanders shoes and our own Bradshaw and Lloyd collection.

Tricker's Shoes

2011-03-11T03:24:00.000-08:00

In 1829, Joseph Barltrop and his wife Claire Louise Tricker founded what was to become one of the oldest English shoe manufacturers namely Tricker Limited. Five generations later, his family continue to apply the same traditional crafts and skills in the production of the world renowned shoes and are proud to be the holders of the Royal warrant from His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. Using only the best available materials, including calf upper leather and oak bark tanned soles, Trickers craftsmen apply legendary skills to both hand-made and bench-made shoes, maintaining a standard seldom equalled in Goodyear welted footwear

At our website you can view the entire collection of Trickers Country Collection and under the Bradshaw and Lloyd Collection the Tricker's 1829 Collection.

Also available are the extensive range of shoes from Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Sebago shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd's ever expanding branded range.

The Loake Collection

2011-03-04T01:36:00.000-08:00

The Loake shoemaking tradition began in 1880 when brothers Thomas, John and William opened a factory in Northamptonshire in the heart of the English shoemaking industry. The aim was to provide the most handsome, comfortable and durable gentlemen’s shoes possible. The present factory, in Wood Street, Kettering, was built by the brothers in 1894. Today, five generations later, Loake continues to be family owned and prides itself on the exceptional quality that only traditional skills and a family heritage can achieve. Loake are most famous for its fine, handcrafted Goodyear Welted shoes. Only the finest grade leathers and materials are used to create this renowned brand of footwear.

At Bradshaw and Lloyd you can purchase the entire range of shoes from Loake's four collections:
1880
Evolution
Shoemakers
Design

Also visit the website to view the latest range from:
Sebago shoesSanders and Sanders shoesTricker's shoesBradshaw & Lloyd shoes

The Bradshaw and Lloyd branded range

2011-02-25T07:06:00.000-08:00

We offer two collections:
The Bradshaw & Lloyd Bench-Made Collection: In the old days a gentleman expected to spend one week’s salary on a pair of decent shoes. He would then expect those shoes to last him a generation. This collection meets all those quality requirements and epitomizes all that was ever great about English shoemaking. Bench-made in a factory in Northampton which has been hand crafting the very finest shoes since 1829, we are very proud to offer these shoes under the Bradshaw & Lloyd brand, at a fraction of the price they would be in London’s Jermyn Street. Last shape is crucial to the look of a shoe and this entire collection is made on the finest last we have seen in 20 years. Nothing has been spared in terms of the quality of materials. The upper leathers are made of the very best box calf leathers and the extraordinarily hard wearing oak bark tanned leather soles will last on average three times as long as regular leather soles. We are confident that once worn these shoes will become a prized possession and will last far longer than you thought possible – short of forking out a weeks’ wages.

The Bradshaw & Lloyd Grosvenor Collection: Made entirely in England by one of the most respected shoe makers in Northampton. As with our Bench-Made Collection these shoes are made using the traditional Goodyear welting method of construction, whereby the upper leather, insole, welt and sole are entirely stitched together. This time consuming method is acknowledged to be the finest construction for formal footwear as it enables the shoe to be resoled any number of times without degrading the upper leather. With fine grade calf leather uppers, full leather linings, leather welts and leather insoles these shoes represent extraordinary good value and, crucially, they look superb.

Visit the website to view the entire range of shoes including Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes.

About us

2011-02-18T02:43:00.000-08:00

Bradshaw and Lloyd, established by Richard de Winter in 1990, is located in the historic village of Ditchling which nestles beneath the South Downs in Sussex. Bradshaw and Lloyd’s commitment is to supply a comprehensive selection of quality shoes and boots at very sensible prices. At www.bradshawandlloyd.com we offer the entire range from the highly respected brands of Loake Shoes, Sanders Shoes, Trickers Shoes and Sebago shoes. Our in-house Bradshaw and Lloyd collection rivals the quality of any shoe in London’s Jermyn Street – but at a fraction of the price.

Free delivery throughout the UK and all shoes are delivered on approval - we have a no quibble returns policy. We therefore offer a remarkably convenient and efficient method of buying shoes of exceptional quality but at remarkably modest prices, offering savings of up to 30%.

Buying a good pair of shoes is one thing, but keeping them for years in good condition is another. To this end we offer a traditional shoe repair service to help you get the maximum wear from your shoes. We offer a free collection and returns service for shoe repairs if you live or work in central London.

We are always pleased to help and will reply promptly to emails to sales@bradshawandlloyd.com or do telephone us on 0870-2406990 if you wish to discuss our shoes or service.

Our shoe repair prices are unchanged.

2011-02-11T04:21:00.000-08:00

We are managing to maintain our 2008 shoe repair prices, at least for the time being, whilst our skilled repairer continues to use the best materials and traditional methods. Exclusively we offer a FREE collection and FREE returns service from/to your office in central London.

If you would like us to attend to your shoes please reply to this email or telephone 0870-2406990 and we shall post you a courier sack.

Our men's repair prices per pair (inclusive of courier service and VAT):
½ leather stitched sole & rubber heel * £37.00
½ rubber stitched sole & rubber heel £37.00
½ leather stitched sole £28.00
½ rubber stitched sole £28.00
Stick-on rubber sole £16.00
Rubber heel £9.00
Rubber heel with quarter iron £11.00
Leather heel with quarter rubber £12.00
Re-line heel upper £9.00
Steel toes tip £2.50
* Standard repair.
We also repair womens' shoes but due to their diverse nature we do need to see them before we can quote a price.
The courier sack will take up to 5 pairs of shoes. Our minimum repair price per sack is £37.
Turnaround usually within 5 to 10 working days.

For our new shoes please visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com where delivery throughout the UK is FREE plus we now offer a FREE RETURNS service should you wish to return shoes for any reason. Here you can view the entire range of shoes from: Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes, as well as the ever expanding Bradshaw and Lloyd range.

Best selling Loake shoe styles

2011-02-04T04:39:00.000-08:00

We offer Loake shoes from their 3 main collections: the 1880 collection, the Shoemakers collection and the Design Loake collection. The following list shoes the 20 most popular styles in descending order for each collection:

TOP 10 1880 STYLES
1 Chester Tan 2 6 Aldwych Black
2 Pimlico Dark Suede 7 Buckingham Black
3 Kempton Suede 8 Blackfriars Black
4 Bedale Tan 9 Kempton Black
5 Burford Tan 2 10 Hilton Black

TOP 20 SHOEMAKER STYLES
1 Cagney Black 11 Princeton Black
2 McQueen Black 12 Pendragon Black
3 290B 13 771B
4 Rome Black 14 Princeton Burgundy
5 805B2 15 Brighton Oxblood
6 Siena Black 16 Severn DK 2
7 Bibury Black 17 Waterloo Brown
8 290T 18 Eton Black
9 Eton Suede 19 Bogart Black
10 747B 20 Braemar Tan

TOP 10 DESIGN STYLES
1 Powers Black 6 Gunny Tan
2 Powers Dk Brown 7 Jack Dark Brown Suede
3 Gunny Black 8 Trapper Brown Suede
4 Gobi Suede 9 Harrison Black
5 Sharp Black 10 Banks Dark Brown

In December, Chester tan again topped the charts, and many other 1880 styles would have been there as well had stocks not been eroded by several months of strong sales. However, the Loake 1880 chukkas (Pimlico and Kempton) performed well, as did other boots in the 1880 collection (Bedale, Burford tan and Litchfield brown).

The LEGEND last shoes were again evident in the top 50 best sellers.

New Design Loake style Jack in dark brown suede sold particularly well during December.

Visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website to view all Loake shoes and of course shoes from Sanders and Sanders, RE Tricker and Sebago. We now offer a free delivery and also a free returns service throughout the UK.

Bradshaw and Lloyd Shoe Club

2011-01-28T02:19:00.000-08:00

It is with great pleasure that we can announce the launch of the Bradshaw & Lloyd Shoe Club. To kick things off for 2011 we are pleased to offer you a 10% discount off all our Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Sebago shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes and 20% off all Trickers shoes. In addition you will benefit from free delivery and a free returns service should you wish to return an item.

Since this offer is limited to our Shoe Club members please quote offer code TS14LV in the Comments/Special Instructions box at the end of the online ordering process at www.bradshawandlloyd.com . You will initially be charged the website price however we shall email you confirmation of the discount on receipt of your order and refund the discount to your card. Alternatively please telephone 0870-2406990 quoting the offer code. This offer will end on 28th April 2011. For your benefit we maintain detailed records of your previous orders.

Northampton continued

2011-01-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

Government and Politics:

Northampton is administered by both Northampton Borough Council, run from May 2007 for the first time by the Liberal Democrats, and also Northamptonshire County Council. From 2005 the latter has been controlled by the Conservative Party. The Borough Council runs services such as housing, waste collection and smaller planning items in the Borough. The County Council looks after social services, education and libraries in the whole county. Since April 2006 major planning decisions such as large housing schemes and new roads have been the responsibility of the WNDC.

Northampton is represented in Parliament by two MPs:
Brian Binley, Conservative, (Northampton South)
Michael Ellis, Conservative, (Northampton North)
Both of these constituency boundaries changed significantly for the 2010 General Election with the creation of a new constituency, South Northamptonshire, which takes a large part of the south of Northampton borough.

Transport:

Northampton is near junctions 15, 15a and 16 of the M1 London to North Yorkshire motorway. The A45 and A43 can be accessed by a partially completed ring road. The A14 is close by to the north.

Northampton railway station is on the Northampton Loop of the West Coast Main Line, and has regular services to London and Birmingham provided by London Midland. Virgin Trains provide one commuter service to London and a departure from Birmingham New Street late at night. These two Virgin Train services are scheduled to be Pendolinos.

Sywell Aerodrome is the nearest airfield which has recently been upgraded with a 1000 metre concrete runway. For international links, East Midlands Airport and Luton Airport are quickly accessible by the M1; Birmingham International Airport via the M1/M6 and also by train.

In the town, buses are operated by Stagecoach Northants and First Northampton from the Greyfriars bus station. Stagecoach provide travel to outlying villages and towns during the day. National Express cover routes between major towns. There are good local links to Daventry, Wellingborough, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Rushden, Kettering, Corby and Market Harborough.

Northampton is the terminus of an arm of the Grand Union Canal. The arm connects to the River Nene and from that to the River Great Ouse and the North Sea. No longer used for freight, the waterway is now popular with anglers and narrowboaters. Principal outlying villages on the canal include Gayton, Blisworth, Braunston and Stoke Bruerne.

Northampton had a horse-drawn tramway which opened in 1881. The system was extended in stages and taken over by the council in 1897 and named Northampton Corporation Tramways. It was electrified in 1904, but closed in 1934 mainly as a result of competition from motor buses which were introduced in 1929. Two of the original tram shelters are preserved: one at the Racecourse park and another in Kingsthorpe opposite the Cock Hotel.

The above has helped maintain Northampton as the centre of England's shoemaking industry. Visit Bradshaw and Lloyd's website to view the latest range of shoes from Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes, Sebago shoes and Bradshawand and Lloyd shoes.

Northampton from the 20th century onwards

2011-01-14T06:17:00.000-08:00

Growth after 1900 slowed until the 1960s. The shoe industry declined and other employment was slow to arrive. In the 1920s and 30s, council houses were built in the east of the town at Headlands; north at St Davids; and south in Far Cotton. The Borough boundary, first extended in 1900, expanded again in 1932. From the 1920s until 1975 the town had its own power station supplying electricity to areas as far away as Wolverton.

Northampton was designated a New Town in 1968, and the Northampton Development Corporation (NDC) was set up to almost double the size of the town, with a population target of 230,000 by 1981, rising to 260,000 in later years. In 1959 the M1 motorway was opened nearby. Growth was slower than planned. The 1960s and 70s saw the town centre change with development of a new bus station, the Grosvenor Shopping Centre, flats and hotels.

The population grew to 100,000 by 1961, 130,000 by 1971 and 156,000 by 1981. When NDC wound up after 20 years, another 40,000 residents and 20,000 houses had been added. The borough boundaries changed in 1974 with the abolition of Northampton county borough and its reconstitution as a non-metropolitan district also covering areas outside the former borough boundaries but inside the designated New Town.

The rail link and busy M1 motorway to London helped the growth as a commuter town for London. Northampton's housing expansion was east with the 1970s eastern district estates built mainly for the London overflow population and more recently, in the west at Upton and south near M1 junction 15 at Grange Park, initially of 1,500 houses actually in South Northants Council area.

21st Century projections are that the district's population will grow to 226,400 by 2016 and to 261,300 by 2026. Northampton asked, unsuccessfully, for city status as a part of the 'millennium cities' scheme.The University of Northampton was established in 2005 after several years as a University College and before that being Nene College.

In 2006 Northampton became a government expansion zone with new growth by West Northamptonshire Development Corporation an unelected quango. Expansion began in 2007 at Upton and St Crispins spreading west towards junction 16 of the M1. The other major area is south-east of the town enveloping villages such as Little and Great Houghton, Quinton, Hackleton and Cogenhoe. Some expansion will be on brownfield sites such as Ransome Road, Far Cotton, an inner suburb, and in existing borough boundaries. This growth is hugely beneficial to the Northamptonshire shoe industry. Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of shoes from Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes, Sebago shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes.

History of Northampton

2011-01-07T04:07:00.000-08:00

The early history of Northampton, the centre of English shoemaking:

Remains found here date from the Bronze Age. Farming settlement probably began around the 7th century AD. In the 8th century it was an administrative centre for the kingdom of Mercia. The pre-Norman town was known as Hamtun.

The town became significant in the 11th century, when the Normans built town walls and a large castle under the stewardship of the Norman earl, Simon de Senlis.The original defence line of the walls is preserved in today's street pattern (Bridge St, The Drapery, Bearward St and Scarletwell Street). The town grew rapidly after the Normans arrived, and beyond the early defences. By the time of the Domesday Book, the town had a population of about 1500 residents, living in 300 houses.

The town and its castle were important in the early 12th century and the King often held Court in the town. During his famous fall out with Henry II, Thomas Becket at one time escaped from Northampton Castle through the unguarded Northern gate to flee the country,

Northampton had a large Jewish population in the 13th century, centered around Gold Street. In 1277 300 Jews were executed, allegedly for clipping the King's coin, and the Jews of Northampton were driven out of the town. Archaeological sites include a medieval Jewish cemetery and the Northampton Medieval Synagogue.

The town was originally controlled by officials acting for the King who collected taxes and upheld the law. In 1189 King Richard I gave the town its first charter. In 1215 King John authorised the appointment of William Tilly as the town's first Mayor and ordered that: 'twelve of the better and more discreet residents of the town join him as a council to assist him' . In 1176 the Assize of Northampton laid down new powers for dealing with law breakers.

A university was established in 1261 by scholars from University of Cambridge. It briefly flourished, but was dissolved by Henry III in 1265 apparently as it posed a threat to the University of Oxford.

The first Battle of Northampton took place at the site of Northampton Castle in 1264 - when the forces of Henry III overran the supporters of Simon de Montfort. In 1460a second Battle of Northampton took place in the grounds of Delapré Abbey - and was a decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, and King Henry VI was captured in the town by the Yorkists.

In May 1328 the Treaty of Northampton was signed - being a peace treaty between the English and the Scots in which Edward III recognised the authority of Robert the Bruce as King of Scotland and betrothed Bruce's still infant son to the king's sister Joanna.

A large network of medieval tunnel remains under the centre around All Saints church.

Northampton supported the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. For this reason the town walls and castle were later torn down on the orders of King Charles II as punishment. The railway station in Northampton stands on the site of the former castle, and used to be called "Northampton Castle Station".

The town was destroyed by fire in both 1516 and 1675 and was rebuilt as a spacious and well-planned town. In the 18th century Northampton became a major centre of footwear and leather manufacture. The prosperity of the town was greatly aided by demand for footwear caused by the Napoleonic Wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In his 18th century "Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain", Daniel Defoe described Northampton as, "...the handsomest town in all this part of England."

Northampton's growth was accelerated in the 19th century, first by the Grand Union Canal, which reached the town in 1815 and later the coming of the railways. The first railway to be built into Northampton was a branch from the main London-Birmingham line at Blisworth to Peterborough through Northampton which opened in 1845. This was followed by lines to Market Harborough (1859) and Bedford (1872). The Northampton loop of the West Coast Main Line was built in the late 1870s. After 1850 the town grew beyond the old town walls. In 1800 the population was round 7,000 and was 87,000 a century later. Thus a ready supply of labour became increasingly available to the growing shoe industry. Joseph Tricker established his factory in 1829. The Sanders brothers began manufacturing in 1873 and then in 1880 the Loake brothers started up. View their latest shoes and boots at www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

Location of the English shoe industry

2010-12-24T01:30:00.000-08:00

Sanders and Sanders, Loake Brothers and RE Tricker are all based in and around Northampton, England therefore we should have a look at this important centre of shoemaking and its history.

Northampton is a large market town and local government district in the East Midlands region of England. It is about 67 miles (108 km) north-west of London and around 50 miles (80 km) south-east of Birmingham, and lies on the River Nene. It is the county town of Northamptonshire.

The district's population is 200,100 and the town population is 189,474, making Northampton the 22nd-largest settlement in England, and the UK's 4th-largest town without official city status, after Reading, Dudley and Milton Keynes. Northampton is the most populous district in England that is not a unitary authority, a status it failed to obtain in the 1990s local government reform. Northampton's population has increased greatly since the 1960s, largely due to planned expansion under the New Towns Commission in the early 1960s.

Northampton was a major centre of shoemaking and other leather industries, although only specialist shoemaking companies such as Church's and Trickers, formerly located in nearby Earls Barton, survive. A large number of old shoe factories remain, mostly now converted to offices or accommodation, some of which are surrounded by terraced houses built for factory workers. Northampton's main private-sector employers are now in distribution and finance rather than manufacturing, and include Avon Products, Barclaycard, Blacks Leisure Group, Nationwide Building Society, Panasonic, Travis Perkins, Coca Cola, Schweppes, National Grid, Texas Instruments and Carlsberg. The University of Northampton is also a major employer.

Anglia Building Society was formed by amalgamation of Northampton Town and County Building Society with Leicestershire Building Society in 1966 and subsequently merged with Nationwide Building Society in 1987.

R.E. Tricker Ltd
56-60 St. Michaels Road
Northampton NN1 3JX

Sanders & Sanders Ltd
Spencer Road
Rushden
Northants NN10 6AE

Loake Bros. Ltd
Wood Street
Kettering
Northamptonshire NN16 9SN

Sebago shoes is a truly international company and their shoes are now made worldwide. To view the entire range of shoes and boots from these factories visit Bradshaw and Lloyd's website.

Ghillie Brogues

2010-12-17T03:36:00.001-08:00

With the festive season approaching anyone with a Scots heritage ought to be wearing Ghillie Brogues to complement their kilt. The ghillie style of full brogue oxford has no tongue to facilitate drying and long laces that wrap around the leg above the ankle and tie below the calf to facilitate keeping the tie clear of mud. Despite the functional aspects of their design, ghillies brogues are most commonly seen as a component of traditional, formal Scottish dress and are worn primarily for social occasions.

Scottish ghillies are used by men and women for Highland dancing, and by men for Scottish country dancing. They are almost always black, although they often feature coloured stitching and eyelets. Highland ghillies, for Highland dances, generally need to be a bit larger than the foot, due to being worn with thick socks or hose; for National dances they should fit snugly as they are worn with thin socks or stockings.

Ghillies, or ghillie brogues, are also a type of shoe with laces along the instep and no tongue, especially those used for Scottish country dancing. Although now worn for dancing and social events, ghillies originated as a shoe that would dry quickly due to the lack of a tongue, and not get stuck in the mud because of their laces above the ankle.

In a perhaps more recent and certainly competing shoe-related use, Ghillie has also been used to describe laced shoes where rings or loops that project over the tongue are attached to the upper as an alternative to the use of eyelets punctured in the upper; this style is often seen on athletic shoes.

Loake produce a highly popular Goodyear welted Ghillie shoe with suitably long laces in a black polished leather. Visit Bradshaw and Lloyd's website to view this and many other formal styles of shoe from Sanders and Sanders, RE Tricker and Sebago.

Free returns wirh Bradshaw and Lloyd

2010-12-10T01:53:00.000-08:00

Obtaining really good quality shoes has become even easier with Bradshaw & LLoyd's FREE postage throughout the UK and also now FREE RETURNS if for any reason, having seen them, you decide to return them. Please visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of shoes from: Loake, Sanders, Trickers and Sebago at unbeatable prices plus the exclusive Bradshaw & Lloyd range.

With 380 styles of mens shoes on the website and a simple filter system, you can swiftly locate the right shoes for you.

We continually monitor internet prices to ensure that our prices are the most competitive. However if you were to find the shoes cheaper elsewhere on the internet we will refund the difference.

Order via www.bradshawandlloyd.com or telephone 0870-240-6990 from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday to discuss your requirements. For your benefit we maintain detailed records of your previous orders.

We strive to make obtaining the finest shoes at the best possible prices as simple as possible.

If you would like to receive further details of our nationwide shoe repair service please e-mail repairs@bradshawandlloyd.com.

Soles

2010-12-03T06:05:00.000-08:00

Due to their high cost oak bark leather soles are used in only the very finest shoes, including all Bradshaw and Lloyd's Benchmade Collection. But what are they? Oak bark tanning uses the classical oak-bark method, obviously. A naturally pure tanning method taking place in old, three-meter deep oak lined pits. This method uses exclusively vegetable tanning agents in the form of barks and fruits. The process normally lasts between nine and twelve months, depending on the hide thickness. The leather is tanned without mechanical movement, without raising temperatures and without adding chemical catalysts.

Besides other advantages, this proves to be very lightweight due to the long tanning duration ensuring that the hide absorbs only the amount of tanning agent absolutely necessary. Oak-bark tanned leather possesses unique properties: it is extremely hard wearing, tough, as well as flexible, making a comfortable sole of outstanding solidity, standing out through its appealing surface and a warm woody color. Oak-bark tanned sole leather is also:

- Highly water-repellent
- Especially breathable
- Absorbs perspiration
- Deodorant and antiseptic
- Prevention against foot diseases
- Completely bio-degradable

View the entire range of Bradshaw and Lloyd's shoes and also RE Trickers shoes, which also only use oak bark tanned soles, at www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

For regular leather Goodyear welted shoes have a look at Sanders shoes, Loake shoes and Sebago shoes.

Modern tanning methods

2010-11-26T05:13:00.000-08:00

These days the tanning process can be divided into four elements: The first stage is the preparation for tanning. The second stage is the actual tanning and other chemical treatment. The third stage, known as retanning, applies retanning agents and dyes to the material to provide the physical strength and properties desired depending on the end product. The fourth and final stage, known as finishing, is used to apply finishing material to the surface or finish the surface without the application of any chemicals if so desired.

Preparing hides begins by curing them with salt. Curing is employed to prevent putrefaction of the protein substance (collagen) from bacterial growth during the time lag that might occur from procuring the hide to when it is processed. Curing removes excess water from the hides and skins using a difference in osmotic pressure. The moisture content of hides and skins gets greatly reduced. In wet-salting, the hides are heavily salted, then pressed into packs for about 30 days. In brine-curing the hides are agitated in a salt water bath for about 16 hours. Generally speaking, curing substantially reduces the chance of spoilage by bacteria. Curing can also be done by preserving the hides and skins at a very low temperature.

In a process known as soaking, the hides are then soaked in clean water to remove the salt and increase the moisture so that the hide or skin can be further treated.

After soaking, the hides and skins are taken for liming: treatment with milk of lime that may involve the addition of "sharpening agents" such as sodium sulfide, cyanides, amines etc. The objectives of this operation are mainly to:

Remove the hairs, nails and other keratinous matter. Remove some of the interfibrillary soluble proteins like mucins. Swell up and split up the fibres to the desired extent. Remove the natural grease and fats to some extent and bring the collagen in the hide to a proper condition for satisfactory tannage. The weakening of hair is dependent on the breakdown of the disulfide link of the amino acid called cystine, which is the characteristic of the keratin class of protein that gives strength to hair and wools (keratin typically makes up 90% of the dry weight of hair). The hydrogen atoms supplied by the sharpening agent weaken the cystine - cysteine molecular link, and the covalent disulfide bond links are ruptured. This weakens the keratin. To some extent, sharpening also contributes to "unhairing," as it tends to break down the hair proteins.

The isoelectric point of the collagen in the hide is also shifted to around 4.7 due to liming, which is an acidic type of tannage.

The majority of hair is then removed using a machine, with remaining hair being removed by hand using a dull knife, a process known as scudding. Depending on the end use of the leather, hides may be treated with enzymes to soften them in a process called "bating." But before bating, the pH of the collagen is brought down to a lower level so that enzymes may act on it. This process is known as "deliming."

Once bating is complete, the hides and skins are treated with a mixture of common salt and sulphuric acid, in case a mineral tanning is to be done. This is done to bring down the pH of collagen to a very low level so as to facilitate the penetration of mineral tanning agent into the substance. This process is known as "pickling." The common salt (sodium chloride) penetrates the hide twice as fast as the acid and checks the ill effect of sudden drop of pH.

Tanning can be performed with either vegetable or mineral methods:

Vegetable tanning uses tannin. The tannins occur naturally in the bark and leaves of many plants. Tannins bind to the collagen proteins in the hide and coat them causing them to become less water-soluble, and more resistant to bacterial attack. The process also causes the hide to become more flexible. The primary barks used in modern times are chestnut, oak, redoul, tanoak, hemlock, quebracho, mangrove, wattle and myrobalan. Hides are stretched on frames and immersed for several weeks in vats of increasing concentrations of tannin. Vegetable tanned hide is flexible and is used for luggage and furniture.

Mineral tanning usually uses chromium in the form of basic chromium sulfate. Once the desired level of penetration of chrome into the substance is achieved,the pH of the material is raised again to facilitate the process. This is known as "basification". In the raw state chrome tanned skins are blue and therefore referred to as "wet blue." Chrome tanning is faster than vegetable tanning (less than a day for this part of the process) and produces a stretchable leather which is excellent for use in handbags and garments.

Tawing is a method that uses alum and aluminium salts, generally in conjunction with other products such as egg yolk, flour, and other salts. The leather becomes tawed by soaking in a warm potash alum and salts solution, between 20°C and 30°C. The process increases the leather's pliability, stretchability, softness, and quality. Adding egg yolk and flour to the standard soaking solution further enhances its fine handling characteristics. Then, the leather is air dried ("crusted") for several weeks, which allows it to stabilize. Tawing is traditionally used on pigskins and goatskins to create the whitest colors. However, exposure and aging may cause slight yellowing over time and, if it remains in a wet condition, tawed leather will suffer from decay. Technically, tawing is not tanning.

Depending on the finish desired, the hide may be waxed, rolled, lubricated, injected with oil, split, shaved and, of course, dyed. Suedes, nubucks etc. are finished by raising the nap of the leather by rolling with a rough surface.

Visit Bradshaw and Lloyd's website to view shoes from Loakes, Sanders and Sanders, RE Tricker and Sebago. These are long established shoe manufacturers whose leathers utilize all the above modern methods of tanning.

Ancient tanning methods

2010-11-19T05:42:00.000-08:00

In ancient history, tanning was considered a noxious or "odiferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor. Indeed, tanning by ancient methods is so foul smelling that tanneries are still isolated from those towns today where the old methods are used. Ancient civilizations used leather for waterskins, bags, harnesses, boats, armor, quivers, scabbards, boots and sandals. Tanning was being carried out by the South Asian inhabitants of Mehrgarh between 7000–3300 BC.Around 2500 BC, the Sumerians began using leather, affixed by copper studs, on chariot wheels.

Skins typically arrived at the tannery dried stiff and dirty with soil and gore. First, the ancient tanners would soak the skins in water to clean and soften them. Then they would pound and scour the skin to remove any remaining flesh and fat. Next, the tanner needed to remove the hair fibers from the skin. This was done by either soaking the skin in urine, painting it with an alkaline lime mixture, or simply letting the skin putrefy for several months then dipping it in a salt solution. After the hair fibers were loosened, the tanners scraped them off with a knife.

Once the hair was removed, the tanners would bate the material by pounding dung into the skin or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains. Among the kinds of dung commonly used were that of dogs or pigeons. Sometimes the dung was mixed with water in a large vat, and the prepared skins were kneaded in the dung water until they became supple, but not too soft. The ancient tanner might use his bare feet to knead the skins in the dung water, and the kneading could last two or three hours.

It was this combination of urine, animal feces and decaying flesh that made ancient tanneries so odiferous.

Children employed as dung gatherers were a common sight in ancient cities. Also common were "piss-pots" located on street corners, where human urine could be collected for use in tanneries or by washerwomen. In some variations of the process, cedar oil, alum or tannin were applied to the skin as a tanning agent. As the skin was stretched, it would lose moisture and absorb the agent.

Leftover leather would be turned into glue. Tanners would place scraps of hides in a vat of water and let them deteriorate for months. The mixture would then be placed over a fire to boil off the water to produce hide glue.

Variations of these methods are still used by do-it-yourself outdoorsmen to tan hides. The use of brains and the idea that each animal (except buffalo) has just enough brains for the tanning process have led to the saying "Every animal has just enough brains to preserve its own hide, dead or alive".

Visit Bradshaw and Lloyd to view the latest range of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes

Let's look at the tanning of leather in a little more detail

2010-11-12T03:06:00.000-08:00

Tanning is the process of making leather, which does not easily decompose, from the skins of animals, which do. Often this uses tannin, an acidic chemical compound. Coloring may occur during tanning. A tannery is the term for a place where these skins are processed.

Tanning leather involves a process which permanently alters the protein structure of skin so that it cannot ever return to rawhide. Making rawhide does not require the use of tannin and is made simply by removing the flesh and fat and then the hair by way of soaking in an aqueous solution (often called liming when using lime and water or bucking when using wood ash (lye) and water), then scraping over a beam with a somewhat dull knife, and then leaving to dry, usually stretched on a frame so that it dries flat. The two aforementioned solutions for removing the hair also act to clean the fiber network of the skin and therefore allow penetration and action of the tanning agent.

The English word for tanning is from medieval Latin tannāre, deriv. of tannum (oak bark), related to Old High German tanna meaning oak or fir (related to modern Tannenbaum). This refers to use of the bark of oaks (the original source of tannin) in some kinds of hide preservation.

Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of shoes from:
Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes

Environmental impact of leather production

2010-11-05T04:36:00.000-07:00

Leather is a product with high environmental impact, most notably due to:

The impact of livestock
The heavy use of polluting chemicals in the tanning process
ASir pollution due to the transformation process (hydrogen sulfide during dehairing and ammonia during deliming, solvent vapors).
One tonne of hide or skin generally leads to the production of 20 to 80 m3 of turbid and foul-smelling wastewater including chromium levels of 100–400 mg/L, sulfide levels of 200–800 mg/L and high levels of fat and other solid wastes, as well as notable pathogen contamination. Pesticides are also often added for hide conservation during transport. With solid wastes representing up to 70% of the wet weight of the original hides, the tanning process comes at a considerable strain on water treatment installations.

Tanning is especially polluting in countries where environmental norms are lax, such as in India, the world's third-largest producer and exporter of leather. To give an example of an efficient pollution prevention system, chromium loads per produced tonne are generally abated from 8 kg to 1.5 kg. VOC emissions are typically reduced from 30 kg/t to 2 kg/t in a properly managed facility. A review of the total pollution load decrease achievable according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization posts precise data on the abatement achievable through industrially proven low-waste advanced methods, while noting that "even though the chrome pollution load can be decreased by 94% on introducing advanced technologies, the minimum residual load 0.15 kg/t raw hide can still cause difficulties when using landfills and composting sludge from wastewater treatment on account of the regulations currently in force in some countries."

In Kanpur, the self-proclaimed "Leather City of World" and a city of 3 million people on the banks of the river Ganges, pollution levels were so high that despite an industry crisis, the pollution control board has decided to seal 49 high-polluting tanneries out of 404 in July 2009. In 2003 for instance, the main tanneries effluent disposal unit was dumping 22 tonnes of chromium-laden solid waste per day in the open. Scientists at the Central Leather Research Institute in India have developed biological methods for pretanning as well as better chromium management.

The higher cost associated to the treatment of effluents that to untreated effluent discharging leads to illegal dumping to save on costs. For instance, in Croatia in 2001, proper pollution abatment cost 70-100 USD/t of raw hides processed against 43 USD/t for irresponsible behaviour.

No general study seems to exist but the current news is rife with documented examples. In November 2009 for instance, it was discovered that one of Uganda's main leather producing companies directly dumped its waste water in a wetland adjacent to Lake Victoria.

Needless to say the shoes you will find at Bradshaw and Lloyd from shoe manufacturers such as Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes do their best to source all their leathers from environmentally friendly sources.

Leather production processes

2010-10-29T04:38:00.000-07:00

The leather manufacturing process is divided into three fundamental sub-processes: preparatory stages, tanning and crusting. All true leathers will undergo these sub-processes. A further sub-process, surface coating, can be added into the leather process sequence but not all leathers receive surface treatment. Since many types of leather exist, it is difficult to create a list of operations that all leathers must undergo.

The preparatory stages are when the hide/skin is prepared for tanning. Preparatory stages may include: preservation, soaking, liming, unhairing, fleshing, splitting, reliming, deliming, bating, degreasing, frizing, bleaching, pickling and depickling.

Tanning is the process which converts the protein of the raw hide or skin into a stable material which will not putrefy and is suitable for a wide variety of end applications. The principal difference between raw hides and tanned hides is that raw hides dry out to form a hard inflexible material that when re-wetted (or wetted back) putrefy, while tanned material dries out to a flexible form that does not become putrid when wetted back. Many different tanning methods and materials can be used; the choice is ultimately dependent on the end application of the leather. The most commonly used tanning material is chromium, which leaves the leather, once tanned, a pale blue color (due to the chromium); this product is commonly called "wet blue". The hides once they have finished pickling will typically be between pH 2.8 and 3.2.[citation needed] At this point, the hides would be loaded in a drum and immersed in a float containing the tanning liquor. The hides are allowed to soak (while the drum slowly rotates about its axle) and the tanning liquor slowly penetrates through the full substance of the hide. Regular checks will be made to see the penetration by cutting the cross-section of a hide and observing the degree of penetration. Once a good, even degree of penetration exists, the pH of the float is slowly raised in a process called basification. This basification process fixes the tanning material to the leather and the more tanning material fixed, the higher the hydrothermal stability and increased shrinkage temperature resistance of the leather. The pH of the leather when chrome tanned would typically finish somewhere between 3.8 and 4.2.

Crusting is when the hide/skin is thinned, retanned and lubricated. Often, a coloring operation is included in the crusting subprocess. The chemicals added during crusting have to be fixed in place. The culmination of the crusting subprocess is the drying and softening operations. Crusting may include the following operations: wetting back, sammying, splitting, shaving, rechroming, neutralization, retanning, dyeing, fatliquoring, filling, stuffing, stripping, whitening, fixating, setting, drying, conditioning, milling, staking, and buffing.

For some leathers, a surface coating is applied. Tanners refer to this as finishing. Finishing operations may include: oiling, brushing, padding, impregnation, buffing, spraying, roller coating, curtain coating, polishing, plating, embossing, ironing, ironing/combing (for hair-on), glazing and tumbling.

These processes are left to specialists in the Northamptonshire shoe industry. Shoe makers such as Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes and Sebago shoes will instruct tanneries as to the specification of the leathers required for their shoes and buy in required quantities. This enables them to concentrate on what they specialize in - making footwear which you can view at Bradshaw and Lloyd's website: www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

Types of leather used

2010-10-22T03:53:00.000-07:00

We have talked about how leather is processed to make shoes but what animal hides are used in the clothing and footwear industry?

Today, most leather is made of cattle skin, but many exceptions exist. Lamb and deer skin are used for soft leather in more expensive apparels. Deer and elk skin are widely used in work gloves and indoor shoes. Pigskin is used in apparel and on seats of saddles. Buffalo, goats, alligators, dogs, snakes, ostriches, kangaroos, oxen, and yaks may also be used for leather.

Kangaroo skin is used to make items which need to be strong but flexible—it is the material most commonly used in bullwhips. Kangaroo leather is favored by some motorcyclists for use in motorcycle leathers specifically because of its light weight and abrasion resistance. Kangaroo leather is also used for soccer footwear.

At different times in history, leather made from more exotic skins has been considered desirable. For this reason certain species of snakes and crocodiles have been hunted to near extinction.

In the 1970s, farming ostriches for their feathers became popular, and ostrich leather became available as a byproduct. There are different processes to produce different finishes for many applications, i.e., upholstery, footwear, automotive products, accessories and clothing. Ostrich leather is currently used by many major fashion houses such as Hermès, Prada, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton. Ostrich leather has a characteristic "goose bump" look because of the large follicles from which the feathers grew.

In Thailand, sting ray leather is used in wallets and belts. Sting ray leather is tough and durable. The leather is often dyed black and covered with tiny round bumps in the natural pattern of the back ridge of an animal. These bumps are then usually dyed white to highlight the decoration. Sting ray leather is also used as grips on Japanese katana.

Generally speaking cow hide is by far and away the most popular leather used in the Northamptonshire shoe industry. However Loake shoes have often used Kangaroo in their softer style shoes and for a premium Trickers shoes will use the very hard wearing horse (cordovan)hide in their made to order shoes. Visit Bradshaw and Lloyd to view the full range from these manufacturers and Sebago shoes and Sanders shoes.

Shoe trees

2010-10-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

Shoe trees are inserted into shoes to help maintain the original shoe shape, help prevent creases and cracking, and absorb moisture from the lining of the shoes. Available for men's and women's shoes, a shoe tree usually adjusts to cover a wide range of shoe sizes.

Types of Shoe Trees Available:
Shoe trees are available in plastic or wood (usually cedar). The main benefits to plastic shoe trees is that they are less expensive, and they are lightweight, making them good for travel. However, even though they are more expensive, cedar shoe trees have several advantages over plastic. They tend to last longer; add a clean cedar scent to footwear; and work better at keeping the natural shape. Cedar shoe trees also absorb moisture, whereas plastic shoe trees will not.

If used from the start, shoe trees can slow, or even prevent your shoes from developing creases, making them particularly useful for dress shoes.

If shoes are not worn for long periods of time, they actually shrink, using a shoe tree in these shoes will help to prevent shrinkage.

Shoe Trees Help Prevent Moisture Buildup
Feet perspire, and that moisture accumulates in the lining of our shoes. Wooden shoe trees also have the additional benefit of absorbing moisture, making the shoes more comfortable to wear. This function is crucial as it is the perspiration from feet which can cause the lining to degrade and then the upper leather itself.

Additional Benefits of Shoe Trees
Shoe trees are also useful when polishing or buffing. By inserting a shoe tree into the shoe you're working on, the shoe will be held in shape, and caring for them will be easier.

Shoe Trees vs. Shoe Stretchers
Shoe trees can marginally stretch shoes, but usually only very slightly. This will work for shoes that are just a touch too tight. If you're looking to stretch shoes, a better product to use would be a shoe stretcher.

Various brands of shoe tree are available in the high street and online. Trickers shoes, Loake shoes, Sanders shoes and Sebago shoes all offer their own branded cedarwood trees. At www.bradshawandlloyd.com we offer Loakes' cedarwood trees which are excellent value for money.

Which are the world's finest shoemakers?

2010-10-08T06:47:00.000-07:00

Good classic gentlemen’s shoes are not only an important feature of a formal outfit for the man with a good taste. They can also play an important role in making your first impression on other people – in business or privately. Also, many females with good taste claim to judge men by their shoes – “That is the first thing I look at”. Simply speaking, good shoes are an excellent investment.

Shoes for formal occasions should normally be black. However, the old saying “no browns after six” has lost a lot of its relevance in recent years with dressing down and a general relaxation of rules, but this still applies to formal evening invitations. The fashion of wearing brown shoes has come from Italy, where light brown shoes are perfectly alright for a dark suit and this has now spread to the rest of the world. However, there are some people who have eccentric habits such as, for example, London star chef Marco Pierre White, who always wears his suede shoes without any socks no matter what the weather is. Formula 1 mogul Bernie Ecclestone prefers to wear his monk shoes with the flap half-open, like a pair of wings.

Good classic leather shoes should never be worn two days running so that they can dry and air sufficiently. The leather sole has the advantage of absorbing moisture during the day. For rainy days, one or two pairs of shoes with a thin rubber sole glued to the leather sole will safeguard the shoe and your feet. A proper thick rubber sole will also be good enough for a day in the country.

Apart from some American and continental European shoe brands, it is clearly the English shoe manufacturers, most of them based in Northampton (about one and a half hours north-west of London), who lead the global up-market shoe industry. Northampton has a history of shoe-making going back to Cromwellian times (17th century) and the British Civil War. It was with the help of industrialisation that England became the leading country in the world for classic men’s shoes. The below features on the various best international classic shoe manufacturers are in alphabetical order:

Alden:
The Alden Shoe Company is a family owned business with a history that now spans four generations of shoe makers. Charles H. Alden founded the Alden Shoe Company in 1884 in Middleborough, Massachusetts. In 1931 when Mr. Alden retired, the remaining shares of the Alden Shoe Company were acquired by the Tarlow family and the factory was moved to Brockton, Massachusetts, and continued production there until 1970, when it was enlarged. Along with producing Goodyear welted men's traditional shoes of extraordinary quality, the research and development of orthopaedic products has contributed greatly to the comfort and fit of Alden's traditional dress footwear. Alden’s innovations have been removable golf spikes and the original pattern for the now world-famous 1948 tassel moccasin design.

Allen-Edmonds:
In 1922, Elbert W. Allen founds the company with the vision to produce shoes that last. William Edmonds joins the company in the 1930s and is responsible for marketing. World War II provides a big boost for Allen-Edmonds as the Army is a big customer and the soldiers become very satisfied customers, many of them for the rest of their lives. In the 1980s, the old factory is destroyed and former head of international sales, John Stollenwerk, takes over from the family as owner and president. This function he still holds today. Allen-Edmonds has always been the ultimate customer experience offering not only the best shoes, but also the best service such as re-crafting of worn-out shoes. Allen-Edmonds considers shoe-making an art: “Every pair is crafted by hand, in a process that includes 212 different production steps, because that's what it takes to make the most comfortable, longest lasting shoes you'll ever wear.”

Berluti:
Berluti was founded in 1895 by Alessandro Berluti, who had come to France to establish himself as a craftsman shoemaker. Berluti grew and flourished under the successive guidance of Torello Berluti, Talbinio Berluti and, to the present day, Olga Berluti. Olga Berluti is the creator of the men's shoes which bear her name. In 1993, LVMH acquired the brand with the objective, shared with the creator of Berluti shoes, of assuring global expansion while preserving the soul of the business. In 1996, there was an expansion and renovation of the historical shop in the rue Marbeuf (8th arrondissement) in Paris and the creation by Olga Berluti of five new lines (Tatoués, Guerrier, Dandy, Esprit de la Couture, Lasso) and an infinite variety of colours. In the same year, Berluti's ready-to-wear workshop at Ferrara, Italy, was acquired, in order to assure development coupled with quality control. Berluti’s ambition is to become the international benchmark for truly elegant footwear for men.

Church's:
Church's Shoes was founded in 1873 by three brothers who brought together under one roof the cottage industry skills involved in shoe-making at the time. The company's headquarters are still based in Northampton in England. Church's used the same combination of quality craftsmanship and the world's finest leathers to produce the Church English Shoe Collection. The collection of ‘Handmade Custom Grade’ shoes offers premier shoes to experience the finest in comfort, quality and style. In a changing world, these classic English styles form a lasting impression. The 250 operations and eight weeks of craftsmanship using the very finest leathers to produce every single pair of shoes for today's well-dressed gentleman is legendary. Church & Co. still manufacture Church branded footwear at their St James factory in Northampton, which is possibly the largest single unit in Europe manufacturing high quality Goodyear welted shoes. Church also has the ability to satisfy the individual needs of customers who want to make use of "made-to-order" services as well as a first class repair service.

Crockett & Jones:
Crockett & Jones was founded in 1879 in Northampton by Charles Jones and his brother-in-law, James Crockett. Now in its fourth generation, Crockett & Jones remains committed to maintaining the highest standards of traditional craftsmanship, quality and service, which have been appreciated by its customers for more than 100 years. Hand-crafted by the traditional Goodyear-welted manufacturing method using only the finest leathers available, Crockett & Jones shoes have an exceptional combination of comfort, elegance and durability in wear. Each pair takes up to eight weeks to be manufactured, in a highly skilled process involving over 200 separate operations. Crockett & Jones are today renowned throughout the world as being one of Britain’s finest shoemakers - well known for their refined style and elegance.

John Lobb:
Founded in 1849, Lobb is one of England's oldest makers of bench-made shoes, worn by clients such as King Edward VII (1901-1911, who was Edward, Prince of Wales from 1863-1901), famous 20th century opera tenor Enrico Caruso or actor Daniel Day Lewis. Hermes acquired John Lobb in 1976 and took over everything except the original John Lobb bespoke shoe shop on London's St. James's Street. Whilst the original, family-owned Lobb in St. James's Street still makes shoes one pair at a time, Hermes has broadened the reach of the Lobb brand name through its ready-made shoes. Of all Lobb shoe models the double monk strap William model pictured on the opposite side is the most popular and famous model of all. At Lobb, special care is taken to select the fine leather skins (with crocodile skin shoes for about USD 1500 at the top of the range) and many of the shoes feature topstitching on the vamp and sole. The traditional British stitching on the bottom of the sole is done entirely by hand. The production of each pair of John Lobb shoes is so time-consuming that only about 100 pair of shoes are finished per day.

New & Lingwood:
In 1865, New and Lingwood was founded in Eton by Ms. New and Mr. Lingwood, who married later, but the name still stands for excellent service and quality products. This enabled New & Lingwood to gain official status as outfitters to Eton College and has served many generations of Etonians, many of whom come from old aristocratic or just very wealthy families. Since 1922, when New & Lingwood opened a shop in 53 Jermyn Street, old Etonians and other customers alike can enjoy the personal service in London, such as having bespoke shoes made. The range of classic shoes offered by New & Lingwood was significantly extended in 1972, when the old and famous shoes and boot making company Poulsen Skone was acquired. This meant maintaining, if not increasing, the high standards inherited of making superb classic shoes.

Ludwig Reiter:
Ludwig Reiter was established in 1885 in imperial Vienna by the Bohemian born shoemaker Ludwig Reiter who opened his own workshop. He soon becomes famous for his fine welted boots, which he even delivered to the imperial guards. In 1919, Ludwig Reiter II expanded his father’s business with the experience he gained during many years at shoe factories in Europe and in America. In 1934, Ludwig Reiter becomes a factory, producing elegant welted men's and ladies' shoes under the brands "Fox" and "Piccadilly". In the 1980s and the 1990s Ludwig Reiter went through a renaissance, which saw a big expansion of the business. Now there are not only the traditional classic gentleman shoes but also elegant lady shoes under the label of ‘Anna Reiter’.

Tricker's:
In 1829, Joseph Barltrop and his wife Claire Louise Tricker founded one of the oldest English shoe manufacturers called Tricker Ltd. Five generations later, his family continue to apply the same traditional crafts and skills in the production of the world renowned Tricker’s shoes. Tricker shoes has a the Royal warrant from His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. But not only Prince Charles but also his sons Prince William and Prince Harry are customers. The manufacturing home of Tricker’s is Northampton, using the best available materials, including calf upper leather and oak bark tanned soles. Tricker’s craftsmen apply their legendary skills to produce both hand-made and bench-made shoes. Offering a comprehensive selection of classic styles for immediate wear, there is also a handmade bespoke service. This also applies to the best velvet slippers available in England as they are the only ones with leather lining. Visit the Bradshaw and Lloyd website to view a comprehensive selection of Trickers shoes.

Patent leather

2010-10-01T03:41:00.000-07:00

Patent leather is leather that has been given a high gloss, shiny finish. The original process was developed by Newark-based inventor Seth Boyden in 1818 with commercial manufacture beginning September 20, 1819. His process used a linseed oil–based lacquer coating. Modern patent leather usually has a plastic coating.

Patent leather is sometimes confused with poromeric imitation leathers such as DuPont's Corfam and Kuraray Co.'s Clarino which are manmade materials with a similar glossy appearance.

Patent leather and poromerics are cleaned in a similar way. Dirt adhering to the coating can be removed with a damp cloth, using a mild soap if needed. Minor scratches and scuff marks in the coating itself can be removed using one of several special-purpose patent leather and poromeric cleaners on the market. With wear and tear, patent leather will eventually lose its glossy finish, but will still be smoother than most other types of leather, looking almost rubbery.

Patent leather and poromerics are used in applications where an eye-catching glossy appearance is the most important consideration. Examples include fashion items such as wallets and handbags, dance and uniform shoes, kinky boots and professional wrestling boots, and trench coats. In recent years patent leather has become a popular material for limited-edition sneakers.

History
The history of patent leather begins in the early 19th century and owes its invention to Seth Boyden of Newark, New Jersey. In 1818, Boyden began to investigate the possibility of creating a version of leather that was treated in such a way that the material retained its desirable qualities of protection and durability. At the same time, this new type of leather would also have an appearance that would be decidedly more dressy than work boots and similar leather goods.

Using a formula that was based on a series of treatments using layers of linseed oil-based coats, the new shiny leather began commercial production on 20 September 1819. Boyden’s efforts resulted in the production of glossy leather that quickly caught on as a complement for formal dress.

Patent leather begins as a superior grade of fine grain leather that undergoes a process to achieve the glossy look. Originally, this was accomplished by applying layers of a linseed oil finish to the leather, gradually creating the sleek appearance. Later, the invention of plastics changed the methods for producing patent leather.

Plastic finishes were able to produce effects similar to the application of several treatments with linseed oil, with the advantage of considerably less monetary investment on the part of the producer. Over time, the development of synthetic resins further simplified the process and cut production costs even further, making the mass production of patent leather possible.

Characterized by a glass-like finish that catches the light, the typical patent leather accessory is a solid black. Patent leather may also come in several colors such as neutral tan, white, black or even neon colors such as neon-green and hot-pink.In addition to the mirror-like finish, patent leather is also virtually waterproof, while still retaining a very flexible texture. The visual aspects of patent leather have made it a sought-after material for formal accessories. Most men's footwear produced to be worn with tuxedos or with dress military uniforms is made of patent leather, and many formal types of heels for women are also produced using patent leather. Clutches and small handbags for women are also made using patent leather, as well as some formal wallets and cigarette cases. Patent leather has also seen popular use on sneakers.

On www.bradshawandlloyd.com look out for the Ritz and Strand styles from Sanders shoes. Neither Loake shoes, Trickers shoes nor Sebago shoes are presently producing a patent leather product.

How to clean suede shoes

2010-09-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

Brush out dirt. Make sure your shoes are dry, and use a suede cleaning brush to gently brush away dust or dirt. Brush in the same direction (don't go back and forth) to lift dirt out and make your shoes appear newer.

Remove scuff marks. Use the suede brush to vigorously brush scuffed areas back and forth. For scuffs that are too matted down to respond to the brush, try scraping the area with a knife to lift the nap. For stubborn marks in the suede, try rubbing the dirt out with a pencil eraser or a piece of crepe rubber (the crinkled rubber that many shoe soles are made from).

Remove water stains. Water can discolor affected suede. To solve this problem, wet the entire outside of the shoe by applying a light coat of water with a nail brush. Use a sponge or dry cloth to soak up excess water, and then let the shoes dry at least overnight. Be sure to insert a shoe tree into the shoe while it dries so that the shoe doesn't shrink or lose its form. Once the shoes are dry, go over them lightly with a suede brush.

Remove oil or "unknown" stains. Use the suede brush to scrub the stain as you would for a scuff. Use the nail brush to scrub stubborn stains with warm water. Grease stains can be particularly difficult to remove from suede, so badly stained shoes may never look good again.

Protect your suede. Spray a coat of suede protector spray on your shoes when you first get them and after each cleaning. Follow the manufacturer's directions, and make sure to remove excess dirt before spraying the shoes.

Bradshaw and Lloyd's best selling suede shoes:
Loake shoes: Eton, Lincoln, Paisley, 758, Mitchum, Kempton,
Sebago shoes: Docksides: Arlington, Classic,
Sanders shoes: Dundee: Lo-Top, Hi-Top, Jack, Harrie, Archie, Olly,
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes: Holborn,Aldwych, Kilburn, Finchley, Kensington, Piccadilly,

Shoe polish

2010-09-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

All natural leather shoes require feeding to keep the leather supple and prevent water ingress. Shoe polish (or boot polish), usually a waxy paste or a cream, is used to polish, shine, waterproof, and restore the appearance of leather shoes or boots, thereby extending the footwear's life. In some regions—including New Zealand—"Nugget" is used as a common term for solid waxy shoe polish, as opposed to liquid shoe polishes.

Various substances have been used as shoe polish for hundreds of years, starting with natural substances such as wax and tallow. Modern polish formulae were introduced early in the 20th century by Sam Seitler, an early entrepreneur in the polish business, and some products from that era are still in use today. Today, shoe polish is usually made from a mix of natural and synthetic materials, including naphtha, turpentine, dyes, and gum arabic, using straightforward chemical engineering processes. Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Trickers shoes and Sanders shoes all have a brand of polish which they recomend, however they all have essentially the same ingredients.

The popularity of shoe polish paralleled a general rise in leather and synthetic shoe production, beginning in the 19th century and continuing into the 20th. The World Wars saw a surge in demand for the product, in order to polish army boots.

Shoe polish is applied to the shoe using a rag, cloth, or brush. Shoe polish is not a cleaning product, and therefore the footwear should be both clean and dry before application. A vigorous rubbing action to apply the polish evenly on the boot, followed by further buffing with a clean dry cloth or brush, usually provides good results. Another technique, known as spit-polishing or bull polishing, involves gently rubbing polish into the leather with a cloth and a drop of water or spit. This achieves the mirror-like, high-gloss finish sometimes known as a spit shine which is especially valued in military organizations. Polishes containing carnauba wax can be used as a protective coating to extend the life and look of a leather shoe.

Shoe polish may be purchased pre-soaked into a hard sponge, which can be used to buff leather without needing to apply any additional polish to either the leather or the sponge. This is usually known as an applicator. A number of companies that manufacture shoe care products also sell a liquid shoe polish in a squeezable plastic bottle, with a small sponge applicator at the end. To decrease its viscosity, bottled polish usually has a very low wax content.

There are many products closely related to shoe polish, but not strictly considered as such. Other chemical products may be used to clean and shine shoes—in particular whiteners for white shoes, and a variety of sprays and aerosols for cleaning and waterproofing suede shoes. A banana peel can also be used to effectively shine shoes.

Although shoe polish is primarily intended for leather shoes, some brands specify that they may be used on non-porous materials, such as vinyl. The polish is generally the same colour as the shoes it will be used upon, or it may be neutral, lacking any intrinsic colour.

Since medieval times, dubbin, a waxy product, was used to soften and waterproof leather; however, it did not impart shine. It was made from natural wax, oil, soda ash and tallow. As leather with a high natural veneer became popular in the eighteenth century, a high glossy finish became important, particularly on shoes and boots. In most cases, a variety of homemade polishes were used to provide this finish, often with lanolin or beeswax as a base.

In the nineteenth century, many forms of shoe polish became available, yet were rarely referred to as shoe polish or boot polish. Instead, they were often called blacking (especially when mixed with lampblack), or simply continued to be referred to as dubbin. Tallow, an animal by-product, was used to manufacture a simple form of shoe polish at this time. Chicago, Illinois, where 82% of the meat consumed in the United States was processed in the stock yards, became a major shoe polish producing area for this reason.

Prior to 1906, shoe polish was not well known as a purchasable product, nor was it particularly sophisticated. While sales were not especially high, a few brands, like Nugget, were available in the U.K. during the 1800s. The practice of shining people’s shoes gradually caught on and soon many shoeshine boys in city streets were offering shoe shines using a basic form of shoe polish along with a polishing cloth.

A number of older leather preserving products existed including the Irish brand Punch, which was first made in 1851. In 1890 the Kroner Brothers established EOS, a shoe polish factory in Berlin, which serviced the Prussian military. It finally closed in 1934 when the Nazis forbade Jews to operate a business. The German brand, Erdal, went on sale in 1901. The first shoe polish to resemble the modern varieties (aimed primarily at inducing shine) was Kiwi. Scottish expatriates William Ramsay and Hamilton McKellan began making "boot polish" in a small factory in 1904 in Melbourne, Australia.[8] Their formula was a major improvement on previous brands. It preserved shoe leather, made it shine, and restored color. By the time Kiwi Dark Tan was released in 1908, it incorporated agents that added suppleness and water resistance. Australian-made boot polish was then considered the world's best. Black and a range of colors became available, and exports to Britain, continental Europe, and New Zealand began. Kiwi polish is now owned by the Sara Lee conglomerate and imported from China.

He named the shoe polish after the kiwi, the national bird of New Zealand; Ramsay's wife, Annie Elizabeth Meek Ramsay, was a native of Oamaru, New Zealand. It has been suggested that, at a time when several symbols were weakly associated with New Zealand, the eventual spread of Kiwi shoe polish around the world enhanced the Kiwi's popular appeal and promoted it at the expense of the others.

Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view a comprehensive range of shoe polishes and other shoe care accessories.

Plimsolls

2010-09-10T02:23:00.000-07:00

A plimsoll shoe, plimsole, or plimsoll is a type of athletic shoe with a canvas upper and rubber sole, developed as beachwear in the 1830s by the Liverpool Rubber Company (later to become Dunlop). The shoe was originally, and often still is in parts of the UK, called a 'sand shoe' and acquired the nickname 'plimsoll' in the 1870s. This name derived, according to Nicholette Jones' book "The Plimsoll Sensation", because the coloured horizontal band joining the upper to the sole resembled the Plimsoll line on a ship's hull, or because, just like the Plimsoll line on a ship, if water got above the line of the rubber sole, the wearer would get wet.

As it was commonly used for corporal punishment in the British Commonwealth, where it was the typical gym shoe (part of the school uniform), plimsolling is also a synonym for a slippering. They were generally black or white with a few in brown.

In most of English-speaking North America, they are known as sneakers or tennis shoes, depending on the regional dialect. In Australia and other places such footwear is still referred to as a sandshoe, and include the similar shoe, the Dunlop Volley. In the UK these shoes were compulsory in schools' physical education lessons and today are still generally known as Plimsolls or pumps. Regional terms are common for these. In Northern Ireland and central Scotland they are usually known as gutties; "sannies" (from 'sand shoe') is also used in Scotland. In parts of Southern England and Wales they are known as "daps" or "dappers". There is a widespread belief that "daps" is taken from a factory sign - "Dunlop Athletic Plimsoles" which was called "the DAP factory". However, this seems unlikely as the first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary of "dap" for a rubber soled shoe is a March 1924 use in the Western Daily Press newspaper; Dunlop did not acquire the Liverpool Rubber Company (as part of the merger with the Macintosh group of companies) until 1925.

In South Africa they are called tekkies and in East Africa Tackies allegedly because that is how the rubber went in the sun.

In India, white plimsolls are often worn by school children and are known as Keds. The brown version is used by most police and military units as a gym training shoe; they are also part of the uniform of a batman (military).

The Plimsoll has become an icon of many generations—and music genres, including Grunge, hip-hop, emo and gangsta rap. In the early months of 2008, the Plimsoll shoe within the UK became a major fashion statement, with many celebrities such as Pete Doherty and other stars influencing their comeback. They are generally worn with tight fitting jeans (also known as Drainpipe jeans) or jeans with turned up bottoms.

Sebago's new Victor shoe epitomizes all the classic lines of the original Plimsoll with a fashionable twist. Cisit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest Sebago range.

For the entire range of Loake shoes, Trickers shoes, Sanders shoes and the Bradshaw and Lloyd collection visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

Monks and Derby shoes

2010-09-03T03:11:00.000-07:00

A monk shoe is a style of shoe with no lacing, closed by a buckle and strap. It is moderately formal shoe: less formal than a full Oxford (American: Balmoral); but more so than an open Derby (American: Blücher). In between these, it is one of the main categories of men's shoes. If it has a cap toe, it is usually brogued, and is popular in suede.

Popular styles:
Loake shoes:
Paisley
Islington
Blackfriars
Telford
Dean
McDowell
Paisley

Sanders shoes:
Stamford

A Derby or Gibson shoe (Blücher in America) is a style of leather shoe with open lacing. The tongue of the shoe is made with the same piece of leather as the vamp, and the facings with the lacing holes meet together over the tongue, and are not stitched to the tongue at the bottom. It is sometimes incorrectly called a style of Oxford shoe, which refers exclusively to shoes with closed lacing.

Popular styles:
Loake shoes
Regent
Badminton
Waterloo
Pendragon
Bogart
Hopkins
Braemar
Waverley
771
Epsom

Sebago shoes:
Sagamore
Seabury
Harwich

Trickers shoes:
Bourton
Ilkley
Keswick

Sanders shoes:
Cambridge
Shaftesbury

Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the entire range.

Oxford shoes

2010-08-26T01:31:00.000-07:00

Certainly the most popular style of lace-up shoe, an Oxford shoe is a style of leather shoe with enclosed lacing. Oxford shoes are traditionally constructed of leather and were historically rather plain. The shoes originally appeared in Scotland and Ireland, where they are occasionally called Balmorals. The design of the shoe is often plain, but may include some small ornamentation or perforations.

Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Tricker shoes and Sebago shoes all produce an extensive variety of Oxford style shoes in many leather colours and suedes. These can be viewed at Bradshaw and Lloyds's website.

The meanings of the terms Oxford and Balmoral vary geographically; in the U.S., "Balmoral" is synonymous with "Oxford", while "Oxford" is often used to refer to any "dressy" style of shoe, including the Blücher (Derby); elsewhere, especially in Britain, the Balmoral is a particular type of Oxford where there are no seams (apart from the toe cap) descending to the welt, a style particularly common on boots.

As opposed to the other main type of men's laced shoes, the Derby, the two flaps of leather with the piercings for the laces are stitched together at the bottom. The shoes can be made from a variety of leathers for different situations, ranging from formal evening shoes of patent leather, to daytime shoes. These are most commonly black or brown, and may be brogued. The toes may be plain or capped (less formal). Some leathers, such as suede or patterned leathers, and brown leather, are less formal, while other options, such as black leather, are more formal; features of comparable formality are traditionally combined, making combinations such as 'black full brogue' or 'plain capless suede' unorthodox innovations.

Brogues

2010-08-20T03:24:00.000-07:00

Brogues, often known as wingtips in the United States, are low-heeled shoes made of heavy leather, originating in Scotland and Ireland as a coarse, usually untanned leather shoe. The term wingtip derives from the toe cap pattern, which forms a W and resembles the profile of spreading bird wings.[1]

Brogues proper are traditional men's country shoes, less formal than even brogued Oxford shoes, or shoes with less than full broguing. As outdoor shoes, they are normally made in brown and are not traditionally worn in town (though the more formal Oxford laced shoe is commonly made in black even when fully brogued, and is now worn in town).

Full brogues (also known as wingtips) have a toe cap in a W shape, with punched patterns on various sections of the shoe, such as the heel counter. Half brogues have a normal straight-edged toe cap and less punching. Terms such as quarter-brogue and so on may be used to describe progressively less brogueing. The terms full brogue and half brogue do not necessarily refer to brogues in the traditional sense, but instead to the degree of broguing on the shoe, allowing, for example, full brogue shoes with closed (not open) lacing.

An extensive range of brogues, both as an Oxford cut and Derby cut are available from: Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes, Trickers shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes. Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the full collections.

Ghillie Brogues are a type of shoe with laces along the instep and no tongue. Although now primarily worn for social events, Ghillies originated as a shoe that would drain water and dry quickly due to the lack of a tongue, and not get stuck in the mud because the laces were above the ankle. Loake's 'Ghillie' shoe is a prime example of this style.

The word brogue is derived from the Scottish and Irish Gaelic word bróg, meaning shoe; the plural is brògan (Scots Gaelic) or "bróga" (Irish). The term brogue survived in American English as the term Brogans in Appalachian and southern United States dialects. The word ghillie comes from gille (Scots Gaelic) (Ir. giolla) meaning a "lad" or a "servant".

Lasts

2010-08-13T01:30:00.000-07:00

A last is a form in the rough shape of a human foot, which is used in shoemaking to provide the fit and style of a shoe. It is used by cordwainers or shoemakers in the manufacture or repair of shoes. Lasts come in pairs and the material used to make them is either European bass hardwood, rock maple, or special, high molecular weight, high density polyethylene plastic.

Almost all footwear is made on lasts, a form that creates the footwear's size, fit and style. There are many types of lasts which reflect the type of footwear and feet they are designed for. In the mid-1800s lasts were made from specially selected hard wood, known as rock hard maple which does not increase in shape for the brief period when wet materials are laid on it during shoe manufacture. Modern lasts are made of HMW-HDPE, which allow for many tack holes without repairs to the bottoms. The material of a last does not affect the fit; but the shape and size of a last does affect the fit, and must accommodate the factory machinery used to finish the shoe. The material used to make the last must be firm enough to withstand the pressure applied by the pullover machines when bottoming the shoe. Both plastic lasts and wood lasts easily hold small tacks (called lasting tacks) which are used to preliminarily fasten areas of the shoe onto the last before the sole is added.

Today many mass production high fashion shoe designers such as Sebago shoes farm out shoe production to China and elsewhere in the far east, where lasts are commonly made of HMWPE and the plastic is recycled and reformed for different seasons. The only cordwainers still using wood lasts are the few in Italy, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and England as well as some older American cowboy boot makers who prefer wood lasts to bottom custom footwear. In Northampton Loake shoes, Trickers shoes and Sanders shoes are still using those same lasts they were using a hundred years ago.

Different types of footwear require lasts with different characteristics. Open-toe sandal style will use a last that allows the toes to spread out, while a boot last is designed to hug the instep for a closer fit.

For a full made to measure shoe the customer meets the lastmaker who from detailed drawings and measurements of his feet will hand carve a pair of wooden lasts from which shoes can subsequently be made for a perfect fit. Bradshaw and Lloyd offer a full made to measure service whereby the customer meets the lastmaker in R.E. Tricker's lastmaker in their Jermyn Street store in London's West End. Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com for further details.

The Moccasin Shoe

2010-08-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

A moccasin is a shoe traditionally made of deerskin or other soft leather, consisting of a sole and sides made of one piece of leather, stitched together at the top, and sometimes with a vamp (additional panel of leather). The sole is soft and flexible and the upper part often is adorned with embroidery or beading, et cetera. Historically, it is the footwear of many Native American tribes; moreover, hunters, traders, and European settlers wore them. Etymologically, the moccasin derives from the Algonquian language Powhatan word makasin and from the Proto-Algonquian word maxkeseni.

Moccasins protect the foot while allowing the wearer to feel the ground. The Plains Indians wore hard-sole moccasins, given that their territorial geography featured rock and cacti. The eastern Indian tribes wore soft-sole moccasins, for walking in leaf-covered forest ground. Moccasins were usually all brown, the same color.

Today, moccasins usually are part of a Native American regalia, e.g. a powwow suit of clothes. The most common style is that of the Plains Indian moccasin. In New Zealand and Australia sheep shearers' moccasins are constructed of a synthetic, cream-coloured felt, with a back seam and gathered at the top of the rounded toe. These moccasins are laced in the front, and the lacing is covered with a flap fastened with a buckle at the shoe's outer side. The fastener arrangement prevents the shearer's handpiece comb from catching in the laces. Shearers' moccasins protect the feet, grip wooden floors well, and absorb sweat.

The moccasin shoe has resurged as a popular form of recreational shoe for both men and women. The name Sebago shoes is now synonimous with the 'Dockside' deck shoe made using the traditional moccasin construction and is ideal for all boating activities.

Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the vast range of moccasins available from Sebago.

The Northampton shoe industry has also embrased the moccasin form of shoe for shoes required to be soft and highly flexible. Loake shoes in particular offer a good range of slip-ons of a moccasin construction

The Wellington Boot

2010-07-29T02:04:00.000-07:00

The Wellington boot, also known as rubber-boots, wellies, topboots, gumboots, barnboots, muckboots or rainboots are a type of boot based upon leather Hessian boots. It was worn and popularised by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. This novel "Wellington" boot then became a fashionable style emulated by the British aristocracy in the early 19th century. At Bradshaw and Lloyd we continue to offer the classic all leather Goodyear welted Wellington from Sanders shoes Wellington which remains popular in military circles.

These days Wellington boots are completely waterproof and are most often made from Rubber or PolyVinyl Chloride (PVC) a halogenated polymer. They are usually worn when walking on wet or muddy ground, or to protect the wearer from heavy showers. They are generally just below knee-high. The "Wellington" in contemporary society is a very common and necessary safety or hygiene shoe for vastly diverse industrial settings: for heavy industry with an integrated reinforced toe; protection from mud and grime in mines, chemical spills in chemical plants to highest standard hygiene requirements from food processing plants, operating theatres and state-of-the-art dust-free clean rooms for electronics manufacture.

The first Duke of Wellington instructed his shoemaker, Hoby of St. James's Street, London, to modify the 18th-century Hessian boot. The resulting new boot was fabricated in soft calfskin leather, had the trim removed and was cut to fit more closely around the leg. The heels were low cut, stacked around an inch (2.5 centimetres), and the boot stopped at mid-calf. It was suitably hard-wearing for battle, yet comfortable for the evening. The boot was dubbed the Wellington and the name has stuck in British English ever since. The Duke can be seen wearing his namesake boots, which are tasseled, in an 1815 portrait by James Lonsdale.[1]
Wellington's dashing new boots quickly caught on with patriotic British gentlemen eager to emulate their war hero. Considered fashionable and foppish in the best circles and worn by dandies, such as Beau Brummell, they remained the main fashion for men through the 1840s. In the 1850s they were more commonly made in the calf-high version, and in the 1860s they were both superseded by the ankle boot, except for riding.

These boots were at first made of leather. However in 1852 Hiram Hutchinson met Charles Goodyear, who had just invented the vulcanization process for natural rubber. While Goodyear decided to manufacture tyres, Hutchinson bought the patent to manufacture footwear and moved to France to establish "A l'Aigle" ("To the Eagle") in 1853, to honour his home country. The company today is simply called "AIGLE", "Eagle"). In a country where 95% of the population were working on fields with wooden clogs as they had been for generations, the introduction of the wholly water-proof Wellington-type rubber boot became an instant success: farmers would be able to come back home with clean, dry feet.

Production of the Wellington boot was dramatically boosted with the advent of World War I and a requirement for footwear suitable for the conditions in Europe's flooded trenches. The North British Rubber Company (now Hunter Boot Ltd) was asked by the War Office to construct a boot suitable for such conditions. The mills ran day and night to produce immense quantities of these trench boots. In total, 1,185,036 pairs were made to meet the British Army's demands.

In World War II, Hunter Boot was again requested to supply vast quantities of Wellington and thigh boots. 80% of production was of war materials - from (rubber) ground sheets to life belts and gas masks. In Holland, the British forces were working in flooded conditions which demanded Wellingtons and thigh boots in vast supplies.

By the end of the war in 1945, the Wellington had become popular among men, women and children for wet weather wear. The boot had developed to become far roomier with a thick sole and rounded toe. Also, with the rationing of that time, labourers began to use them for daily work.

The lower cost and ease of rubber "Wellington" boot manufacture, and being entirely water-proof, lent itself immediately to being the preferred protective shoe to leather in all forms of industry. Increased attention to occupational health and safety requirements led to the steel toe or steel-capped Wellington: a protective (commonly internal) toe capping to protect the foot from crush and puncture injuries. Although traditionally made of steel, the reinforcement may be a composite or a plastic material such as ThermoPlastic Polyurethane (TPU). Such steel-toe Wellingtons are nearly indispensable in an enormous range of industry and are often mandatory wear to meet local occupational health and safety legislation or insurance requirements.

Visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view our extensive range of shoes and boots from:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Trickers shoes
Sebago shoes

Interesting Facts and Historical Anecdotes

2010-07-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

Boot and shoemakers are often commonly called "cobblers." But the word cobbler is more properly applied to shoe repairmen. Those who actually make footwear are known as "cordwainers." This term has its antecedents in the word "cordovan" which was a reddish leather produced in Spain. Hence, one who worked in cordovan was a cordwainer. Shoemakers who made custom, made-to-order shoes were known as "bespoke" makers. Refer to www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view Trickers shoes. All these styles can be made to order on wooden lasts, hand carved, for the perfect fit.

St. Crispin
Shoemaking has a long history and one that is rich in tradition. Within the trade itself -- among shoe and bootmakers -- the legends, the traditions, and the history really begin with St. Crispin. St. Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers. Since medieval times, October 25th has been celebrated as St. Crispin's Day and the Shoemaker's Holiday. In the past, boot and shoemakers traditionally closed their shops on this day, in celebration and commemoration. I say commemoration because there is more to the story of St. Crispin than meets the eye. Actually there are two stories that seem to be the same... one in England, one in France. St. Crispin was born into a wealthy Roman family in the third century A.D.. Somewhere fairly early on, he converted to Christianity. Since this was not an approved lifestyle for a noble Roman, legend says that he was disinherited. Forced to fall back upon his own resources, St. Crispin (not yet a saint) became a shoemaker. Although teaching the gospel was his life's work, he made shoes in his spare time -- until he was put to death for his beliefs in Soissons, France in 288 A.D.. We know a little more about St. Hugh, the English counterpart to St. Crispin. Born Hugh, son of Arviragus -- king of Powisland (modern day Wales), St. Hugh married a Christian princess, Winifred of Flintshire. She quickly converted him to Christianity, with roughly the same results. Thrown into poverty, Hugh became a shoemaker who preached the gospel by day and plied his craft by night. Both he and Winifred were put to death, ostensibly for rabble-rousing, about 300 A.D.. Legend has it that his fellow shoemakers kept constant vigil and consoled him during the time of his internment. After his death, by hanging, his friends pulled his body from the gibbet and dried his bones. These were made into tools for making shoes. For many years, in fact, a shoemaker's tool kit was called St. Hugh's Bones. To this day our Northamptonshire factories: Loake shoes, Trickers shoes and Sanders shoes continue to celebrate St. Crispin's Day. A celebration that would not be understood by the international workers at Sebago shoes.

As a class, shoemaker's have historically been regarded as having an innate philosophical bent. They have been writers, mayors, popes, and leaders of major social upheaval.

"Sixty-four to the inch"
Northampton, England was, for many years, the center of shoemaking in England and Europe. June Swann, who was curator at the Museum there, tells the story of having heard, for years, the legend of "64 stitches to the inch" that was told about the Northampton trade. But during her tenure there she had never actually seen an example of such refined workmanship -- until she received a shipment of 19th century boots from the States.

After the American Civil War, many of the trades -- jobs that for centuries had relied upon skilled, highly trained craftsmen -- began to be industrialized. Just naturally there was great resistance to the very concept of the factory and wage slavery. Boot and shoemakers were some of the most vociferous in this resistance and their industry was, in fact, one of the last to be converted. During the late 1800's, many prize work competitions were staged to demonstrate that factory workers could not compete with skilled craftsmen. Some of the fanciest and most refined work ever to be done was created for these exhibitions. Ms. Swann tells of coming across boots made in Philadelphia for show that were stitched 64 stitches to the inch. Now just about the finest work that can be done on leather with a modern sewing machine is approximately 30 stitches to the inch. More stitches only tear the leather. Additionally, we know that this work was done by hand. James Devlin says in his book The Guide To The Trade that this work was done with an awl so fine that upon an accidental piercing of his hand, the wound neither hurt nor bled; and that a human hair was used for a needle.

Much of the footwear that is in common use today (see the Bradshaw and Lloyd website)had its origins in the styles and fashions of Europe -- and, particularly, England. itself. Indeed, the "cowboy" boot, in its several variations, does not derive from Spanish or Native American influence as is commonly thought, but is, instead, a direct descendent of the boot style made popular by Arthur Wellsley -- the Duke of Wellington.

Well Heeled
A common thread in these stories, and the many others that surround shoemakers, is the theme of nobility . Indeed the heel itself is a mark of nobility. The earliest information we have of the high heel being used for riding, describes invading mongol tribesmen wearing bright red wooden heels. Mongols were consummate horsemen and their easy victories left a mark on European society. Since owning and caring for a horse requires some wealth and since being horseback places a person physically above the common man, riders and, consequently, high heels became associated with nobility. To this day, we say well-heeled to describe someone who is wealthy or aristocratic. The Stuart cavaliers -- king's men all -- that immigrated to America during the Cromwellian Interregnum brought with them their thigh high riding boots... with high heels. Many settled in the south and indeed the bulk of the southern plantation class was descended from cavalier stock; a fact that played a big part in the unfolding of the American Civil War and the preeminence of the southern cavalry. Before and after the civil war many Southerners migrated to Texas or went west to escape the devastation of the war. Again their notion of high heels and nobility went with them. Many people have speculated upon the origins of the cowboy boot, but the Northhampton Museum in England has one of the largest collections of historical footwear in the world and in these exhibits can be found the true story of the western boot. Throughout the 17th and 18th century exhibits are examples of riding boots which, as with one particular pair made in approximately 1630, have high tops, pointed toes and 2" stacked heels. During this period of time, boots were made upon straights -- lasts that were neither left nor right. Rights and lefts had been common before this era but with the emerging fashion for high heels (some as high as 3") and the difficulty of producing paired lasts at the higher heel height, most footwear was produced on the straight last. Military styles had a great influence on boots during this time although for practical reasons the tops of boots gradually began to come down from the thigh high buckets of the cavaliers. In 1790 paired lasts were reintroduced mostly as a response to lower heel heights. And as the new century began, boots became very fashionable, even for women. In 1815, Arthur Wellsley, First Duke of Wellington, defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. In the wake of his victory and his ensuing popularity, Wellington boots became the style. The major difference in these boots from previous styles was that the heels were low cut and the tops were only calf high.

At Northhampton there is a pair of dress wellingtons made in 1817. They are a four piece boot --vamp, counter cover, front and back tops -- with beaded side seams (the same layout as a modern cowboy boot). The vamps and counter covers are black patent leather, the tops are maroon with an olive top binding and trim...and they have a fancy decorative stitch pattern on the front of the leg. With 1" stacked leather heels and inside canvas pulls they are remarkably like the western boots that later became part of the history of the American frontier. In 1847, S.C. Shive, in America, patented the patterns and crimping board for what we call a "full wellington" -- a two piece boot that found wide acceptance among the military, horsemen, and adventurers of the time. From the 1850's to the 1880's, the full wellington was the boot that military officers were issued. And although by regulation, foot soldiers and enlisted men were issued shoes (ankle high lace-ups -- predecessors of the packer), the full wellington was preferred and was the boot that went west with the army and the nation. In fact, the earliest examples of true cowboy boots -- the Coffyville and others -- are full wellingtons.

Our rubber soled shoes

2010-07-16T03:12:00.000-07:00

So long as a shoe is leather lined and has a leather insole it makes little difference to the breathability of a shoe whether it has leather or rubber soles. If a shoe can breathe then not only will it be good for the leather but it will be good for your feet. Because of their flexibility, durability and non-slip attributes an ever growing number of our shoes have a rubber sole. These are still Goodyear welted in the traditional manner and so any number of re-soles remain possible.

By far and away our most popular rubber sole is the 'Dainite', manufactured by the Harboro Rubber Company in Leicester since 1894. The company remains in Market Harborough at the centre of the shoe making industry, between Leicester and Northampton, under the leadership of the original founder's family. The Dainite trade name originates from the established local phrase describing the company as 'day and night' mills. The Dainite studded sole is one of its most widely known and used products. It provides comfort and grip in all conditions whilst not attracting or storing dirt.

Over the years the Dainite rubber sole has become the rubber sole of all discerning shoe manufacturers including: Loake shoes, Trickers shoes, Sanders shoes, Church shoes, Crockett and Jones shoes and Barker shoes. This sole has hardly changed since it first appeared in 1910.

Filter out 'rubber soles' when you next visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com and you can see the extensive range of Goodyear welted shoes with these famous Dainite rubber soles.

The leather used in our shoes

2010-07-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide.

Several tanning processes transform hides and skins into leather:

Vegetable-tanned leather is tanned using tannin and other ingredients found in vegetable matter, tree bark, and other such sources. It is supple and brown in color, with the exact shade depending on the mix of chemicals and the color of the skin and is mainly used for tanning sole leather. Vegetable-tanned leather is not stable in water; it tends to discolor, and if left to soak and then dry it will shrink and become less supple and harder. In hot water, it will shrink drastically and partly gelatinize, becoming rigid and eventually brittle. Boiled leather is an example of this where the leather has been hardened by being immersed in hot water, or in boiled wax or similar substances. Historically, it was occasionally used as armor after hardening, and it has also been used for book binding.

Chrome-tanned leather, invented in 1858, is tanned using chromium sulfate and other salts of chromium. It is more supple and pliable than vegetable-tanned leather and therefore is mainly used in the tanning of upper leathers in the shoe industry. It does not discolour or lose shape as drastically in water as vegetable-tanned. It is also known as wet-blue for its color derived from the chromium. More esoteric colors are possible using chrome tanning.

Rawhide is made by scraping the skin thin, soaking it in lime, and then stretching it while it dries. Rawhide is stiffer and more brittle than other forms of leather, and is cut up into cords for use in lacing or stitching.

Leather—usually vegetable-tanned leather—can be oiled to improve its water resistance. This supplements the natural oils remaining in the leather itself, which can be washed out through repeated exposure to water. Frequent oiling of leather, with mink oil, neatsfoot oil or a similar material, keeps it supple and improves its lifespan dramatically.

Types of leather:

Leather types
In general, leather is sold in four forms:

Full-grain leather refers to the leather which has not had the upper "top grain" and "split" layers separated. The upper section of a hide that previously contained the epidermis and hair, but were removed from the hide/skin. Full-grain refers to hides that have not been sanded, buffed, or snuffed (as opposed to top-grain or corrected leather) to remove imperfections (or natural marks) on the surface of the hide. The grain remains allowing the fiber strength and durability. The grain also has breathability, resulting in less moisture from prolonged contact. Rather than wearing out, it will develop a patina over time. Leather furniture and footwear are made from full-grain leather. Full-grain leathers are typically available in two finish types: aniline and semi-aniline.

Top-grain leather is the second-highest quality and has had the "split" layer separated away, making it thinner and more pliable than full grain. Its surface has been sanded and a finish coat added to the surface which results in a colder, plastic feel, less breathability, and will not develop a natural patina. It is typically less expensive, and has greater resistance to stains so long as the finish remains unbroken than full-grain leather.

Corrected-grain leather is any leather that has had an artificial grain applied to its surface. The hides used to create corrected leather do not meet the standards for use in creating vegetable-tanned or aniline leather. The imperfections are corrected or sanded off and an artificial grain impressed into the surface and dressed with stain or dyes. Most corrected-grain leather is used to make pigmented leather as the solid pigment helps hide the corrections or imperfections. Corrected grain leathers can mainly be bought as two finish types: semi-aniline and pigmented.

Split leather is leather created from the fibrous part of the hide left once the top-grain of the rawhide has been separated from the hide. During the splitting operation, the top grain and drop split are separated. The drop split can be further split (thickness allowing) into a middle split and a flesh split. In very thick hides, the middle split can be separated into multiple layers until the thickness prevents further splitting. Split leather then has an artificial layer applied to the surface of the split and is embossed with a leather grain (Bycast leather). Splits are also used to create suede. The strongest suedes are usually made from grain splits (that have the grain completely removed) or from the flesh split that has been shaved to the correct thickness. Suede is "fuzzy" on both sides. Manufacturers use a variety of techniques to make suede from full-grain. A reversed suede is a grained leather that has been designed into the leather article with the grain facing away from the visible surface. It is not considered to be a true form of suede.

Full grain leathers are therefore used in the better quality formal shoe. All Bradshaw and Lloyd's own brand of shoes, Trickers shoes, Flexwelts from Sanders shoes and the 1880 Collection from Loake shoes are all made with full grain calf leather. Visit our website www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view over 300 styles of shoe. Full grain leathers are also used in most Sebago shoes.

Oak bark Leather Soles

2010-07-02T04:23:00.000-07:00

Only oak bark leather soles are used in Bradshaw & Lloyd's Bench-Made Collection. So what exactly are they?

It’s leather tanned using the classical oak-bark method, obviously. A naturally pure tanning method taking place in old, three-meter deep oak lined pits. This method uses exclusively vegetable tanning agents in the form of barks and fruits. The process normally lasts between nine and twelve months, depending on the hide thickness. The leather is tanned without mechanical movement, without raising temperatures and without adding chemical catalysts.

Besides other advantages, this proves to be very lightweight due to the long tanning duration ensuring that the hide absorbs only the amount of tanning agent absolutely necessary. Oak-bark tanned leather possesses unique properties: it is extremely hard wearing, tough, as well as flexible, making a comfortable sole of outstanding solidity, standing out through its appealing surface and a warm woody color. Oak-bark tanned sole leather is also:

- Highly water-repellent
- Especially breathable
- Absorbs perspiration
- Deodorant and antiseptic
- Prevention against foot diseases
- Completely bio-degradable

Naturally this formidable sole leather does make the shoe rather more expensive than standard Goodyear welted sole leather but oak bark sole leather will wear at least 3 times longer. With the cost of resoling shoes forever escalating it is money well spent.

Trickers shoes also use oak bark sole leather in all their shoes.
Sanders shoes, Loake shoes and Sebago shoes use standard sole leather.

Shoe repairs

2010-06-25T02:32:00.000-07:00

With the budget announced this week there is growing concern about the economy and our financial security. Perhaps now is the time to condsider repairing your shoes rather than replacing them. If you happen to either live or work in central London Bradshaw and Lloyd offer a remarkably convenient hight quality shoe repair service. For no charge our courier will collect from your office or home. So long as you meet the minimum repair charge of £37.00 per collection the following prices represent extraordinarily competitive rates:

Men's repair prices per pair (inclusive of courier service and VAT):
½ leather stitched sole & rubber heel * £37.00
½ rubber stitched sole & rubber heel £37.00
½ leather stitched sole £28.00
½ rubber stitched sole £28.00
Stick-on rubber sole £16.00
Rubber heel £9.00
Rubber heel with quarter iron £11.00
Leather heel with quarter rubber £12.00
Re-line heel upper £9.00
Steel toes tip £2.50
* Standard repair.
Turnaround usually within 5 to 10 working days.

To arrange collection of your shoes please email repairs@bradshawandlloyd.com or telephone 0870-2406990 and we shall post you a courier sack which will take up to 5 pairs of shoes.

For our new shoes please visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest from:

Loake shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers shoes
Sanders shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes

Reduced international postal rates

2010-06-18T03:06:00.000-07:00

We now offer greatly reduced rates for sending our shoes abroad via courier:

Europe (EU) - £9.00 (2 to 5 day service).
Europe (non EU) - £12.00 (2 to 5 day service).
USA and Canada - £19.00 (1 to 3 day service).
Far East and Australia - £25.00 (1 to 4 day service).
Rest of the world - £33.00 (2 to 4 day service).
Free delivery within the UK.

+ with the pound so low against many currencies our shoes have never been such good value.

Do visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view the latest range of shoes from:
Loake of Northamptonshire (est.1880) - Mens shoes.
Sanders of Northamptonshire (est. 1873) - Mens shoes.
Trickers of Northampton (est. 1829) - Mens shoes.
Sebago of Maine, USA (est. 1947) - Mens + Womens shoes.
+ the B&L premium collection made by Trickers but at a fraction of their Jermyn Street prices.

We continually monitor internet prices to ensure that our prices are the most competitive. However if you were to find the shoes cheaper elsewhere on the internet we will refund the difference.

Order via www.bradshawandlloyd.com or telephone 01273-841946 from 9am to 6pm (GMT) Monday to Friday to discuss your requirements. For your benefit we maintain detailed records of your previous orders.

We strive to make obtaining the finest shoes at the best possible prices as simple as possible:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Tricker shoes
B&L shoes
Sebago shoes

Suede or Nubuck - What is the difference?

2010-06-11T04:31:00.000-07:00

Nubuck is top-grain cattle rawhide leather that has been sanded or buffed on the grain side, or outside, to give a slight nap of short protein fibers, producing a velvet-like surface and is resistant to wear.

Nubuck is similar to suede. It differs in that suede is created from the inner side of a hide, whereas nubuck is created from the outer side of a hide, giving it more strength and thickness along with a fine grain. It is generally more expensive than suede, and must be coloured or dyed heavily to cover up the sanding and stamping process.

The word nubuck probably comes from new + buck(skin).

We have just introduced a stunning range of suede shoes in an array of georgeous colours including greens and blues as well as the more classic shades on natural crepe Goodyear welted soles. Filter out just 'suede shoes' at bradshawandlloyd.com and prepare to be impressed with the extensive range from Sanders shoes, Loake shoes, Trickers shoes, Sebago shoes and the ever expanding Bradshaw and Lloyd collection.

How to Clean Suede Shoes

2010-06-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

Suede shoes can be easily ruined if not cleaned properly. Follow these simple steps to keep them looking their best:

Step 1: Once the suede is dry take a clean, dry towel and gently rub your suede shoes. This helps to bring up the nap and restore the suede's surface.

Step 2: Grab your pencil or suede eraser and rub your shoes to remove dry deeply embedded stains.

Step 3: Brush the surface of your shoes with a metal suede brush using a controlled circular motions. This helps to smooth out the areas of your shoes that have been roughed up by the eraser. It also effectively gets rid of stubborn scuff marks.

Step 4: Spray your shoes with a coat of suede protector.

Removing Water Stains
Step 1: Place a light coat of water on the outside of each shoe with a clean nail brush.

Step 2: Soak up the excess water with a dry cloth or sponge.

Step 3: Insert a shoe tree into each shoe and let them air dry overnight. Without the shoes trees, your shoes may lose their form or shrink. If you don't have any shoe trees, then use balled up tissue paper instead.

Step 4: Go over your shoes with a suede brush the next day when they have dried completely.

Step 5: Coat each shoe with a layer of suede protector.

You can filter out suede shoes from our website and view the entire range offered by: Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes.

Shoes for the summer

2010-05-28T03:56:00.001-07:00

Summer is on its way and now is the time to organize your footwear for the holidays. Bradshaw and Lloyd has the complete range of Sebago's 2010 range on our website at unbeatable prices. So whether your holidays involve getting very wet or just strolling along the promenade we have the right shoes for all occasions.

Don't forget that our 10% discount offer runs until 20th June. Just quote offer code FTF997 in the comments section at the end of the online ordering process to get the discount on all Sebago shoes, Loake shoes, Trickers shoes and the new Bradshaw and Lloyd collection.

New Season Sale

2010-05-21T02:56:00.000-07:00

At Bradshaw and Lloyd we are offering a 10% discount on all Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Sebago shoes, Trickers shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes along with free deliver throughout the UK. Offer ends 30th June 2010.

To qualify please order one or more pairs of shoes from www.bradshawandlloyd.com and quote offer code FTF997 in the comments section at the end of the ordering process. The discount will not appear in the on-line ordering process, we shall email you confirmation of the discount on receipt of your order. Alternatively telephone 0870-2406990 quoting the offer code.

If you would like to receive further details of our shoe repair service please e-mail repairs@bradshawandlloyd.com. We offer a free collection service throughout central London and for £7.48 a collection can be arranged from a home or business address throughout mainland UK.

Assuring you of our best attention at all times.

Richard de Winter

What is Veldtschoen construction?

2010-05-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

Instead of the upper leather turning underneath the insole like more common constructions, the Veldtschoen turns outwards and is stitched directly to the mid-sole. The advantages of this are a durable construction which is easy to repair, and also flexible, increasing the comfort of the shoes.

The name Veldtschoen translates from Dutch to mean field shoe. It was created with the theory that if the leather of the upper turns outwards rather than inwards, it would direct unwanted debris and water, dependent on materials used, away from the foot instead of inside the shoe. Water resistance requires more engineering of the shoe and is not common practice today, with rubber Wellington boots catering for this market area. Instead, the Veldtschoen is regarded more for its excellent durability, comfort, and attractive appearance. Loake shoes and Sanders shoes can both make heavier country style shoes using this method of construction. But without doubt Trickers shoes of Northampton are the world leaders with their Country Collection. Some of Tricker's more popular shoes from this collection can be viewed on our website.

Sebago shoes with their nautical bent do not make shoes using Veldtschoen construction techniques.

Moccasin Construction

2010-05-07T02:35:00.000-07:00

The word moccasin has become synonymous with the Sebago brand and is best associated with their classic Docksides. A moccasin construction produces a very light, flexible and comfortable shoe with a distinctive appearance . A bag of leather is formed by hand stitching an apron to a vamp. This bag is dampened and then forced on to the last to form the shape of the shoe. The sole is then stitched or glued to the formed upper part. Because the soft leather upper goes right around the foot, forming a flexible and adaptable 'bag', a moccasin is exceptionally comfortable.

To view the entire range of Sebago shoes visit our website.

Blake Shoe Construction

2010-04-30T04:43:00.001-07:00

Blake construction is the bread and butter of the Italian shoe industry. Although Italian shoe manufacturers use a dizzying array of construction techniques, probably more good-quality shoes are made using Blake construction than all of the other methods combined.

The diagram above shows what is involved with Blake construction, and it should be immediately clear why it is so popular: it's a lot simpler than Goodyear welting. There is a single row of stitching that attaches the insole to the upper (turned under the insole) and the outsole. Obviously, since the stitching runs inside of the shoe, it's not possible for a Blake-constructed shoe to be stitched together by hand; so this construction technique is a child of the Industrial Revolution. It's named for Lyman Reed Blake, and American inventor who patented the machine to accomplish this in 1856. He later sold the patent to a man named Gordon McKay, and one consequently sees this construction method referred to as McKay construction.

Blake construction has two principal advantages. First, because it requires no stitching on the sole edges outside the shoe, it is possible to get extremely close-cut soles with it, much more closely cut than would ever be possible with a Goodyear-welted shoe. Second, because Blake-constructed shoes have fewer layers in the sole, they tend to be more flexible than Goodyear -welted shoes. The principal disadvantages are all outgrowths of the stitching along the insole. This row of stitching can irritate some feet, especially when it is not covered by a sock liner. More seriously, it can wick moisture from the ground into the inside of the shoe. Unless they have rubber soles, Blake-constructed shoes will always be less waterproof than Goodyear-welted shoes, all other things being equal. But there is also a limit to the number of times a Blake-constructed shoe can be re-soled as new holes are being made in the upper leather each time a new sole is attached by the needle. With Goodyear welted shoes the sole stitching goes into the welt which is a seperate piece of leather from the upper leather. So when the welt eventually becomes too riddled with holes a new welt is simply stitched to the upper leather. For these reasons Goodyear welting is the preferred method of construction for the traditional English shoes manufacturers in Northampton; Loake shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes. Sebago shoes will also use Goodyear welted construction in their more formal shoes. However in their recareational shoes such as the classic Dockside moccasin construction is the preferred method of construction. This technique will be discussed in detail next week. To view a huge range of Goodyear welted shoes vist the Bradshaw and Lloyd website.

What is Goodyear Welting?

2010-04-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

The Goodyear Welted Shoe Construction is a high quality shoemaking process which was originated many centuries ago. The process involves stitching the welt (strip of leather) to the upper and inner sole.

Christian Dancel, a German immigrant to America, invented a machine which could carry out this process.

In 1864 Charles Goodyear Jr, son of Charles Goodyear - the discoverer of vulcanized rubber bought the rights to this process and employed Dancel as superintendent of his factory. It eventually came to England in the 1870’s.

Nowadays due to this methods undeniable qualities, durability, comfort, shape retention, flexibility, insulation and easy repair it is still considered as the “work of art” in the shoe construction.

Only the best shoemakers in the world offer goodyear welted footwear. These include: Sanders shoes, Loake shoes and Tricker Shoes. Most of the shoes offered at www.bradshawandlloyd.com are made this way. Just look for 'goodyear welted construction' in the description of any shoe on the site.

Spring Sale

2010-04-16T02:11:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to offer a 10% discount on all our Loake shoes, Sanders shoes, Sebago shoes, Tricker shoes and Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes along with free deliver throughout the UK. Offer ends 15th June 2010.

To qualify please order one or more pairs of shoes from www.bradshawandlloyd.com and quote offer code FTF747 in the comments section at the end of the ordering process. The discount will not appear in the on-line ordering process, we shall email you confirmation of the discount on receipt of your order. Alternatively telephone 01273-841946 quoting the offer code. For your benefit we maintain detailed records of your previous orders.

If you would like to receive further details of our shoe repair service please e-mail repairs@bradshawandlloyd.com. We offer a free collection service throughout central London and for £7.48 a collection can be arranged from a home or business address throughout mainland UK.

Assuring you of our best attention at all times.

Richard de Winter

Shoe Repair Service: Free courier collection service in Central London

2010-04-09T04:14:00.000-07:00

Are your shoes in need of repair? We offer a FREE collection and return service from any business address within central London.

Men's repair prices per pair (inclusive of courier service and VAT):
½ leather stitched sole & rubber heel * £37.00
½ rubber stitched sole & rubber heel £37.00
½ leather stitched sole £28.00
½ rubber stitched sole £28.00
Stick-on rubber sole £16.00
Rubber heel £9.00
Rubber heel with quarter iron £11.00
Leather heel with quarter rubber £12.00
Re-line heel upper £9.00
Steel toes tip £2.50
* Standard repair.
Minimum repair price per collection is £37. Turnaround usually within 5 to 10 working days.

To arrange collection of your shoes please reply to this email or telephone 0870-2406990 and we shall post you a courier sack which will take up to 5 pairs of shoes.

For our new shoes: Loake shoes, Sebago shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes please visit www.bradshawandlloyd.com.

Our shoe brands:

2010-04-01T03:39:00.000-07:00

The Bradshaw and Lloyd Collection:
In the old days a gentleman expected to spend one week’s salary on a pair of decent shoes. He would then expect them to last him a generation. This collection meets all those quality requirements and epitomizes all that was ever great about English shoemaking. Bench made in a factory in Northampton which has been hand crafting the very finest shoes since 1829, we are very proud to offer these shoes under the Bradshaw & Lloyd brand, at a fraction of the price they would be in London’s Jermyn Street. Last shape is crucial to the look of a shoe and this entire collection is made on the finest last we have seen in 20 years. Nothing has been spared in terms of the quality of materials. The upper leathers and linings are made using the very best calf leathers. The famously hard wearing oak bark tanned leather soles will last on average three times as long as regular leather soles. We are confident that once worn these shoes will become a prized possession and will last far longer than you thought possible – short of forking out a weeks’ wages.

The Loake Collection:
The Loake shoemaking tradition began in 1880 when brothers Thomas, John and William opened a factory in Northamptonshire in the heart of the English shoemaking industry. The aim of Loake shoes was to provide the most handsome, comfortable and durable gentlemen’s shoes possible. The present factory, in Wood Street, Kettering, was built by the brothers in 1894. Today, five generations later, Loake continues to be family owned and prides itself on the exceptional quality that only traditional skills and a family heritage can achieve. Loake are most famous for its fine, handcrafted Goodyear Welted shoes. Only the finest grade leathers and materials are used to create this renowned brand of footwear.

The Sanders Collection:
Sanders & Sanders Ltd was established in 1873 by brothers William and Thomas Sanders of Rushden, Northamptonshire. They had a vision of offering outstanding quality footwear to discerning members of the public throughout England. They had their five craftsmen, selected the finest English hides, the best local oak-bark tanned soles and began to design and make boots. The Sanders shoes vision has since been passed down from father to son and the company is currently in the fourth generation of family management, employing over one hundred craftsmen. Most of the footwear is made using the Goodyear Welted construction method, where the upper, insole, welt and sole are entirely stitched together. Although a very labour intensive process, this is acknowledged to be the finest construction for formal footwear.

The Sebgo Collection:
In 1946 the Sebago heritage of crafting quality handsewn footwear nearby Lake Sebago in Maine, USA, was initiated by three veteran shoemakers. Since then Sebago Inc. has become the world’s most recognised brand for producing premium, American, casual footwear. From the beginning, the company has been known for the highest standards of hands-on manufacturing techniques, proprietary processes, timeless styling and quality materials. At Sebago shoes, styling has always gone hand in hand with comfort. Great-fitting handsewn loafers and oxfords are built around comfort-based lasts, and Sebago created and patented the welt construction method used in many of these handsewns to provide maximum fit and comfort. Sebago obtained worldwide popularity for its Docksides boat shoe, representing the best in leisure lifestyle and great performing casual footwear.

The Trickers Collection:
In 1829, Joseph Barltrop and his wife Claire Louise Tricker founded what was to become one of the oldest English shoe manufacturers namely Tricker Limited. Five generations of Trickers shoes later, his family continue to apply the same traditional crafts and skills in the production of the world renowned shoes and are proud to be the holders of the Royal warrant from His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. Using only the best available materials, including calf upper leather and oak bark tanned soles, Trickers craftsmen apply legendary skills to both hand-made and bench-made shoes, maintaining a standard seldom equalled in Goodyear welted footwear

Mechanisation and Northampton’s shoemakers

2010-03-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

The transition form workshop to factory was one that took place in many industries in the 19th Century. As transport links sprung up and a distribution network developed, the manufacturers in Northampton’s shoe industry spied an opportunity for profit. Mechanisation was a means of maximising production and therefore profits. The nature of the Northampton shoe industry meant that this modernisation was perceived as a threat to the shoemakers’ autonomy and independence and even threatened their livelihood. Their reaction was in the same spirit as the Luddites, though no physical damage was wrought upon the machinery, their introduction was fiercely opposed. When it emerged the jobs were not immediately being lost through the introduction of machinery, their adaptation became widespread.

The next logical step for the industry’s manufacturers was to entice shoemakers into huge workshops, or factories, where work could be regulated and uniform. These were epitomized by Loake shoes, Sanders shoes and Trickers shoes. Hand techniques and home working did persist in Northampton late into the 19th Century. There was still plenty of work for hand shoe makers and most firms employed nearly as many out workers as they did factory hands. The dispute of 1857-9 marked the beginning of a period of change, not the transition itself. As more efficient machinery was developed, the economic viability of hand workers was reduced.

Twenty years after the mechanisation dispute, Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in 1878 said that:
“The visitor to Northampton will at once be reminded by the leather aprons and grimy faces which haunt the streets that he is in the land of shoemakers.”

However this ‘land of shoemakers’ was experiencing fundamental changes in working practices that would change the nature of the shoemaking industries. As is evident, the 1857-9 dispute only marked the beginning of this period of change, and traditional hand techniques lingered on into the 20th Century. Many of these techniques can still be seen at Loake shoes, Tricker shoes and Sanders shoes.

This article was prepared from material provided by the Shoe Collection, Northampton Museums and Art Gallery.

Mechanization and Northampton's Shoemakers

2010-03-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

The Strike:

In February 1859, the manufacturers of Northampton issued a statement confirming the shoemakers worst fears: machines to close shoe uppers were to be introduced:
“That in consequence of Sewing Machines being extensively used un the Cities and Principal Towns in the United Kingdom, so as seriously to affect the demand upon the Wholesale Houses any further delay in the introduction of them, by the Manufacturers of Northampton, would be permanently injurious to the interest of the trade generally. And in accordance with this conviction, it was decided to introduce the Machine Sewn Tops simultaneously into their respective Trades.”

Emblem of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Rivetters and Finishers
© Courtesy of J R Betts - Raunds & District History Society
The reaction of the Mutual Protection Society was to call a strike, urging as many shoemakers as possible to leave Northampton and seek work elsewhere. However the strike was unsuccessful and failed to rouse the town’s shoemakers. It transpired that the Northampton shoemakers did not have any objection to the introduction of machines so long as they did not threaten their jobs. By the middle of May 1858, it was all over and sewing machinery had a permanent role to play in the production of Northampton’s shoes. By 1864, there were 1500 closing machines in the town.

Just as business was returning as normal for Northampton’s shoemakers, further changes were in store. In Northampton’s Campbell Square, the construction of Isaac, Campbell and Co’s factory was completed in 1859. The company intended all of the shoemakers it employed to work inside the factory instead of at home – as was the norm. In order to convince the stubborn shoemakers, the company published an appeal.

This appeal included appeasements designed to entice the shoemakers, as well as the very strictures which they wanted to avoid at all costs. Women were to have separate workshops with female superintendents while married women could continue working from home. Children could be apprenticed and the shoemakers could appoint their own overseers. The company wanted these appeasements to prove that:
“the system we propose is not ‘the factory system’. It is a carefully considered system of constant, orderly, regulated work, without an of the bad features which have made the factory system distasteful to you;”

However, the fixed wages and hours represented an end to the workers’ autonomy. The Isaac Campbell and Co’s factory failed, but others were to replace it, such as Loake Shoes and Sanders Shoes. Trickers Shoes had of course been in business by this time for generations.In 1861 the Turner Brothers took over, four years later they were producing 100,000 pairs of shoes a week using steam engines: the factory had arrived.

Mechanisation and Northampton’s shoemakers - the story continues.

2010-03-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

Fighting the onset of mechanisation

Trickers shoes had already been established by 1829. In November 1857, the shoemakers held a meeting to discuss the introduction of machinery in the production of boots and shoes. The Northampton Mercury carried an account of the meeting, from which the following quotations are taken. At the meeting, Mr Wilder, a shoemaker, identified that the purpose of the meeting was to: “check the introduction of machinery, which was bound to bring ruin on them all”.

The meeting had been precipitated by the construction of a “monster warehouse” in the town which the shoemakers feared was going to “ride rough shod over them all unless they came forward in time”. The shoemaker feared that owners of the new warehouse intended to use it as a factory. In the words of Mr Pell, a shoemaker at the factory:
“that operations were to be confined within its walls and that machinery was to be used here.”

The owner of the warehouse, Mr MP Mansfield, denied this was the case but the shoemakers remained unconvinced and pledged to resist the introduction of machinery. In April 1858, the Northampton Boot and Shoe-makers Mutual Protection Society was formed to oppose mechanisation. A strike fund was created and links were forged with Stafford’s shoemakers who were already engaged in a dispute with their manufacturers over the introduction of machinery. Battle lines had been drawn in Northampton, each side waited to see who would blink first. Loake shoes weren't to appear on the scene until 1870.

It is interesting to note that Trickers shoes were established in 1829, Sanders shoes were established in 1873 and Loake shoes was established in 1880.

Mechanisation and Northampton’s shoemakers. Origins of Loake shoes, Trickers shoes, Sanders shoes

2010-03-05T03:05:00.000-08:00

In the 19th Century, the process of making shoes had differed little from earlier centuries. Charles Mahor described how a hand shoe worker worked in the 19th Century:
"All the raw parts – soles, insoles, uppers, welts – come in skips, and my cousin and me, we used to fetch it… The women closed the uppers on a closing machine donstairs and then took them upstairs to the shoemaker.”

Shoemakers worked individually, collecting raw material from a manufacturer and then returning the finished product in return for payment. The work was carried out by hand, usually in a workshop in the shoemakers’ own home. Other family members, including wives and children, were often engaged in assisting the shoemaker.

Therefore, shoemakers enjoyed a largely autonomous, independent position. They decided themselves what days and hours they worked, often deciding to work on Sunday in order to have more cash to spend in the pub on Sunday night. The habit of taking off Monday, St Monday, is testimony to the freedom enjoyed.

As shoemakers effectively ran their own business, they had to keep business records and conform to measurements to ensure shoes fitted correctly. This high level of literacy combined with the fact that many had been granted freeman status meant that any perceived infringement on their autonomy and flexibility would be vigorously opposed.

In 1857, when the first machines for shoe production appeared in Northampton, the town’s shoemakers feared that there would be massive unemployment and that those who managed to keep their job would be forced to work in a factory. The idea of having their working lives controlled by someone else and having set working hours was totally alien to their way of thinking. A battle was inevitable between Northampton’s shoemakers and shoe manufacturers.

History of shoemaking in Northamptonshire where all our English shoe brands, including Loake shoes, are made.

2010-02-26T02:35:00.000-08:00

First instalment:

The association between Northampton and shoemaking dates back to the 15th Century, when the 1452 Assizes regulated prices and weights for various trades included cordwainers (medieval name for shoemakers):
"The Assize of a Cordwainer is that he make no manner of shoes nor boots but of good neats leather and that it be thoroughly tanned."

Northampton’s access to the raw materials necessary to shoemaking was guaranteed by the large cattle market held in the town. Its central location also enabled a wide distribution network to be established; as a result shoemaking developed into the town’s major industry. By 1642, there were enough shoemakers in Northampton to secure a very large order.

In that year, a group of 13 shoemakers, led by Thomas Pendleton, obtained a contact for 600 pairs of boots and 4,000 pairs of shoes to be used to equip the army going to Ireland. The existence of the order is known to us because the shoemakers had difficulty getting paid for their work and were still complaining about non-payment in 1651 – link to Legacies Legends Northampton article.

The 1841 Census lists 1,821 shoemakers in the town. At this time clues are evident, hinting the transformation taking place in the town’s shoe industry. Some shoemakers were beginning to be described as manufacturers, as opposed to shoemakers. These manufacturers would normally employ a large number of shoemakers, supplying materials and collecting the finished product from shoemakers, and then selling on to buyers.

As mechanisation and the factory system became accepted practise in fellow industries, Northampton’s shoemakers began to fear the onset of machinery. They perceived mechanisation as a threat to their craftsmanship and livelihood. The nature of the town’s shoemaking industry meant that a smooth transition from artisan’s workshop to employee’s factory was not on the cards.

Instalment 2 to be published 5th March.

Rubber soled shoes

2010-02-19T05:17:00.000-08:00

Could rubber soled footwear be the future for quality mens shoes? All the major factories in Northamptonshire are finding their rubber soled shoes are selling tremendously well. This is no doubt partly due to the quality of the soles used, they can last three times as long as leather soles. So long as a leather welt is used they still retain the look of all leather shoes. Sadly finding a shoe repairer who can do a quality repair is not always easy these days. So along with increased wear there is also the added benefit of greater weather proofing with rubber soles. Be sure to check that shoes you intend to buy have a full leather insole. Synthetic insoles are a false economy as your feet will just get hot and smelly, feet need to breathe.
Our website is unique in that you can select just rubber soled shoes. Have a look at www.bradshawandlloyd.com to view all the latest styles from:
Loake shoes
Sanders shoes
Sebago shoes
Trickers shoes
Bradshaw and Lloyd shoes