Barrow Hepburn & Gale

Barrow & Gale, founded in 1760 as Hepburn and Gale and after 1920 as Barrow Hepburn and Gale, is a British luxury leather goods manufacturers, founded in 1760, best known as the producer of the Despatch Boxes used by the Government of the United Kingdom. As well as the manufacturing of Despatch Boxes, it is also known for the making of Royal Maundy purses, for which it was granted a royal warrant in 1968.^[1][2][3]

Barrow, & Gale despatch boxes have become a symbol of the British democratic system and its constitutional monarchy, being used by successive sovereigns and prime ministers. As a company, Hepburn & Gale claim they have an unbroken chain of makers whose skills have been passed from one master craftsman to apprentice since 1760. Today they only supply to the British Sovereign, foreign Heads of State, governments, government officials and representatives and private clients.

The company operates from its original headquarers in Bermondsey .

Timeline

Foundation and Early History (1760-1901)

Barrow Hepburn & Gale’s was founded in 1760 under the name of Hepburn and Sons by John Hepburn, having moved to Bermondsey from Chesham and there opened a tannery. There are records of the Hepburn family working from Long Lane in Bermondsey throughout the 19th century, eventually coming work with the Gales in both Deptford and Bermondsey. Samuel Barrow, originally working as a tanner himself, from 1848 set up his own company Samuel Barrow and Brother, based in the Grange. Then in 1901 there was the merger of Hepburn and Gale with Ross and Co, another leather company from the 17th century, which possessed the rights to manufacture ministerial boxes for the government, and over time became a larger supplier to the British Army, for items such as saddles and bayonet scabbards, especially during WW1, but also in the Boer and Crimean Wars.^[4]

Expansion in the early 20th century

Through a series of mergers, Barrow Hepburn and Gale came to be “the largest leather concern in Bermondsey in the 20th century”,^[5] with Hepburn and Gale merging with Ross and Co in 1901. Ross and Co, another tanning company dating to the 18th century, possessed to rights manufacture ministerial boxes for the government, the famous Dispatch Boxes with which Barrow Hepburn and Gale would come to be associated. Then in 1920 Hepburn, Gale and Ross merged again with Samuel Barrow and Brother, by this time becoming a very successful company, making a broader range of leather goods and expanding its operations to encompass glue, gelatine and rubber production. A number of other mergers followed, such as to Blackman's Leather Goods Company, which supplied baby harnesses to HRH the Duchess of Kent and to HRH Princess Juliana of the Netherlands,^[4] resulted in an ever growing company. Eventually, “with the acquisition of Thomas Holmes and Son in 1935 it achieved the proud position of producing a twelfth of the total sole leather of the country”^[4]

Bermondsey Tanners

Barrow Hepburn and Gale’s roots were in Bermondsey, a historic leather district, known for its tanneries already in the 17th century. The necessity of a guild, the Comonalty of the Mistery of Tanners of St Mary Magdalen Bermondsey of Surrey which was given royalty charter by Queen Anne in 1703, attests to the history of tanning in Bermondsey. Barrow Hepburn and Gale’s first occupied three tanneries in Long Lane, that had been in existence since the middle of the 17th century, was purchased by John Hepburn. This site, known as the Grange, comprised two and a half acres by the time of the Topographical History of Surrey published in 1841 by Edward Brayley.^[5] In 1898, the Grange tannery site was burnt down, after which it was restored in its current state, now converted flats at Tanners Yard.

References

External links

• Company website