Piano-making in Camden Town

One of the major industries of 19^th century Camden Town, piano-making started in the West End before moving, first to the traditional furniture-making district of Tottenham Court Road, and then gradually northwards into Camden Town. Soon there were dozens of factories, all working to meet the demand for what had become a symbol of domestic respectability in Victorian society. After all, a married couple’s second biggest purchase, after a bed, was a piano!

By the 1880s London had over 200 piano-making firms, three quarters of them north of the Thames. It was often said that every street in north London contained a piano works, and in many parts of Camden Town this was literally true. Bayham Place was the most notable piano-making enclave.



19th century trade directory

From a practical point of view, this part of London made an eminently suitable centre for the piano industry. The Regent’s Canal could be used to transport bulk timber to the factories and then the finished products away, either westwards via the canal network to the Midlands, or east to the docks and the rest of the world. Hence the proliferation of firms along the canal in Stoke Newington, Islington and, notably, Camden Town. The latter soon became the beating heart of London piano making in the period 1860–1930, at its centre the historic Mother Red Cap pub (now the World’s End), which functioned as a kind of informal labour exchange. The streets nearby were crowded with pianos or piano parts being trundled on hand-carts from one workshop to another.


Goad's fire insurance map of 1891

Collard & Collard factory in Oval Road

The oldest firm was Collard & Collard who patented a form of upright ‘square’ piano in 1811. The Goad Fire Insurance map shows that they had a concentration of factories at the end of Oval Road in the triangle bounded by the houses in Gloucester Crescent, Arlington Road and Jamestown Road. These housed the premises of different craftsmen and included a veneer store, timber stores, engineers’ shops, French polishing, fret-cutting and wood turning workshops, glue boiling, stringing shops, key loading – all specialist skills required to produce the finished instruments. At the heart of the operation was a (still) distinctive round factory with 22 bays and a bench under each window to give good light. There was also a central open well to allow pianos to be hoisted from floor to floor during manufacture - the lowest floor was used for drying, the next for upright pianos, the second floor for cleaning, the third for polishing the cases and those above for ‘belly’ manufacture and finishing off. The circular shape proved ideal, giving maximum floor space and light for the minimum number of bricks.

In addition to the ‘big guns’, there were other piano firms operating on a much smaller scale, many of them little more than small assembly shops in back kitchens, with parts bought in ready-made. One old piano maker said, “Sometimes, on a Friday afternoon, you could meet the boss of one of these small factories hawking a piano round the district in the hope of selling it for cash, twenty pounds or so, to pay the wages and the rent. Piano firms were in all sizes - whales and minnows.”

Watercolour by Thomas Shepherd: A Piano Manufactory c. 1831

Towards the turn of the century, however, the tide turned. By 1912, Germany had come to dominate the market, exporting sixty-five times more pianos and piano parts than Britain. There was a small revival here immediately after the First World War, though this was soon affected by the rise of the gramophone, cinema and radio. Collard & Collard left Camden Town in the 1920s and their round factory was occupied over the following years by garment firms, engineers and printers.

In 1993 the local telephone book listed a few piano shops in North London, piano removers and tuners - but no piano manufacturers at all. Until vacating their premises in Bayham Street in 2014, the sole survivor of the piano industry in Camden Town was Heckscher & Co, a firm which began making parts in Germany in 1869. They came to London in 1883 and rented, then bought their first warehouse from the Marquis of Camden (!). They still supply piano components but not on anything like the scale of their heyday.

The site of Collard and Collard’s piano factory in Oval Road is now Grade II listed, restored and has been reborn as an office complex known as the Rotunda.

 

References:

Londoners by Celina Fox (1987)

Website: http://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/ctown/p050/pages55-59.htm#_ftnref1

Website: http://www.kentishtowner.co.uk/2015/03/23/secret-history-kentish-towns-piano-factories/

Website: http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2014/jun/heckscher-piano-makers-say-goodbye-camden-town-after-130-years-warehouse-closes