Furniture-making in Shoreditch

Just as the Whitechapel area has always been synonymous with the rag trade, so for decades Shoreditch, Hoxton, and to some degree neighbouring Bethnal Green, were a centre for the production of furniture for sale across London and abroad.

The first furniture-makers in the East End appeared in trade directories of the 1790s. These tended to be lone artisans at a time when furniture-making was regarded as a craft rather than an industry. Their output was mostly bespoke furniture for London’s burgeoning middle class.

It was the emergence of a mass market for lower-priced, ready-made goods in the 19^th century (including cheaper veneered goods made possible by the introduction of powered machinery) that led to the meteoric rise of the East End furniture trade. With the building of 200 miles of new streets in London between 1839 and 1850 alone, the need for furniture was vast and ever-growing.  All classes of work were undertaken, from richly inlaid cabinets that might be sold for £100 at West End emporia, (such as Maples in Tottenham Court Road) to ‘gypsy’ tables that would be sold locally for 9 shillings a dozen.

Adam Dant's 1912 'Map of Industrious Shoreditch'

The industry centred on Curtain Road and Great Eastern Street. Wholesale showroom warehouses lined both these streets, while the actual workshops and factories where the items were made were sandwiched between tenement blocks, timber yards and public buildings in quieter side streets. It was said that “the real assembly line ran through the streets” with countless small businesses all working together. Different workshops contributed different stages, with the streets and pavements often used for temporary storage of finished and part-finished items.

Late 19th c. warehouses in Fanshaw St, Hoxton

Most of these businesses typically employed fewer than eight workers - only a few had more than 50 people. Rarely purpose-built, these smaller concerns tended to be domestic houses converted to commercial use, with a hoist being added to help move furniture between floors.

There are several reasons why this area became a centre for furniture-making and related trades. Firstly, the Regent’s Canal opened in 1820. This linked the Paddington arm of the Grand Junction Canal in the west to the Thames at Limehouse, passing just to the north of Shoreditch. It made importing raw timber and exporting finished products much easier. Then came the Eastern Counties Railway in 1840, followed thirty years later by major road improvements, such as the construction of Great Eastern Street.

The furniture industry also required a large pool of cheap labour, something the Victorian East End was well able to supply. The workforce was constantly replenished by high levels of immigration, including a large number of East European Jews from the 1880s. The factories and showrooms of the Jewish-owned B. Cohen & Sons dominated the southern end of Curtain Road from the 1880s right through to the 1940s.

C&R Light, Curtain Rd

Also built in the 1880s at 134-46 Curtain Road were the huge showrooms of C&R Light, one of the best-known wholesale dealers and manufacturers. The building is still a dominant presence even today.

 By the 1920s the East End furniture trade was still going strong. An article in a 1929 edition of The Woodworker describes the predominance of the industry in Shoreditch and the wider East End: “At any time during the week from the purlieus of Hoxton, from Old Ford, Bethnal Green, and the byways of Shoreditch could be seen vans and weird piles of furniture in unpolished or skeleton forms, … frames piled to a dizzy height on one barrow, two or three telescope dining-tables on another.”

Disused timber merchant's in Hoxton St, built c.1890

From the 1930s, however, firms began to move to the Lea Valley where land was cheap and there was room to expand. World War Two was a further nail in the industry’s coffin with many buildings in Shoreditch suffering catastrophic bomb damage. But a few companies did cling on into the late 1950s. As former Shoreditch resident Pat August recalls: “I remember a small firm of cabinet- makers where we lived in Garden Walk (Derby Houses). The men used to work on the pavement outside the factory and I remember the whining of the saw all day and all the sawdust outside.  The local kids used to stand and watch them (no 'elf and safety’ in those days!) and the men used to give us any spare wood to light the fire.”

Today the industry has all but disappeared, but the disused tall Victorian and Edwardian warehouses and commercial buildings left behind provide ideal studio and gallery space, or have found an entirely new use as cafes, shops and bars.

Former London College of Furniture, Pitfield St

And there is a further reminder of this area’s heritage. In recognition of Shoreditch’s importance as a centre for furniture production, in 1893 the LCC bought a set of early 19^th century almshouses in Pitfield Street to create the Shoreditch Technical Institute, offering courses in every branch of furniture and upholstery manufacture and design. The London College of Furniture, as it was later renamed, has now moved to Whitechapel and is part of London Metropolitan University.  

References:

The East End Nobody Knows Andrew Davies (1990)

Website: https://content.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/behind-the-veneer-south-shoreditch/behind-the-veneer.pdf/

Website: http://spitalfieldslife.com/2013/01/26/adam-dants-map-of-industrious-shoreditch/

Website: http://eastlondonhistory.com/2010/11/17/east-end-furniture-makers/

Website: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/1472/KIRKHAMFurniture-Making1982.pdf?sequence=1