Tag Archives: Sam Smith

FA Cup to US Vases: Lucien Emile Boullemier

This plate or plaque, made by the Maling company to commemorate the North East Coast Exhibition of 1929, depicts some of Tyneside’s most iconic bridges and industries. Unusually, it also bears the signature of the artist. Even more unusually the name is that of someone who, on the football field, scored one of the FA Cup’s biggest ever giantkilling goals. And he was a opera singer of some renown too. And, no, it’s not Colin Veitch!

Maling plaque with Boullemier artwork

But first the plaque. The North East Coast Exhibition, which took place in what is now known as Exhibition Park from May to October 1929, attracted over four million visitors. It succeeded beyond all expectations in its aim to be a showcase for NE industries. For the Maling company, in particular, it was a chance to finally shake off its old image as a mere producer of jam jars. And so the company produced a wide range of souvenirs to be sold at the event both on its own stand (shared with Townsend, a retail company) and for the famous Heaton tea company, Ringtons.

The plaque above is from a private collection but you can see one in the Laing Art Gallery. It was selected for inclusion in ‘A History of the North East in 100 Objects’, a project designed to show important examples of the ‘creativity and innovation which have changed the region and the world.’

Among the other souvenirs at the NE Coast Exhibition were a model of Newcastle’s castle keep and octagonal tea caddies depicting local bridges, cathedrals and castles.

Maling ware with Boullemier artwork

The artwork on all these items was by Lucien Emile Boullemier, who was living in High Heaton, having joined the company from the Soho Pottery in Staffordshire three years earlier.

Distinguished lineage

Lucien’s father, Antonin, had been born in Metz, France, in 1840, himself the son of a prominent decorator at the Sevres National Porcelain Factory. Antonin studied ceramic painting in Paris at various decorating establishments. He was also apprenticed as a figure painter at Sevres where he worked until in 1870 but in 1871 he and his wife, Leonie, fled to England during the short-lived Paris Commune. Antonin went to work at Mintons in Staffordshire, where his work received many royal commissions and was exhibited all over the world.

Antonin Lucien Boullemier (1840-1900) painted on ceramic by Lucien E Boullemier

By 1881, Antonin and Leonie, now living in Stoke, had six children: Blanche (aged 9), George (8), Leon (6), Lucien (4), Henrietta (3) and Alice (10 months). They were later joined by Antonin junior, Henri, Leonie and Jeanne. Another three children died very young.

Self portrait by Lucien Emile Boullemier

Like his father and grandfather before him, Lucien was destined to be a ceramic artist but first he had a general art education, which was to serve him well. In 1895, while a student at Stoke School of Art, he won £2 second prize in the Duchess of Sutherland’s Prize for Design for a ‘design in silk for dress purposes’. His painting of George Howson, owner of a sanitary ware company, now in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, dates from 1897.

Cup Hero

But art wasn’t Lucien’s only talent. Like his older brother Leon, who played in goal with some distinction, mainly for Lincoln City (for whom he played home and away against Newcastle United), Lucien was a talented footballer. He played seven games for Stoke and 153 for Burslem Port Vale, among them a famous cup tie.

In the first round of the 1898 FA Cup, Sheffield United, who were at the time five points clear at the top of England’s top division, were drawn at home to Burslem Port Vale of the Midland League. A comfortable victory for the champions elect was expected but an early goal and spirited display by Vale shocked the home fans and only a controversial penalty awarded by Durham referee, Mr Cooper, allowed the Sheffield side back in the game. For the last half hour, Vale’s defence, which included Lucien Boullemier, had its back to the wall but held firm.

On the day of the replay, a gale was blowing and, at kick off, the low winter sun dazzled the players and many of the 12,000 mainly home fans in the ground. Vale won the toss and sensibly elected to play the first half with the strong wind and sun behind them and when Sheffield United’s huge keeper William Foulke’s first goal kick was blown almost back into his own goal, United knew they were in for a torrid half. Only two minutes into the match, the underdogs went ahead and they were unlucky not to add to their tally.

The second half was bound to be a different story but such was the league leaders’ commitment to attack that a hoofed Vale clearance found 19 year old right half, artist Lucien Emile Boullemier, bearing down on goal with only Foulke to beat. The keeper raced forty yards out of his goal and body checked the oncoming Vale player preventing a certain goal. But mainly the Sheffield team continued to swarm forward and in the eightieth minute, with goalkeeper Foulke continuing to join the attack, they were rewarded with a scrappy equaliser. A groan was heard around the ground as the home fans’ dreams of a famous victory faded.

The winter gloom was starting to descend as the game headed into extra time and many of the supporters, having no choice but to leave to catch their buses, trams and trains home, sadly missed the great moment when, with Foulke once more stranded upfield, young Lucien Boullemier had his second chance of the game. This time, there was no reprieve for Sheffield United, as Boullemier netted the winning goal in one of the biggest cup upsets yet seen.

In fact over 120 years later, the match still appears on a website dedicated to the biggest Cup shocks of all time. Vale lost to Burnley in the next round but were rewarded by a place in an expanded Football League Division 2 the following season. Sheffield United went on to win Division 1 and the following year, with six of the players who had been humiliated by little Port Vale, they actually won the cup.

As for Lucien, in the 1901 census, he described himself as a self employed painter and sculptor but he went on to captain Port Vale until part way through the 1902-3 season, when, aged 25, he suddenly announced his retirement to concentrate on his art: the Eric Cantona of his day! The photograph below shows him during a brief comeback for Northampton Town.

Lucien Boullemier is back row, third from the left. Leon Boullemier is the goalkeeper in the middle of the back row.

Trenton Vases

A few months later, on 30 January 1903, Lucien set sail from Liverpool to New York aboard the ‘SS Ivernia’. His first destination was Washington DC, where he stayed with his sister in law. (In 1896, he had married Mary Emma Sandland, the dressmaker daughter of Staffordshire pottery owner, William Sandland.) Four months later, he was joined at the home he had found for the family in New Jersey, by his wife and two children, six year old Percy and four year old, Lucien George. The young English ceramic artist must have made an immediate impression or perhaps he had been hired because of his growing reputation because soon afterwards, not only had he found work, but he was responsible for painting four vases ‘considered by some to be the best and most important decorative porcelain pieces ever created in America’.

The Trenton Potteries Company was known for its production of bathroom fixtures, but when the invitation came to create something special for the 1904 Worlds Fair in St Louis, Trenton Potteries submitted four ornamental vases, each standing four feet seven inches tall. The four magnificent vases, all painted and signed by Lucien Emile Boullemier, announced to the 19.7 million people who attended and to the watching world that the American ceramics industry, and especially Trenton, had arrived and were among the best anywhere at making fine porcelain (albeit with the considerable input of a lad from Stoke better known at home for his prowess on the football field). The vases can now be seen in New Jersey State Museum, Newark Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Trenton Museum. (But beware the last link which attributes its vase to Antonin, Lucien’s father, who had died before the vase was made).

Maling

Having enhanced his reputation in America, Lucien returned to England on 23 November 1904 and he spent most of the next 20 years working in Staffordshire first for Minton’s, the firm which had employed his father, and then the SoHo Pottery in Cobridge. He returned to football briefly to play alongside his brother at Northampton Town and made one final nostalgic appearance for his beloved Port Vale. But Lucien had lots of other interests too, both sporting and artistic. He swam for Staffordshire and captained their water polo team as well as playing cricket for Trentham. He also had many poems published and appeared in operas at the Theatre Royal, Hanley and elsewhere.

Lucien Boullemier as Squire Weston in ‘Tom Jones’, appropriately holding a ceramic jug.

But then in 1926, aged 49, Lucien made another bold move. He joined C T Maling and Sons ‘to take charge of the decorations department at the Ford Potteries, Newcastle’. The Malings believed they had pulled off something of a coup by enticing Boullemier away from the Staffordshire heart of the UK porcelain industry and when, as we have seen, the commercial opportunities occasioned by the North East Coast Exhibition presented themselves three years later, how lucky were they to be able to turn to the man who had already dazzled the world at an even larger event in St Louis nearly a quarter of a century earlier.

Boullemier’s influence over the next decade was huge. He updated many of the firm’s designs and is said to have introduced a new glamour into its products by printing in gold and using rich, lustrous glazes. You can see the plaque below in a cabinet in the Laing Art Gallery cafeteria, along with other fine examples dating from Boullemier’s time at Maling. It was purchased in 1989 with grant aid from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Boullemierlaingdragonthumbnail_IMG_3269res

Maling ‘Oriental’ Dragon plaque, c 1929

The Boullemier designed plaques below are on display in the reception are at Hoults Yard, the former Maling Ford B works.

Boullemier plaques, Hoults Yard

Among the many other Maling products designed and executed by Lucien Emile Boullemier were large dinner services commisioned by both Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Victoria, and Sam Smith of Ringtons.

Heaton

During his time in Newcastle, Lucien lived first in lodgings with John and Lily Williams at 54 Simonside Terrace and then moved to a newly built family house at 36 Denewell Avenue in High Heaton. In Newcastle, Boullemier was remembered by co-workers as a ’character’ and ‘nice chap’. He was a ‘large, flamboyant and occasionally eccentric man who often dressed in a trilby and sang operatic arias while he worked.’

Lucien Emile Boullemier

Lucien Boullemier eventually left Newcastle in 1936 to return to the Potteries to work for the New Hall Pottery Company, where he produced a range called ‘Boumier Ware’, each piece of which carried his facsimile signature. He died in the other Newcastle (under Lyme) on 9 January 1949, aged 72.

Lucien Emile’s son, Lucien George, was also a talented artist and sportsman. He won an art scholarship to Italy but was unable to take it up because of WW1. He joined his father at Malings in 1933 (The pair were known as Old Bull and Young Bull) and succeeded his father as art director, working for Maling until, in 1963, the factory finally closed after 200 years.

Lucien G Boullemier, extreme right, at work at Maling.

In 1939, Lucien G and his wife Edith were living at 18 Martello Gardens in Cochrane Park. Their son, Tony, attended Cragside School and RGS before training as a journalist on the ‘Journal’, before joining the ‘Daily Express’ on Fleet Street. In 1975, he and his wife founded their own newspaper, the ‘Northants Post’. He is now a writer living in Northamptonshire.

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews and Chris Jackson of Heaton History Group. Thank you to Tony Boullemier for additional information on and for photographs of the Boullemier family.

Sources

American Porcelain 1770-1920 / Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen; Metropolitan Museum Ney York, 1989

British Newspaper Archive

Maling: a Tyneside pottery; 2nd ed; Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1985

Maling: the Trademark of Excellence / Steven Moore and Catherine Ross; 3rd ed; Tyne and Wear Museums, 1997

https://www.thegiantkillers.co.uk/1898burslemportvale.htm

Other online sources including Ancestry and Wikipedia

Can You Help?

If you know any more about Lucien Emile and Lucien George Boullemier, especially their time at Malings and in Heaton, or have photographs you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Swimming for Heaton

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Who remembers Heaton Pool aka Chilli Road Baths?

Heaton Pool, 1995 (Thank you to Newcastle Libraries)

It was situated on Biddlestone Road, where the doctors’ surgery is now. Heaton History Group member, Arthur Andrews, has fond memories of the pool and of Heaton Amateur Swimming Club (ASC), which was based there. Arthur takes up the story:

‘After learning to swim at a very cold open air pool at Hawkey’s Lane in North Shields, it was suggested by our swimming teacher, Mrs Richardson, that my brother Michael, sister Moira and I give competitive swimming a try. So every Thursday evening. we all began to catch the Number 11 yellow ‘custard’ bus to Heaton ASC at Chilli Road Baths. Moira, although a competent swimmer, eventually decided that being competitive was not for her. But Michael and I stuck with it.

Heaton Amateur Swimming Club membership cards

Bleached blondes

Dave Smith was our coach and taskmaster. His bark was worse than his bite, although it did not seem like it at the time. Training was hard work (as it should be!). No one had swimming goggles in those days so, after a long session, the chlorine really stung our eyes. On dark evenings the street lights seemed to have blurred haloes of light around them. Any contact with cigarette smoke on the bus made our eyes water. Those of us with fair hair ended up ‘bleached blondes’. The highlight of club night was tucking into fish and chips from Wallace’s on the corner of Benton Road and the Coast Road on the way home.

The Andrews brothers and their trophies (‘mainly Mike’s!’), 1967

There were many swimming galas throughout Northumberland and Durham and not many people had cars to transport the swimmers. Dave Smith, our coach, ferried us round in a small, green Standard 8 and a handful of parents helped too.

Incidentally, the trophy that every club wanted to win was the Samuel Smith Perpetual Memorial Trophy, donated after the death in 1949 of Sam Smith Senior, founder of Ringtons in Heaton. The Smith family were staunch supporters of swimming locally: there was also a trophy in memory of his son Sam Smith Junior, who had tragically died in a plane crash and Malcolm Smith was Heaton ASC president.

Samuel Smith Perpetual Memorial Trophy (Copyright: John Moreels, Ward Philipson Collection)

National Championships

In 1966 and 1967, Michael and I, and a few others from Heaton, achieved the qualifying times to enter the National Swimming Championships at Derby Street (salt water baths) in Blackpool. This pool was 55 yards long, 30 yards longer than Heaton Baths. The length was daunting as was the competition! In my 110 yard freestyle heat I found myself on the starting block between English Champion, Bobby Lord, and international, A A Jarvis. Once the starting gun was fired I followed in their wake, finishing over six seconds behind them. It was all to get competition experience rather than have any chance of winning. Staying in a Blackpool B&B with four in a room was quite an experience as well.

Arthur with 100 yards Freestyle trophy, 1964 Arthur & Colin Feltoe competing in Germany, 1966

Chillier than Chilli Road

I once came in second in the Durham Long Course Championship, which was known as the Durham Mile. In 1967, Michael and I, along with several others from Heaton ASC, took part in this event on Elvet waterside along with approximately 90 other foolhardy souls. We changed in Durham City Baths across the road.There were no wetsuits, though the water temperature was a bracing 14 to16 degrees. We gingerly descended the steep, slippery riverbank and lined up in two rows across the river, our feet sinking into the squelchy, muddy riverbed. It seemed to take an age to for the starting pistol to be fired.

The course was up to the old bandstand and back with no goggles (we would not have been able to see anything any way!) Apart from the cold water and a mass of flailing arms and legs we had to contend with swimming through floating twigs, teasel and other debris hitting our bodies. Swimming too close to the riverbank meant scooping up handfuls of mud, which would slow you down as well as being unpleasant. The turn at the rope across the river near the bandstand was hazardous as the leading group just swam straight into the stragglers, so a black eye or other bruising was a distinct possibility. The hot shower and baths were most welcome after between thirty and sixty minutes in the Wear.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the event ceased in the early 1970s as the Wear was deemed too polluted.

Trophies

In the early 1970s a proposal was made to replace some of Heaton ASC’s older swimming club cups and plaques. Members and parents were asked if any would be willing to donate new trophies and good friends, Bill Allan of Plessey Terrace and Richard Jacobs of Jesmond and myself clubbed together to purchase a cup. We called it the Andrews, Allan and Jacobs Cup to be presented to the winner of the Senior Mens 200 yards Freestyle event. The first time it was competed for, although not at my peak, I entered the event to see if I could win my own trophy. I believe I was ahead for the first six lengths, but in the final two, I was overtaken by several fitter swimmers. I can’t remember who won the event or who presented the trophy. It may only have been swum for once.

Demise

Around this time it was proposed that a City of Newcastle Swimming Club should be set up to comprise the best swimmers from the other clubs in the city. The idea was that, rather than the local clubs only occasionally winning a national event, a centralised club would make a name for itself winning events and producing international swimmers. It would have a full time professional coach to improve standards. The new club was based at Northumberland Road Baths in town. So, in 1973, Heaton ASC ceased to exist. (But what happened to Heaton’s historic club trophies? I’d love to know.)

City of Newcastle Swimming Club’s first annual swimming gala took place on Saturday 15 December 1973. ‘Incorporating Heaton ASC’ is written in parentheses after the name of the new club. This suggests that the other city clubs had not yet relinquished their identities. Certainly Northumberland ASC, with its long tradition and history, continued for many years.

Chilli Road

There were many good times at Heaton ASC and Chilli Road Pool was always popular with competitive swimmers, as it was thought to be a fast pool. (Although the cockroaches in the changing rooms in the 60s seemed to spook a few!)

The pool itself had opened in April 1925, designed by prominent London architect, Alfred William Stephens Cross (1858-1932), who specialised in the design of public baths and wrote a book on the subject. Cross was vice president of RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) and president of the Incorporated Association of Architects and Surveyors. Heaton Pool must have been one of his final designs.

It cost £42,000. Originally there were ‘slipper baths’ for individual bathing; they were practically covered and shaped like a – yes, you guessed! Remember, few people would have had a bath at home in those days. The communal swimming pool measured 75 feet by 35 feet and contained 65,000 gallons of water. Changing cubicles around the edge of the pool were removed in the 1960s.

The pool remained open to the end of the millennium. Generations of Heaton children learnt to swim there and many locals still remember the family sessions with inflatable toys.

Heaton Pool, 1990

But in 2000, a ‘modern leisure facility’, East End Pool, was opened in Byker by Sir Bobby Robson, and that spelled the end for Chilli Road. Between 1990 and 2000, my sister Moira was a duty manager and adult swimming teacher there, continuing the family association until the very end.’

Arthur, Brenda Falcus and Dave Smith in token effort to Save Our Swimming pool

Can you help?

If you know more about Heaton Pool or Heaton ASC or have memories or photographs to share, please either post a message direct to this website, by clicking on the link immediately below this article title, or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

We are always pleased to receive information, memories and photos relevant to Heaton’s history.

Acknowledgements

Written and researched by Arthur Andrews, with additional research by Chris Jackson.

Sources

Heaton: from farms to foundries / Alan Morgan; Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2012

Public baths and wash houses: a treatise on their planning, design, arrangement and fitting: having special regard to the acts arranging for their provision: with chapters on Turkish, Russian and other special baths, public laundries, engineering, heating, water supply etc / W S Cross; Batsford, 1906

White Teeth to Blue Bottle: the Domestos story

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If you’re a stickler for cleanliness (or a local historian), you might well know that Domestos originated in Newcastle. You might even remember the factory in the Ouseburn, where it was bottled until the then owners, Lever Brothers, moved production to Warrington in 1973. But perhaps you don’t know that its story began in a Heaton garden shed.

Origins

Wilfred (sometimes spelt Wilfrid) Augustine Handley was actually born in Essex in 1901 but his parents were both from co Durham and his older sister, Catherine, had been born in Heaton in 1893. By the time his younger sister, Doris Ruby, came along in 1905, the family (father George William, an insurance agent, mother, Dorothy Ann Elizabeth Jane, and older siblings, Robert William, Ruth Primrose , George Ingram Pope and Catherine Violet Beatrice, as well as young Wilfred) had returned to the north east. By 1911, they were living in Gateshead. Father, George, was no longer in insurance. He now worked as a ship’s blacksmith.

Dentistry

It’s something of a surprise then to move forward a decade or so and find trade directories listing both Wilfred and his father as dentists. This was around the time (1922) when the right to call yourself a dentist became regulated for the first time in the UK. Certainly there are sources which give Wilfred’s profession as ‘dental mechanic’ rather than ‘dentist‘. At the moment we can’t be sure but Wilfred’s younger brother, Cecil, followed in their footsteps and, like them, practised from the family home at 309 Chillingham Road for many years.

An article in the Evening Chronicle on 1 November 1945 states that ‘the Joint War Committee of Dental Associations announces that Captain C Handley, having been released from service of the Army Dental Corps is resuming practice at 309 Chillingham Road, Heaton on 5 November 1945’.

Directories list him as a graduate of Kings College University of Durham School of Dental Sciences, which was based in Newcastle. Some local people may remember him: his practice was at the same address on Chillingham Road until the late 1960s. He died at Heddon on the Wall in 1989.

Electoral registers show that Wilfred himself resided at 309 Chillingham Road from at least 1922 to 1934 (with the exception of 1932, when they show him living with his sister Catherine and her husband in nearby Portland Road, then part of Heaton ward). In 1935, he was at 152 Simonside Terrace.

Eau de Heaton

But it was while living at 309 Chillingham Road that the entrepreneurial Wilfred had his big idea. According to Unilever, which still produces it, Wilfred was a 25 year old dental mechanic when he started to dilute and bottle sodium hypochlorite, a waste product bought from the chemical works, ICI Billingham, in the family’s garden shed. We can only guess that originally he was using the compound to whiten dentures (or even teeth?) but saw its wider potential.

In fact, bleach had been around since the eighteenth century when Claude Louis Berthollet produced potassium hypochlorite in his laboratory on the Quai de Javel in Paris. Hence it became known as ‘Eau de Javel‘. A hundred or so years later, in the late nineteenth century, an E S Smith patented the chloralkali process of producing sodium hypochlorite, which then started to be sold as a bleach under a number of brand names.

So Wilfred didn’t invent bleach but what he seems to have got right from the beginning was the marketing and distribution of his product. He set up the Hygiene Disinfectant Company and, according to Unilever, in 1929, chose the brand name ‘Domestos’, from the Latin ‘domus’ meaning house and the Greek ‘osteon’ meaning bone, suggesting ‘backbone of the home’.

The Handley family tells it a little differently: Wilfred asked his mother what his product should be called. When she enquired what it was for and he replied, ‘Domestic use,‘ the name ‘Domestos’ suggested itself.

Home delivery

At first, Domestos was marketed to local housewives and sold in large brown earthenware jars.

Domestos jar (Copyright: William Morris)

Perhaps inspired by the success of Ringtons Tea, established in Heaton in 1907, Handley set up a system of home delivery. (Interestingly, the 1939 Register shows Robert E Sturdy, Sam Smith’s trusted sales manager at Ringtons, who we have written about previously, living next door to Cecil in the Handley family home on Chillingham Road). The jars were refilled by door to door salesmen pushing hand carts or riding bicycle carts. The photograph below was supplied by descendants but we don’t know whether it’s Wilfred himself in the picture. It’s certainly a very early picture of door to door Domestos sales, when the Hygiene Disinfectant Company would have been very small.

Expansion

Sales were buoyant enough for production to move to a small factory on the Quayside in 1932 and to expand into a wide range of polishes, disinfectants, shampoos and detergents. By 1933, goods were being shipped south to Hull by sea and, within two years, supply depots had opened in both Hull and Middlesbrough.

In 1936, Wilfred married Ivy Isabella Cissie Halliday, the daughter of a Gateshead publican, who was herself born in Walker. She was a typist with the Post Office in Newcastle. The same year the company was renamed ‘Domestos’ after its original and most successful line. Records show the subscribers or directors as both Wilfred and Ivy.

In 1938, the company acquired larger premises, the College Works, a former toffee factory on Albion Row, Byker. By now, Domestos was sold in brown glass bottles with specially designed caps that allowed gas to escape. The cost of a bottle in 1938 was 6d with a 1d returnable deposit on the bottle.

After the war, the company was unable to acquire enough delivery vehicles so, again like Ringtons before them, it bought the St Ann’s Works at Heaton Junction and set up its own coach building division. This was soon renamed Modern Coachcraft Limited and by 1965 had a van sales force of over 150 salesmen.

An advertisement from 1951 (Copyright: John Moreels, Photo Memories Organisation)

The bleach wasn’t only promoted as a cleaning agent and to ‘sweeten’ drains. It was also used as a cure for sore feet and, during the war, a treatment for burns. By 1952 there was national distribution with offices in London, Manchester, Cardiff, York and Glasgow and a national research laboratory.

Stergene (launched in 1948 and specially designed for washing woollens) and Sqezy (launched in 1957, the first washing up liquid to come in a squeezable plastic bottle) were other well known products developed by Handley and his staff. But there were specialist brands too – a variant of Stergene, called Hytox was used in hospitals and garages. And it was now that the slogan ‘Domestos kills all known germs’ was first coined.

A window display from 1950. (Copyright: John Moreels, Photo Memories organisation)

Philanthropist

In 1961, Wilfred sold the brand to Lever Brothers Ltd. The 33 years of success and eventual sale of the company meant that Wilfred found himself a wealthy man. In 1963, he established a charitable foundation, the W A Handley Charity Trust, with a large donation. The charity is still in existence today and gives money to good causes throughout the North East and Cumbria. The charity says that it tries to follow the wishes of its founder and support those who are disadvantaged, young, elderly or disabled; maritime and service causes; education, training and employment; communities; historic and religious buildings, the environment, music and the arts.

In the financial year 2015-16, the 100 plus beneficiaries included: Percy Hedley Association, St Oswald’s Hospice, the Lit and Phil, Northern Sinfonia, Shelter, Northumberland Wildlife Trust, Bede’s World and Newcastle Cathedral. Whatever your interests, if you live in the north east, you have good reason to be grateful to Wilfred Handley.

After the sale

After the sale to Lever Brothers (now Unilever), Newcastle at first continued to be the centre of production. There were by now 800 workers on the College Works site and a £100,000 four storey office building was commissioned. Nevertheless a number of production lines, though not those of Domestos itself, were soon moved to Port Sunlight and Warrington.

In the 1970s, the bleach itself went from strength to strength (so to speak). It became thicker, the familiar blue plastic bottle was introduced and perfume was added for the first time. But in 1973, production was moved from Newcastle to Warrington ending Domestos’s long association with Newcastle. This must have greatly saddened Wilfred, who died in Low Fell on 8 May 1975.

Domestos Factory, Albion Row in the 1970s (Thank you to Ouseburn Trust for permission to use)

However, the product first developed in a Heaton garden shed by the young dental mechanic, Wilfred Handley, lives on. It is now sold in 35 countries right across the world. Think about that, as well as the many local good causes it has supported, while you’re whitening your dentures!

Acknowledgements

This article was researched and written by Chris Jackson, Heaton History Group.

Thank you to Jacob Corbin, Archivist and Records Manager, Unilever; Arthur Andrews, Michael Byrne and Allen Mulliss, Heaton History Group; John Moreels, Photo Memories Organisation; Michael Patten and William Morris, descendants of Wilfred Handley; Lesley Turner, Ouseburn Trust for their help. It’s much appreciated.

Sources

‘The Development of Domestos: a product of the Ouseburn valley’ / Michael Byrne in ‘Tyne and Tweed’ no 58, 2004 (Association of Northumberland Local History Societies)

Can you help?

If you know more about Wilfred Handley and the early history of Domestos or anybody mentioned in this article or if you have any photos you are willing to share, please get in touch, either by clicking on the link immediately below this article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

And if you have any memories or photos of work in the Domestos factory in Ouseburn please contact Lesley Turner at the Ouseburn Trust on 0191 261 6596 or by email at lesley.turner@ouseburntrust.org.uk

We are always interested to receive information, memories and photos relevant to Heaton’s history.

Heaton fliers: the Smith family and Newcastle Aero Club

Ringtons’ Story

S in Ringtons, Tea in Heaton

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The imposing white brick Ringtons building on Algernon Road bears the date ‘1924’, indicating that the famous tea company has Heaton connections going back at least 90 years.

Simon Smith, son of Sam, and staff outside Algernon Road HQ, 1932

Ringtons staff outside the company’s Algernon Road HQ, 1932

In fact the story starts much earlier than that.

Samuel Smith was born on 22 June 1872 in Leeds and christened on 22 December of that year along with his older brother, George. His parents were both local. William, his father, earned his living as a fettler, someone who cleaned the machinery in a woollen mill.

According to Sam’s great granddaughter, Fiona Harrison, young Sam started work, aged eight, as a ‘butcher’s boy’ on Friday nights and Saturdays. Aged ten, he joined the staff of one of the country’s biggest tea-dealers, as a ‘half-timer’. He gradually worked his way up and was sent to various of the firm’s offices across Yorkshire to learn all aspects of the business.

By the time he married Ada Emmerson, daughter of a Leeds milk dealer, at the age of 25, he was a travelling salesman for the company and was based in Sheffield. The couple’s two oldest children, John and Douglas, were born in Sheffield but the next two, Elizabeth and Vera, started life in Bradford and by time the youngest, Samuel and Harriet, came along, the family were back in Leeds but preparing for a new life in Newcastle.

We are extremely lucky in that, not only did Sam keep letters, diaries, notes, photographs and mementos, but that his family have treasured them and Fiona has painstakingly combed through the family archive to help us piece together the story of the birth of Ringtons and its relevance to our ‘Heaton’s Avenues in Wartime’ Heritage Lottery Fund project.

The records show that Sam had become increasingly disillusioned with the firm he worked for in Leeds. He felt its staff weren’t treated well and he believed that he could both run a successful company and live true to his values. His friend and colleague, Irishman William ‘Will’ Titterington, was of the same mind and they decided to set up in business together under the name of ‘Ringtons’, which combined the last part of Will’s surname with the first letter of Sam’s.

Sam Smith, founder of Ringtons

Tea to Newcastle

As was common at the time, there was a clause in their contracts stipulating that if they left their current employer, they couldn’t set up within 50 miles of its Leeds headquarters. The two men weighed up their options and were initially tempted by Scarborough, but in the end they couldn’t ignore the excellent opportunities offered by industrial Tyneside, where, although there were already a number of tea dealers including Brooke Bond and Pumphrey’s, none of them delivered door to door, which Sam and Will planned to make their unique selling point, one which has stood the company in good stead right up to the present day.

Fiona has found a letter from William Titterington to Sam Smith, dated 17 July 1907, and written from 2 Fourth Avenue, Heaton, where William is lodging in what is clearly a tiny room that the two men planned to share:

‘I have arrived at the combined room… This bed will only hold me, and I am afraid by the look of it, my feet will be hanging over the foot of it.’

On the other hand:

‘I am on the spot to assist at the shop and see that the workmen are getting on with the cleaning. This house is at the other end of the same terrace as the shop.’

Extract from letter from Will Titterington, Fourth Avenue, Heaton to Sam Smith 1917

So it was in Heaton’s Avenues in 1907 that Ringtons was born. By 1908, the partners had two vans and four assistants and they were blending twice as much tea as a year earlier.

The first mention of the firm in the trade directories is in 1909-10 (which was probably surveyed in 1907-8). Ringtons was based at number 23 Third Avenue with Sam Smith, manager, living at 25. By 1911, the Smiths had moved to 129 Warton Terrace. Will Titterington and his wife Mary were living at 109 Tynemouth Road with their sons, William jnr and Francis, aged six and four.

By 1910 Sam Smith had bought Will Titterington’s share of the company and the firm itself had moved to more spacious premises on an abandoned rifle range at 392 Shields Road (where the Byker retail park is now).

Ringtons, Shields Rd c1912 with extension to the 1910 building in the first picture

Here, their neighbours included a coach builder, cart proprietor, horse keeper and horse shoer, all vital to the Ringtons’ enterprise. Sam had worked hard to make the business a success and it had gone from strength to strength. By this time, there were 11 vans and 11 assistants.

Struggle for survival

But then World War One broke out. It changed everything, as Sam recalled later:

‘Of my staff of 17, some of whom were married, 15 were called to the colours and I promised to do certain things for them so their families should not suffer too much while they were fighting. Of course, I agreed to keep their jobs open for them.’

What Sam hadn’t reckoned with were the severe food shortages and the resulting rationing and restrictions. There was a sugar shortage so people were only allowed to buy it where they bought their tea. Ringtons didn’t sell sugar and couldn’t get hold of it, so business plummeted.

To compensate, the firm started to sell any foodstuff it could lay its hands on: tinned and evaporated milk, dried eggs, canned meat and fish, saccharine, pickles etc. However, often as soon as Sam had bought a consignment, the price of the commodity would be fixed by government at less than he’d paid for it.

‘ Somehow I managed to keep my promises to my soldier staff’ remembered Sam. ‘And somehow managed to relieve a little the distress of the widows of the three who never came back. But it was a fight to be able to pay my own rent and the wolf came nearer and nearer my door’.

At the end of the war, the 12 surviving members of staff returned, ‘three of them wearing the Military Medal’ and, as promised, Sam took them back although the outlook for the company seemed bleak. But gradually, once people and retailers were free to buy and sell what and where they liked, customers returned.

When the ex-servicemen received their gratuities, they clubbed together to buy Sam a watch, which from then on he always wore. It was inscribed: ‘Presented to Mr Samuel Smith, as a mark of gratitude and esteem, from the staff of Ringtons Ltd, on their return from military service. December 1920′

Loyal servant

One of the returning servicemen was Robert Ernest Sturdy, who, in 1911 was living with his wife, Minnie, and their three year old son, Norman Leslie at 57 Spencer Street, Heaton. Robert described himself as a ‘superintendent, tea trade’ . By 1916, the couple had two more very young children, May and Ernest. Robert volunteered to join the army, aged 32, in December 1915, just before conscription was introduced early in 1916. He described himself as a ‘manager (drivers)’ .

On enlistment it was noted that Robert’s heart ‘seemed weak’. His letter of enlistment stated that he was invited to join the Army Service Corps(Mechanical Transport), ‘provided he has not attained the age of 46 and is found medically fit for Service‘ Despite his heart condition, Ernest was accepted and he served on the home front for just over a month before being sent to France in October 1916.

Throughout 1918, he was in and out of military hospitals with conditions variously described as ‘mild debility’, ‘TB‘ and ‘Bronchial catarrh’ before being transferred back to the UK in October 1919, at which time he signed a disclaimer to the effect that he wasn’t suffering from any disability which was due to military service.

Robert returned to Ringtons where, as Sam Smith had promised, his old job was waiting for him. He was still there in the position of sales manager in 1934 by which time he was 50 years old. On completion of 25 years service, he was presented with tea and coffee services. Robert died in 1956, aged 73. By this time his son, Norman, was himself described as a tea dealer, presumably (though we can’t be sure) also with Ringtons. Robert’s younger son, Ernest ,was sadly ‘lost at sea’ during WW2.

The Somme

In total there were 14 people in Heaton in 1911 whose occupation, as recorded in the census, included the word ‘tea’. One was Sam Smith, of course, by now living at 129 Warton Terrace, with Ada and their six children. We can’t be sure which of the others worked at Ringtons, as employer names aren’t usually recorded, but Robert Clapperton Mair, aged 15, who lived with his parents, two brothers and a sister, at 13 Charles Street, described himself as a ‘tea merchant’s assistant’. He joined the 10th battalion Northumberland Fusiliers and was posted to France. Robert was one of those who didn’t return, having been killed in action on the Somme on 25 September 1916, aged 20. His name is recorded on the Thiepval Memorial and also on that of Heaton United Methodist Church on Heaton Road.

Bravery award

Bothers Patrick and Thomas Sullivan were both ‘van salesmen (tea)‘. The family had moved from Dundee while the boys and their sister, Lizzie, were young and the family lived at 16 Fourth Avenue, just a few doors down from Will Titterington’s lodgings in 1907. When war broke out their father, Patrick, a tram conductor, was active in recruiting volunteers for the ‘Pals‘ regiments and we know that Tom enlisted very early on, in September 1914, at the age of 22.

Two years later, by now a sergeant, he was awarded the Military Medal and a Card of Honour for conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty. A full report of his actions appeared in the Newcastle Journal, reproduced below. (Despite what it says in the article, the family appears to have lived on Fourth Avenue, rather than Sixth, throughout the war).

Newcastle Journal 18 November 1916

So Tom was one of the three recipients of the Military Medal who returned to Ringtons after 1918 and was remembered by Sam Smith almost twenty years later. This was confirmed for us by Tom’s great great niece, Helen Wells, who told us:

‘My mam remembers talk of Uncle Tommy. We knew he’d been awarded the Military Medal but we didn’t know why. Tommy worked for Ringtons tea. He moved to Thornaby near Stockton to work for Ringtons there. He died in the 1940s and had no children. Patrick was exempt from military service because he was colour-blind’.

Post-war

A hundred years later, the personal stories give us a tiny insight into the suffering of Heaton and its people during World War One. But within just a few years, the firm, its staff and customers showed their resilience. Ringtons’ business picked up to such an extent that in 1924 a magnificent, modern building was commissioned on Algernon Road.

Ringtons, Algernon Road c1930

Work began in 1926 and it was finished in 1928. It still stands, of course, and is much loved, although the firm has since moved again. Not far though. Ringtons’, first managed from a cramped single bedroom on Fourth Avenue, is still very much associated with Heaton. Its headquarters remain on Algernon Road, next door to its impressive 1920s HQ.

Heaton Avenues in Wartime

This article was researched and written by Chris Jackson, with considerable help from Fiona Harrison, for Heaton History Group’s ‘Heaton Avenues in Wartime’ project, which has been funded by Heritage Lottery Fund. An exhibition, ‘’Tea in Heaton’, will be on display at the Chillingham pub from October to December 2015.

Find out more

This article and the exhibition at the Chilli concentrates on the early days in the Avenues and the impact of World War One but it’s just one chapter of the Ringtons’ story. To find out more, pay a visit to Ringtons’ museum in their Algernon Road headquarters and look out for a talk by Fiona in our 2016-17 programme.

Can you help?

if you have worked at Ringtons, know more about any of the people mentioned in the article and/or have memories or photos to share, please either leave a comment on this website (by clicking on the link immediately below this article’s title) or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org