Luton’s Heritage — Hats off to Luton: a guide to the town’s hat industry The Luton Hat Trail www.travelluton.co.uk 2 Philip Wright, a member of the Felt Makers Livery since he was 21, has been running the family business, Walter Wright, hat manufacturer, for over 15 years. The company was formed in 1889 by Philip’s great-grandparents, Walter and Minnie-Susan Wright, in Albion Road, Luton. The Wright family have been involved in the making of quality ladies hats for over 300 years, making Philip one of the oldest ‘blood line’ hat manufacturers in the world. Inspired by his private customers and friends, Philip designs and makes hats for individuals, including HRH Princess Royal, film, theatre, television, uniform and department stores and boutiques worldwide. He takes his creations to a variety of different public exhibitions from Dubai to London. Whether the hat is for a special occasion, such as the races or a wedding, or more niche club and daywear, Philip endeavours to have a hat for everyone. See video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZcADJzQrfY Luton’s Heritage • Luton Hat Trail 3 Introduction Welcome to the Luton Hat Trail! In the 18th century the English hatting industry was predominantly centred on London, Luton, Denton and Stockport (near Manchester), and Atherstone (Warwickshire). Historically it consisted of two distinct crafts, the straw hat trade (women’s hats and bonnets) and the felt trade (caps and men’s hats). At the beginning of the 1800s the Napoleonic Wars blocked imports of straw plait and hats from the continent, so Luton’s businessmen and women set up factories, both large and small, to supply local and national markets with straw hats. As a result the town expanded significantly in size and population from the mid 1800s onwards. Between the mid 19th and mid 20th centuries the hatting industry so dominated the town that hat-making became synonymous with Luton. As demand for the straw hat fell after the First World War, felt hat production began to flourish in the town, and even though the industry declined in more recent decades, Luton is still considered to be at the centre of the country’s hat trade. A map covering both trails is included in the centre of this leaflet. The numbers shown on the map match those numbers referred to within the text. The Luton Hat Trail comprises two different tours of the town for you to choose from. Both are designed to cover the most intact parts of the remaining historic hatting districts of Luton, each with their own architecture and character that are linked together by the hat trade of the 19th and 20th centuries. Trail 1 — the Bute Street area — is about a half-mile walk lying south of the railway. It houses a concentration of hat factories and workshops, which were often large and sometimes of considerable architectural distinction. This trail lies within the Plaiters’ Lea conservation area. Trail 2 — the High Town / Old Bedford Road area — lies north of the railway and is roughly a mile long. It covers a more dispersed area and includes the domestic side of the industry (modest scale workshops attached to houses). Part of this trail includes an older part of Luton, the High Town Road conservation area. Both trails start and end at The Hat Factory in Bute Street, by the railway station, where refreshments are available. There are also several pubs and restaurants along the way. Most of the premises highlighted are not normally open to the public, however some provide opportunities for visits. This may be possible by contacting the owners directly. Hat Trail 1: Factory and Warehouse Architecture In the hat industry the terms ‘factory’ and ‘warehouse’ were virtually interchangeable and buildings often combined both uses. Although the sewing rooms in factories needed much light and the warehouses did not, there is no difference in architectural treatment of the building elevations. Both warehouses and factories took part in buying and selling hats and storing plait. The leasing of factories and the frequent moves within the industry further encouraged the construction of buildings serving a variety of uses. So warehouses and factories were not differentiated or specialised, and today they are readily converted to other uses. (Right: sewing room at Welch’s Hat Factory, Cheapside, Luton taken from ‘The Graphic’, 14 December 1878). Typically, warehouses and factories Anne’ style was favoured, with noticeable ‘Dutch’ influences. Such shared: buildings were in red brick and terracotta with stone dressings, • a basement for storage, with access and lighting from the street and had a pronounced central bay and pedimented gables. • steps up to the entrance Examples are nos. 32, 40 and 50 Guildford Street and 64 Bute • emphasis on the ground floor elevation, with large windows Street. fronting the showroom • Later, a ‘neo-classical’ style was adopted. The local firm of Franklin • and large areas of glazing to the upper floors (sewing rooms). and Deacon (architects of the old public library, later demolished) Separate rooms, often in detached buildings, were used for built some of the buildings in the 1910s and 1920s; these stiffening, steaming and blocking. This segregated the noisier and included nos. 30 and 37-39 Guildford Street and perhaps 57-61 smellier activities from the rest — and the men from the women! Guildford Street. Bleaching and dying were done by specialist firms on separate Later still, styles were plainer, as with The Hat Factory and the sites away from heavily populated areas. 1930s Vyse’s Factory, both in Bute Street. Whatever the style, the Many hat buildings were modest in scale and design. The more architecture was mostly in the facade and the side elevations were ambitious ‘emporia’ were usually in one of two main styles: often blank. The best of the earlier buildings have been listed but • At the turn of the century an eclectic ‘neo-Jacobean’ or ‘Queen so far the ‘new classical’ ones have not been given this protection. Luton’s Heritage • Luton Hat Trail 4 Trail 1 Trail 1 — Hat Factories in Luton THE 19TH CENTURY “As the train comes into Luton station you see bundles of plait from the bleachers hung outside all the houses like clothes on a In 1840 George Street was bustling with the plait market, and lined washing line. At the station you find yourself surrounded on all sides with hat warehouses. Behind it, except for a few buildings in Bute by straw. Women hurry to-and-fro with bundles of plait tied up in Street (named after a former Lord of the Manor who lived in Luton black calico squares as large as they can carry. The area along the Hoo), there was very little development and gardens and meadows railway and beside the pavement is filled with huge boxes of hats swept down to the River Lea. Barbers Lane, an old route, crossed the and packing cases. As you walk out of the station you can hear the river by a small footbridge and entered the field beyond known as whirr of hundreds of hand-driven sewing machines and along the Seven Acres. By the late 1840s Seven Acres had been laid out with street you meet many more people carrying straw—some in great streets and partly developed, however the main development of shapeless bundles as big as themselves which contain the home- the area followed the opening of the Dunstable-Luton-Welwyn made hats they are taking to the warehouse. In Bute Street there railway (later the Great Northern) in 1858, and the death of John are queues of drays each loaded with boxes, cases and crates up to Waller, a member of the eminent hat-making and plait-dealing 10ft high, while bringing up the rear is a miscellaneous assortment family, a year later. Waller’s death enabled the rapid development of boxes, some carried on men’s shoulders, others causing pairs of of the large gardens behind his George Street house: hence the small boys to stagger under the weight, while several are conveyed names John Street, Waller Street and Melson Street (named after by the humble wheelbarrow. At the station the boxes are removed one of the executors of his will); Cheapside, once the access to his from the drays and placed in sheds to catch the ‘van train’ which is gardens and blocked off by iron gates, could now be opened up the only one of its kind in the country and is specially designed for all the way to Guildford Street. By 1870, helped by cheap imports the hat trade. The boxes are returned on a special goods train on of plait from the Far East and by the invention of a sewing machine Sunday.” for plait, the hat industry was booming. The Plait Halls had just been opened in Waller Street and Cheapside in the developing area which was rapidly becoming the nucleus of the industry (see bottom right image on front cover: 1907 photo of the Plait Halls in THE 20TH CENTURY Cheapside, since demolished). Large factories clustered near railways Around 1900 the hat industry was at its zenith and dominated the (the Midland railway had been opened in 1867 for goods and 1868 life of the town. Enormous railway warehouses (later demolished to passengers) for the transport of goods, as orders were coming and replaced by students’ accommodation) stored boxes of hats prior from all over the world. From the 1870s the production of felt hats to despatch to London. Between the railway and George Street in Luton began to be added to that of straw hats.