A small workshop.
A sheet of copper.
Three generations.
Our Story.
We began with fire, and copper, and time.
We have — more or less — been at it ever since.
Nothing about it has needed replacing.
opens its doors.
Our founder was twenty-nine, newly returned from an apprenticeship at a copper mill, and freshly certain that his village needed a coppersmith. The village agreed.
He bought the brick-and-oak shed at the edge of the family farm from his own father, on a promise to pay back in kettles. The early years were kettles, cauldrons, and warming pans — whatever the copper asked for. And a warming pan for the vicar’s wife.
Nothing left the workshop that hadn’t been raised by his own hands. It is a rule that has never changed.
is raised.
A bishop’s wife walked into the foundry one August morning and asked whether the founder’s son could make her a copper bath. He said yes before he had quite worked out how.
What arrived at the palace the following spring became the first Kensington — hand-raised from six sheets of copper, seamed by hand, hammered to a soft warm patina. The bishop wrote a thank-you note. His wife wrote a longer one.
Over the next twenty years, the workshop added Windsor, then Lancaster. The bell orders slowed; the baths never did. By 1998, the workshop was making forty baths a year, all still by hand, all still to order.
“We do not know how to make a bath quickly.
We know how to make a bath only once.”
The last thing before the maker signs.
the ledger.
The third generation arrived on a wet Tuesday in March, hung his coat on the hook where his grandfather’s coat had hung for fifty years, and opened the ledger to a fresh page.
He added Oxford — a hammered soaking bath — that same year. Stratford, with its brass claw feet, followed in 2003. The finishes grew: antique copper, polished nickel, brushed brass, white enamel, a charcoal that ages to graphite.
What has not changed is everything else. The same forge. The same anvil (older than the workshop). The same ledger — on page one hundred and fifty-two, now — recording every bath by date, metal, maker, and client. Every piece is still made only when it is ordered. Every seam is still hand-brazed.
The Ledger.
The tradition of the second opinion.
one workshop.
The oak door still swings on its original hinges. The forge is still lit at five-forty every morning. The ledger still opens to whatever fresh page needs opening — and forty-two craftsmen begin the day’s work.
Every bath still leaves the workshop matched to its own line in the ledger. Every finish is still cured slowly, then rested a full week before it is packed. Every commission is still spoken about, in person, over tea in the front room.
We have made just over three thousand two hundred baths since 1962. Almost half of them are still in the homes they were first delivered to. We would like to think it will stay that way.
A workshop is not, in the end, a place.
It is the collection of habits that happen there.
What we believe.
Made only when ordered.
Nothing is kept as stock. Nothing is imported. Every bath is measured, cut, formed, and finished only after the ledger has your name in it.
Made by hand.
The same forty-two craftsmen, working with the same hammers, in the same workshop. Never stamped. Never mass-cast. Never anonymous.
Made to be kept.
A bath from our foundry should last a hundred years, and be reworked in a hundred and one. We keep the ledger so we’ll always know which piece it was, and what it needs.
— and what we don’t.
We don’t rush.
Six weeks is the minimum a bath needs to be made properly. We will quote you six weeks. Occasionally we will need seven. We will never quote you four.
We don’t discount.
Everything we make is priced at what it costs to make it, plus a fair margin for the workshop. There isn’t a lower price to negotiate. There isn’t a sale.
We don’t forget.
Once a bath is in the ledger, it is in the ledger for good. If it comes back to us fifty years later needing a new base, we will know exactly which piece it was.
We do not make baths for the year. We make them for the century. Anything else feels a little rude to the copper.
Our head coppersmithThird generation at the bench
Come and see
where it is all made.
Both come with tea, biscuits, and a very slow walk through the workshop.