Richardson Transcripts (CT34)
MR G S HILL
(Mr G S Hill talks about Thomas Stevens, silk weaver of Coventry, founder of the Stevengraph and the Coventry
Silk Weaving Industry.)
To start then, Thomas Stevens the original founder of the company; he was born in 1828 at Foleshill and was a
son of a weaver. I think there was a large family of them but that I can only give you the information I have read
from other peoples' sources.
In his early days he worked in the weaving trade at a firm called Pears and Franklin in Upper Well Street - well,
that was news to me because I had never heard of them until I read it - well, in 1854 he started on his own,
manufacturing in premises in Queen Street and I believe on the - roughly on the site of where he was there is
now Stevens House - a block of flats. He devoted his early days of weaving into making plain and fancy ribbons
which were then in great demand and of course were part of the range of what were really world famous
Coventry ribbons. During that time that he was making these he was experimenting to improve what one may
call the usability of Jacquard Looms such as designing or thinking out a loom to weave more elaborate multicoloured designs.
In 1860 there came the big depression in the Coventry textile trade due, it is stated, to the removal of the duties
on continental produced ribbons and narrow fabrics. So Stevens started thinking of something else of which he
could earn money. And his idea was first of all to produce something in the way of a silk bookmarker. And the
first of these is known to have been produced in 1862 and I believe it was offered for sale at some Convent - I
am not sure if it was Princethorpe or not. This proved very popular and he went on to enlarge his range of
products of bookmarkers from the size suitable for prayer books up to the very large one for Bibles. These went
so well that he then thought of producing a range of silk woven designs and pictures for valentines bearing
suitable Victorian sentimental mottoes, calendars, Christmas and New Year cards, badges for schools and
clubs, and also a small range - I don't think it was extremely large - of sashes for friendly societies. I well
remember we had one in the Boardroom at Cox Street which was one of the Ancient Order of Foresters sashes,
a very elaborate green one. But I don't think he ever made very much progress there because to the best of my
knowledge that trade seemed to have been developed by Slingsbys of Nuneaton who made a speciality of it.
He then turned, and had a sudden idea I imagine, for the introduction of wire woven ribbons for the ships of the
Navy, that is with the name of the ship woven in gold wire. Now it has been stated sometimes that he invented
these but I don't think it can be regarded as a true invention but was merely the use of a different kind of yarn in
the same kind of loom that will make anything else of a similar nature. But anyway he introduced these wire
woven ribbons to the Admiralty which they accepted and apparently he had a -what seemed to be a long running
contract for about 20 years from the Admiralty which was never put out to competition from other sources. But
that, of course, that happy state of affairs, unfortunate for Thomas Stevens, came to an end and I suppose
somewhere about the early - the end of the last century or early part of this - the contract for these type of
ribbons was thrown open to anybody who could make them.
Well so much for Queen Street. His business was then expanding so rapidly that he moved to bigger premises in
West Orchard. Now I am not quite sure where those were but I imagine that it would be on the site of where
George Kennings had a factory up until the time they were bombed I think in 1940 or 4 Now, then, from West
Orchard he moved into premises in Much Park Street. That was rather news to me because I didn't know of that
move to Much Park Street. But in 1874 and 5 he bought the site in Cox Street and built the Stevengraph works.
The first building put up there was the big two storey one which was the original Stevengraph works. Now then,
Thomas Stevens himself he moved permanently to London in 1878 and seemed to carry on the commercial side
of the business from there because he had a very big warehouse in Paternoster Row. He died in 1888.
He had four sons and three daughters and two brothers. Now of the sons I only knew one, that was the late
Thomas Inger Stevens. I can just remember him as a child and I remember when he died in 1908. Of his other of his three other sons I don’t know whether any of them were ever engaged in the business, but he had a
brother who was associated with him. Now Thomas Inger Stevens, he died in 1908, having survived his only son
Thomas Sandal Stevens who died in 1906, I think it was 1906, in his early manhood. When Thomas Inger
Stevens died in 1908 my father who had joined the company I think in about 1890 something, having served his
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apprenticeship at the Coventry Cotton and Spinning Weaving Company, he was appointed - the company was the business was turned into a Limited - private Limited Company - and my father was made Managing
Director which office he held until he died in 1932.
Well now, from roughly the beginning of the century there was a steady expansion of productive capacity to cope
with a change of demand. At the end of the last century and the early part of this, the demand for such things as
Victoriana type of fancy bookmarkers and that sort of thing just faded away, - just wasn't on. And so a lot of
those looms that had been put in were turned over to the making of garment labels, the large labels for raincoats
and suits and things like that and, at the same time, the popularity of the Navy as a fighting force created a very
large demand amongst small children for naval type of fashions - sailor suits, sailor hats - and such was the
demand that they designed a vast range of naval type cap ribbons for boys and girls to wear round their hats
bearing the names of the ships in all kinds of fancy lettering with designs of anchors and crossed flags and this,
that, and the other. But the demand for those things kept up pretty well until the outbreak of the first World War
and while there was a diminishing demand for those from about 1920, '21 it became a complete dead line
and those looms which had been built for the production of these juvenile cap ribbons were changed over to
make the narrower type of labels used on shirts and underwear. Now the new factory was built at the rear of
Stevengraph works in 1900. That contained 36 looms and that was very largely producing work not more than
about an inch and a half or one and three-quarters wide, these particular type of cotton labels that they were
then, for the underwear and shirting trades. In about 1900 and - well it must have been about 1904 and 6, I
remember hearing about this - another factory was built attached to the first extension which contained about 20
looms all of a bigger type for producing the larger type of garment label. And in 1935 we built yet a third
extension containing a mixed assortment of looms because trade was very good, there was a big demand for
our products and we felt justified in making this extension.
During the First World War we produced, according to my memory, about 1 million of the naval hat ribbons
lettered with the ships for the navy and after the end of the war in 1919 and '20 we converted some looms for the
Jacquard type as a temporary measure to make medal ribbons. We made the General Service Ribbon, the
Victory Ribbon, and some of the - I forget what it was called - a ribbon of purple and green which was given for
service in the Far East I believe.
Well I had taken over from my father in 1932 and the business was carrying on very well until it was bombed in
1940 and there was nothing left but the walls and the heap of tangled and burning machinery. That put us in a
very serious quandary; - that was being a private company the interests of a few who were family shareholders that was the Stevens family and my own family - had to be safeguarded and it was a question of rather going on
one's hands and knees to our competitors to see if they could give us any help. And we did receive very valuable
help in Coventry from Cash’s, from Franklin's, and Grant’s, they did everything they could to help us. And
Franklin's kept going throughout the war, Grant's was destroyed I believe-in April 1941 and when Cash's was
very heavily damaged.
But I think it was in 1942 the Board of Trade decided on the scheme which they called "Concentration of
Industry'' which meant that certain firms and certain trades were given a certificate guaranteeing that they would
keep open and receive supplies of materials - in our case - well silk was practically unobtainable - cotton and
rayon, provided they allocated a portion of their output at cost price to firms who undertook to close voluntarily,
thereby releasing labour, and of course reducing the overall demand for yarn. Well we -they took a rather
sympathetic view about firms such as ourselves and we were regarded as having closed voluntarily having been
thoroughly bombed. And the nucleus firms were then invited to take over the voluntary closed firms to allocate a
proportion of their own output for resale by the receiving firms. We joined a group partly with J and J Cash of
Coventry and Brough Nicholson and Hall of Leek. Now the reason for that was, that had we relied purely on
obtaining supplies out of the then existing Coventry manufacturers we couldn't possibly have earned enough to
make any reasonable profit to give our shareholders a living. So therefore Brough Nicholson and Hall of Leek
became our biggest suppliers and from 1942 up to 1945 this worked extremely well. We were able to maintain a
connection with our biggest and best customers, we were allowed to carry on with a proportion of Admiralty
contracts which were made for us by Franklin's and then in the early part of 1945 when the war seemed to be
drawing to an end I had a letter from Brough Nicholson and Hall suggesting that we might consider a take-over
by them of the Stevens' assets. Well the Stevens' assets at that time were certain Investments that we had made
and of course a very large war damage claim. But of course with the proposed development of Coventry it would
have been impossible to have obtained the license to rebuild on the Cox Street site. Now Brough Nicholson and
Hall had a branch factory near to Leek at Cheadle in Staffordshire and they owned a large amount of land round
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their premises so the position was that they had a very good site for building but couldn't get a building license,
we couldn't build in Coventry but could get a building license to build elsewhere. So after some months of
negotiation it was agreed that Brough Nicholson and Hall paid out the sum required for the Stevens' assets and
the transfer was duly made.
At that time, or since the bombing of the factory in 1940, we had occupied the house on the premises, adjacent
to the factory rather, adjacent to the factory, which was occupied by Mr James Stevens who was a great nephew
of the original Thomas Stevens and a cousin of Thomas Inger Stevens and he was our Works Manager. Well
certain rooms in his house which was a large one were made available and we used those as offices and carried
on the Stevens' side of the business from Coventry. But of course that was the sort of thing which one couldn't
expect to last not from Brough's point of view and so they made proposals that I should - that we should close
down the Coventry premises and that I should transfer myself, and such as any staff who wished to go, to Leek.
The understanding was, the agreement, that I should become Head of the combined woven labels sales and
production of Brough, Nicholson and Hall and Thomas Stevens, so a woven label division was created at Leek
and I became its Chief Executive and I held that office until I retired at the end of 1962.
The very great interest of the last year or so in the collection of the Stevengraph pictures some of which have
fetched, what in my opinion are fantastic prices. I, of course, lived with them for so long that familiarity bred
contempt and I never made any attempt to collect them. We had, at the time we were bombed, thousands
of these in stock which had been made in the closing years of the last century and some of course in the early
part of this century and often we used to wonder well, couldn't we make better use of this storage space. But we
never did. The result was that there is nothing left of those and that is why they are so valuable. That is a
thought you know, that if those bombs that fell on the factory had fallen about a hundred yards further off and the
factory had escaped destruction there wouldn't have been this-.craze for collecting. (NO of course).
We were making bookmarkers of the large Bible type about two and a half to three inches wide by eight or ten
inches long right up to the day we were bombed. These were all religious subjects and whereas they were
originally produced for use in Bibles, the demand in my time was always for them to be supplied in ribbon length
to manufacturer of shrouds in the Roman Catholic centres of Dublin, Glasgow, Liverpool. They used them for
trimming shrouds. We were making these right up until the time we were destroyed. We did, between the wars,
produce a number of modern subjects which we issued as calendars to the - our customers. They were a limited
number that we did, I think, the Houses of Parliament, Windsor Castle, Tower of London, Balmoral Castle, the
Forth Bridge, and they were produced in quantities of probably not more than two to three thousand per subject
and were merely sent out as calendars. We also decided to produce in 1936 a portrait, silk portrait of King
Edward the VIII for his coronation which was taking place in May 1937. Well, we'd got several hundred of these
made when he abdicated but of course they were of no use but I suppose they would have been extremely
valuable now if we had kept them. (Yes) . But, having gone to the expense of preparing the Jacquard cards for
weaving this which was about on a four and a half wide - inch wide ribbon by about seven or eight inches long,
we thought we can't possibly be put to the loss of this so we obtained a very good portrait of
King George VI, I think it was from a photograph in a “Tatler", and we cut off Edward VIII's head and redesigned
George VI's and put him in the same uniform. There's a slight showing of this actually in the angle of the neck
but nobody except anyone who was really studying it technically would notice it. Then the following year we
did one of the present Queen Mother, she was then Queen, and these also were distributed as pictures showing
the arts of Jacquard (yes) weaving to our customers. Then the one thing of which I always derive very great
satisfaction was the address given by the City of Coventry to George V on his Silver Jubilee. This was, I think,
really an extraordinary achievement because it was the end of March, about the 28th March 1935, I had a phone
call from the Council House, from the Mayor's Secretary - the Mayor then was Alderman Friswell - saying what
they had in mind, could we do anything to help. I said that time was a bit short but I'll come and see you. So I
went and saw the Mayor and the then Town Clerk who was Frederick Smith and they said they had approached
another firm in Coventry, one of our normal competitors, who said they would want six months to do the job. We
had a month to do it and to send it, I think, to W W Curtis to be mounted in a very rich leather mount. Well they
gave me the particular wording they wanted and they left the design more or less to me. So we called our - got
our designers together and one of the artists prepared a sketch for this. It's about again four inches wide by, I
think, ten inches long and the - at the top of the design was the City arms as it then was incorporating the Prince
of Wales feathers which have disappeared now but through this Manor of Cheylesmore the City was entitled to
use. It had the wording on it - I just forget the exact wording - it's , 'We, the Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of
Coventry in Council assembled, convey our heartfelt congratulations to your Majesty on your Silver Jubilee, etc.'
or something like that and in it, at the bottom, there was a little inset of a picture of Coventry with the three spires
from Greyfriars Green and an ornamental border all round with the rose, shamrock, and thistle. Well because-to
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get that made in such a time was a terrific problem. First of all the sketch having been approved it then had to be
drafted which means it had to be marked up on point paper to about eleven or twelve times the size of the
woven article. Well that - what we did with that, we cut the sketch into about three parts, we gave each Part to
one draughtsman and each man drafted a third of this design himself, the whole thing was then pasted together
for final approval. It was then recut into three parts and three more people were employed on cutting the
Jacquard cards for it. During that preliminary time we had made enquiries about and obtained some special
bright China silk for weaving; we had some yarn dyed; the blue used in it was the garter shade of blue. We got
the loom ready and we started.
We got weaving I suppose just after the middle of March. We only made about, I suppose, not more than 60 of
these. They were all very carefully inspected for faults, we found several completely perfect, one or two with
minor faults which you always get in weaving and the one perfect one was sent I believe to W W Curtis who
mounted it and the whole thing was put on exhibition in what used to be the Gas Showrooms at the end of
Corporation Street - that, and the draft. And it was sent off in due course to the King who, through his private
secretary sent back a letter saying how very pleased he was to see that the old skill of design by Coventry
craftsmen was still present. That, I think, is one of the most interesting things I ever had to watch over. (yes).
Right up until the real development of artificial silk, now known as rayon, all our materials that we used were
either cotton, or pure silk. Silk we obtained from a number of sources. There were two Coventry firms who
supplied us, E 0 French Limited and John Bill, Dresser Limited. We also at times bought supplies direct from
firms in Macclesfield, William Frost and Sons was one, another was G H Heath and Co. Our silk dying was
carried out by the firm Joshua Wardle Limited of Leek, although for some small items wanted in a hurry - the
small weights of silk - we would send to J R French and Co. of Ford Street who used to give us very good
service on specially urgent items that we wanted. Our cotton supplies came from Lancashire or Cheshire, we
had one very good firm at Bollington known as Thomas Oliver, another one was McConnells of Manchester
whose agent was Mr Walter Bednall of Priory Street in Coventry, and he was also agent for the firm who used to
dye all our cottons in very fast dyes - Burgess and Edwards of Manchester. With the growth of the development
of rayon we used to obtain our supplies from Courtaulds in the main, although we did occasionally try one or two
of the smaller firms, but we never found anybody as good as Courtaulds for service or quality. This rayon was
only used in my time in design and for ground weft; we never at Stevengraph had any warps made from rayon
but of course that developed after the war.
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