The
England
Archive

Location

Rayleigh · Essex

Category

Makers

Documented

November 2026

Robert Fuller is a tinsmith and coppersmith in Rayleigh, Essex, and the seventh generation of a family of metal workers - J. Fuller & Sons - that runs back through Clerkenwell to a brazier in Canterbury in the 1700s. He makes tin cups, pails, lanterns and tea urns by hand, cut, rolled, wired, seamed and soldered the old way, and hot-dip tins his own plate in a furnace he built. Warm, generous and wholly a master of his trade, he has no apprentice and no children: by his own account the Fuller line of metal workers ends with him, and he means to carry on for the love of it as long as he can.

Location

Chatham Historic Dockyard · Kent

Category

Makers

Documented

November 2026

Rob Lane-Shaw is the apprentice ropemaker at the Ropery in Chatham Historic Dockyard, about three years into the trade under the master David Cheer. He makes and splices rope by hand on the quarter-mile walk, and - because the Ropery is a self-sustaining museum that nobody funds - he also takes the visitors round, which means he can both make the rope and explain it. He is one of the few people learning the craft young enough to carry it on.

Location

Chatham Historic Dockyard · Kent

Category

Makers

Documented

November 2026

David Cheer is the master ropemaker at the Ropery in Chatham Historic Dockyard, the last working naval ropeyard in Britain. He came for a three-month job twenty-seven years ago and never left: after a year he decided rope-making was the only thing he wanted to do, and he has been the master here ever since. He makes every kind of rope the works still sells - from heavy cordage to dog leads and climbing line - splices and knots by hand, and keeps, among much else, what he says is the only length of sealskin rope left in England.

Location

Birmingham · West Midlands

Category

Makers

Documented

July 2026

Léo Lambert is the master engraver at Westley Richards in Birmingham. He came from a village outside Liège, trained in engraving at the Léon Mignon School there, and wrote to the firm from Belgium; he arrived expecting to apprentice under a master and was told he was the one. He taught himself the lettering he had skipped, designed the firm's own lettering styles, and now runs its in-house engraving studio - the cutting, the gold inlay and the design work behind the finished best guns.

Location

Birmingham · West Midlands

Category

Makers

Documented

July 2026

Haydn Hill is a Birmingham gunmaker who works by hand and on old machines in the traditional setting-up trade of action filing - the hand-fitting of a gun's action so that barrels, body and lockwork close as one piece. He works at the Jesse Hill workshop in Stirchley, named for the forebear whose name is still on the wall, in a family that has filed gun actions in Birmingham for generations, and is one of very few still doing the work this way.

Location

London

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Yuyi Cheng makes contemporary jewellery in London in Chinese filigree inlay (hua si xiang qian) - a distinct tradition from Western filigree, in which the kingfisher-feather technique dian cui is one branch - alongside mother-of-pearl inlay (luodian). Trained as a metalworker in Taiwan and a jeweller in London, she gives endangered imperial Chinese methods a modern subject: the blue that looks like enamel is ethically sourced feather, laid by hand the way the empresses’ jewellers did it.

Location

Loughborough · East Midlands

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Bill Bowes is the foreman at John Taylor & Co in Loughborough, the last major bell foundry in Britain. Forty-one years with the firm, twenty-seven of them in the foundry, and the man who makes the iron that holds and swings a bell - the headstocks, the wheels, the fittings drilled and pinned to the thousandth. If Giridhar gives a bell its voice, Bill gives it the means to ring. Bell founding is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Loughborough · East Midlands

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Giridhar Vadukar is the chief tuner at John Taylor & Co in Loughborough, the last major bell foundry in Britain, and one of only three bell tuners left in the country. Forty-seven years in the trade, thirty of them here, tuning each bell’s five notes by shaving metal from the inside - by ear as much as by eye. Bell founding is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Steve Roche cuts letters and carves stone at Stag Works in Sheffield, the studio he runs and shares with the sculptor Lily Marsh. He came to the trade after a single month in 2008 cost him his job and a broken leg, retrained on a craft bursary, and now works on public lettering and stone commissions across the city.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Lily Marsh carves stone in a shared studio at Stag Works in Sheffield - a sculptor who studied psychology before retraining as a heritage stonemason and then taking a three-year carving diploma at the City and Guilds of London Art School on a QEST scholarship, and who works alongside the letter cutter and stonemason Steve in the room they share.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Grace Horne hand-makes scissors in a former Victorian public toilet in Sheffield - a cutler, corsetiere and PhD who learned the trade at Ernest Wright and works without the old industrial machines. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Kevin Wilebore hand-makes leather bags, belts and sheaths - and the pouches for Ernest Wright's scissors - at Portland Works in Sheffield, the birthplace of stainless steel.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Kylie Cocker hand-makes pocket and pen knives as a mester at Joseph Rodgers, in the workshop inside Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield. Folding knife making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Stephen Wright runs William Wright in Sheffield, the cutlery and silverware firm named after his late father. He has spent his life in the trade and can work every stage of it himself - blanking and pressing the flatware, forming and finishing the holloware, plating and polishing the silver to its final shine. The firm has made forks, spoons, teapots, trays and cruets for the table for close to a century. Sheffield cutlery and silversmithing are on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

The polisher at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, with thirteen years on the wheel. Sabino works the polishing machine - buffing mops on a spinning spindle that take a finished pair of scissors to its bright final shine. It is dusty, exacting work, the last skilled hand a pair passes through before the maker's mark. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

A scissor maker at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, about six years into the trade. His station is the grinding and finishing machines - the wheel and the abrasive belt that bring a forged blade up to its edge - and the work is the same exacting, spark-and-steel routine the firm has run for over a century. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

One of the newer makers at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, and the workshop's grinder - about eighteen months in. His station is the grinding wheel, where a forged blade is taken down to its hollow and its edge, the spark-throwing stage that turns a rough forging into a blade that will cut. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

Production manager and a putter at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902. Trained by two of the country's last master-putters, Jonathan is also the workshop's public voice - the one who gives the talks and interviews about a craft Heritage Crafts classes as critically endangered. About seven years at the bench.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

A putter-togetherer at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902 - and the first trainee of the firm's current era to qualify fully as a putter, the five-year-apprenticed craftsman who marries the two blades of a pair of scissors so they cut. About ten years at the workshop, he does the defining job of the trade: hammering the curve onto each blade and setting the two together by hand and eye until the pair rides true.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

The senior maker at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902. A putter-togetherer trained under Eric Stones and Cliff Denton, Neil now runs the floor and has trained the rest of the makers in the workshop. He took the archive through the whole craft - the grinding of the blade's hollow and twist, the hardening, the rumbling, and the marriage of the two blades, where the gap between them is the secret of a clean cut.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

The man who built Chimo. A Yorkshire-born Merchant Navy officer who came home to take over his family's Sheffield silverware business, in 1989 he gathered a set of independent cutlery, silver and pewter trades under one roof at the White Rose Works and kept their historic names alive. Appointed MBE in 2018 for services to exports and investment in Sheffield, Master of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers in 2020, and chair of the Work-wise Foundation - he is one of the last custodians of a Sheffield trade running short of the next generation.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

A die engraver at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing who has cut steel dies for forty-five years - the only trade he has ever worked. A customer's artwork is worked up into a master pattern, traced on a pantograph die-sinking machine that cuts it into steel at size, and hand-finished; the finished die is the master tool that stamps a crest, a monogram or a mark into the cutlery and silverware the rest of the works makes. Hand engraving sits on the Heritage Crafts Red List.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

A cutler at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing for fifteen years, running the knife-finishing section - drilling and heat-setting the tang into the handle, then grinding, edging and polishing the finished knife. He came to the trade from dye printing and other work, apprenticed for four months, and stayed. He now leads apprenticeships at Chimo, and the larger part of that job, he says, is keeping a young person interested in a repetitive craft long enough to be good at it.

Location

Sheffield · South Yorkshire

Category

Makers

Documented

June 2026

A master cutler of more than forty years in the trade, at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing. The son of a Sheffield cutlery man, he resisted the factory as a young man and then spent a working life in it - taking a knife from a blank through stamping, grinding, serrating, hafting, sharpening and polishing, and now passing the whole sequence on to the next pair of hands.

Location

Much Hadham · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

A woodturner and furniture maker at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, who came to wood from illustration and printmaking. He trained turning globe stands at Bellerby & Co and produced furniture for the London studio Wilkinson & Rivera before building his own practice - turned bowls and centrepieces, furniture in a Scandinavian and Japanese register, and the bespoke wooden stands that hold Jonathan Wright's globes on the floor above.

Location

Much Hadham · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

A maker of bespoke handmade globes - terrestrial and celestial - and a restorer of antique ones, working at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham. He learned the craft over the better part of a decade leading globe production at Bellerby & Co before founding his own studio, took a QEST scholarship and an MA in conservation, and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a trustee of QEST. Globe-making by hand is a rare and endangered craft with no formal training route.

Location

Much Hadham · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

Genevieve Sweeney's first apprentice, learning British knitwear from the cone up at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham. A film graduate who knitted with her grandmother as a child, she came through a four-month course and took to the machines and the linking bench fast - the next pair of hands in a craft the country is trying not to lose.

Location

Much Hadham · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

Knitwear designer and maker at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. Trained in fashion knitwear at Nottingham Trent and shaped by years developing knit for Rag & Bone, Hugo Boss and Burberry, she built her own British label in 2015 to keep the country's knitwear skills alive - naturally dyed merino and lambswool, socks from a family-run Derbyshire mill, and a growing in-house studio where she has taken on her first apprentice, Poppy.

Location

Much Hadham · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

Watchmaker, case maker and engine turner at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, Hertfordshire - an engineer who came to horology with no formal apprenticeship (informal training under an accomplished watchmaker, then tools and methods of his own), and is now one of a tiny handful of people in England making and engine-turning watch cases by hand. A QEST scholar who engine-turned the solid-gold mount of King Charles III's Royal Family Order for the Crown Jeweller. The archive's first horological subject.

Location

Chipping Campden · The Cotswolds

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

Silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden. David Hart's nephew and William's cousin, son of David's brother Basil. He joined the workshop in 1994, aged eighteen, after two years of motor-vehicle engineering at college - asked in to help with a busy order book while he looked for a job, and at the bench ever since.

Location

Chipping Campden · The Cotswolds

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

Silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden - the only one of the workshop's silversmiths not a Hart by blood. Recruited from Chipping Campden School in 1982 while sitting his A-levels, aged eighteen, and apprenticed to David Hart, taught by David and his father Henry. Forty-four years at the bench.

Location

Chipping Campden · The Cotswolds

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

Fourth-generation silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden. Son of David Hart, great-grandson of George Hart of the Guild of Handicraft. Came to the bench from computer science, joining the workshop in 1990, the year his grandfather Henry died, and now carries the workshop forward.

Location

Chipping Campden · The Cotswolds

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

Third-generation silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden - the last working workshop of Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft. Grandson of George Hart, who came to Campden with the Guild in 1902; brought into the workshop by his father Henry in 1956. Eighty-seven at the time of the visit, and seventy years at the bench this July, still raising silver by hand.

Location

Herefordshire · Heart of England

Category

Makers

Documented

May 2026

A working hazel basket maker in Turnham Green Wood, the Herefordshire coppice he established in 2011. One of a handful of working practitioners in the country making the traditional split-hazel Whisket of the Welsh Marches - a craft on the Heritage Crafts Red List of endangered crafts. Reads the stems before cutting (the knobs, the deer marks, the years), cleaves and shaves them into splints, weaves them into round-bottomed baskets that have been made in the same shape since the form was first made. Teaches the craft at venues across the country.

Location

Chertsey · Thames Valley

Category

Makers

Documented

April 2026

Founder of Dennett Boat Builders, Laleham. Trained at three Surrey Thames yards in the 1960s: Horace Clarke's Boatyard in Sunbury from age 15; Walton Yacht; and George Wilsons Yard in Sunbury, where he completed his apprenticeship. Self-employed from 22. Opened the Laleham yard with his son Stephen in 1988.

Location

Chertsey · Thames Valley

Category

Makers

Documented

April 2026

Working principal of Dennett Boat Builders, Laleham, Chertsey. Son of Michael Dennett, who taught him the trade from age two. Joined the yard as a partner in 1988 and has worked there ever since. Specialises in the restoration of historic Thames pleasure craft.

Location

Cambridge · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

April 2026

Lettercutter at the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Eight years at the bench. Roxanne Kindersley's longest-running apprentice and the cutter on the Storm and the Calm After the Storm memorial pillar.

Location

Cambridge · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

April 2026

Designer at the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Younger son of David and Lida Kindersley, husband of Roxanne. The design hand of the workshop - most pieces begin as a sheet of paper and a pencil at his bench.

Location

Cambridge · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

April 2026

Working head of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. She has taken over the running of the workshop from her mother-in-law Lida and now teaches apprentices, directs commissions, and keeps the 700-year-old craft of English stone lettering alive for a new generation.

Location

Cambridge · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

April 2026

Matriarch of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Widow of David Kindersley. A typographer and stone letter-cutter in her own right who has run the workshop for thirty years and still comes in every day.

Location

Norfolk Broads · East Anglia

Category

Makers

Documented

April 2026

A working millwright who has maintained and restored historic windmills across Norfolk and Suffolk for decades. The mill at Toft Monks works because Paul Kemp exists. That is not a small thing.