Fabric taken from the Zoffany x Benedict Foley Entrance Hall is being repurposed
Design Exhibition to Be Held at Voysey House
Zoffany scholars' work to be displayed in Second Life Exhibition
An iconic Chiswick brand is about to return home after an absence of nearly a hundred years.
Arthur Sanderson established a wallpaper factory at a former barracks in what is now Barley Mow Passage in 1879 and it became one of Chiswick’s largest companies reaching a peak of over 1,000 employees.
What was Arthur Sanderson and Sons is now the Sanderson Design Group PLC , a luxury interior design and furnishings group listing on AIM. It has informed the exchange that it will be moving its head office back to Voysey House later this year. Around 80 staff employed in design sales, marketing, finance and administrative functions along with the Sanderson and Morris & Co. archives, will be relocating. The fit-out of the building to the company’s specification is currently underway and it is envisaged that it will include showroom space, a design hub and events location.
Manufacturing will not take place in Chiswick but when production was based here, many of the papers were printed by hand with wooden blocks but roller machine production also was utilised with eight of these machines operating by the end of the nineteenth century.
63 employees of Sanderson, including Herbert the son of Arthur Sanderson, signed up to fight in the First World War and in 1924 Sanderson received a Royal Warrant as a wallpaper supplier to King George V.
There was a lively social life around the factory and Sanderson employees took part in an extensive programme of activities outside working hours. The company’s social club was called ‘Bleak House’ and its premises were close by on Chiswick High Road, 100 yards from the factory. Bleak House Lane still links Chiswick High Road with Barley Mow Passage. The club was equipped with a bowling green, billiard rooms, reading rooms and a dining room where meals were provided to staff at cost price. The club organised social events such as swimming galas and flower shows and one of these fetes is believed to be the inspiration for a scene in The Grand Meaulnes, a novel by French author Alain-Fournier who had worked at the factory as a translator in 1905.
In 1928 a fire gutted the premises, in what has been described as the largest ever fire in Chiswick, and it continued to smoulder for over a week. The company relocated to Perivale, but it retained a connection with the area with its Chiswick Grove range.
Voysey House was built as an extension to the factory in 1902 with a footbridge linking the two buildings across Barley Mow Passage and was recently sympathetically restored to its original state.
Voysey House with the Lamb pub in the foreground
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August 17, 2024