I think it must have been shortly after his period as a bus conductor that Dad joined Harris Lebus, the furniture manufactorer. Dad was a warehouse-man based initially at the Tottenham depot.
He was also a dab hand at French Polishing so maybe he did that too.
Harris Lebus was a furniture manufacturer and wholesaler based in the East End of London in Tabernacle Street with a factory in Tottenham. The firm supplied stores such as Maple & Co., mainly producing bedroom and dining cabinets.
The Harris Lebus Website
HistoryDuring the period of its finest output in the 1900s, the style of furniture is closely associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement,
identified by overhanging cornices, inset door panels and square to
turned legs with pad feet in the manner of William Birch of High
Wycombe. The off the peg hardware is unfussy and stylistically well
designed. These pieces are highly sought after.
As with many larger firms their designers are kept anonymous. This
prolific manufacturer had more to do with bringing the Arts and Crafts
style to the masses than any other.
In later years Harris Lebus became a household name being the largest furniture manufacturer in the world.
[1]
During the Second World War the firm produced the Airspeed Horsa glider, the Mosquito multi role aircraft. The firm also undertook Top-secret operations, such as building replica Sherman tanks out of wood.
[3]
Following the war the firm became part of the government scheme to produce utility furniture bearing the CC41
mark and were central in providing cheaper manufacturing techniques to
provide the country with lower cost furniture with which they could
rebuild their homes, and in fact their design team invented and patented
the technique of facing man-made boards with other woods.
[4]The
Company also devised and perfected the means of assembling Furniture
from preformed sections and completing the construction by curing resin
glue lines, utilising 'Radio Frequency' electricity, or 'R.F.' There was
no metal fixing required in the assembly at all.
After financial difficulty, caused by a period of poor management
which was not Family, the firm finally closed in 1969; however some
could say that the techniques developed at Lebus have caused the
revolution in manufactured panels in home furnishing and flat pack that
many of their counterparts use today.
I think it would have been 1952 that we all moved down to Woodley, I was 2 and Jen 6.
Harris Lebus had a warehouse there, it was sited on the old Woodley Aerodrome which had served as an RAF training school prior to, and during WW2. I believe it was there that the WW2 veteran Douglas Bader crashed his plane. Despite loosing both legs he went on to become an ace fighter pilot. Anyone interested should look up the old black & white film "Reach for the Sky" - circa 1956 - which tells his story with Kenneth Moore playing the lead role.
The hangers, previously used for aircraft made a perfect storage facility for the large wardrobes etc ready for dispatch to customers.
Unfortunately this is the only photo we have of Dad at the warehouse, although there are others taken in the grounds.
For me this was a truly enchanting period of my life. We lived in the Flying School, which was enormous, we even had a playroom big enough to skate inside!
I remember exploring the old outbuildings that were full of aircraft parts - I later regretted not being older because there were enough parts to build my own aeroplane!
As the airfield was our back garden, Dad & I would go mushroom picking at about 6am on Sunday mornings. They were then served up with eggs & bacon for Sunday breakfast.
I also remember taking one of the bedsheets and some string on one occasion........
I climbed to the top of one of the buildings then attached the string to the four corners of the sheet. The other end of the strings I tied round my waist and with no further thought jumped off the roof. Naturally I expected to parachute gently down.......
Hmmm, it was just like the old cartoons, I plummeted to the ground just as the sheet unfurled over my head!!
Ouch, big ouch, but I had discovered gravity, and how it works!! Thankfully, no broken bones.
The Bedfords' circa 1955 In the "garden"
to be continued.......
