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History of leather

Velvet saddle

To discover the origins of Walsall's leather industry we need to look back to the Middle Ages. Amongst the town's recorded early crafts and occupations there are few references to leather workers but, in contrast, numerous ones to saddlers' ironmongers or loriners. Loriners produced a variety of horse-related items, including stirrups, bits, buckles, spurs, saddle trees and harness mounts and decorations.

The loriners' chief requirements were high grade iron, coal, charcoal and limestone, and all four of these could be found in the immediate neighbourhood of Walsall.

The lorinery trade continued to grow throughout the 17th and 18th centuries but it was not until the early 19th century that leather working became an important local trade. The pioneers of the town's leather goods trade seem to have mostly been 'bridlecutters'. By settling in Walsall these men could call upon the highly developed skills of local loriners for their bits and buckles.

The development of the town's leather working industry gained pace in the period after 1840. The building of the South Staffordshire Railway through Walsall in 1847 gave a boost to the trade and by 1851 there were 75 firms making bridles, saddles and harness.

Walsall: The horse's emporium

Horses

Horses were an essential part of Victorian economic and social life, and provided a huge market for Walsall's manufacturers. The working horse was still the chief means of power on most farms, and in total there were something like 3.3 million horses in late Victorian Britain.

In the last decades of the 19th century the Walsall leather trades entered upon a 'Golden Age' of unprecedented prosperity. Exports boomed and Walsall firms sent their products to most parts of the British Empire. Foreign wars provided a particularly lucrative source of trade.

Working conditions

Leather workers

Despite its prosperity, the late Victorian leather industry in Walsall remained in essence, a mass of tiny and often primitive backyard workshops, intermingled with a handful of factories each employing perhaps two or three hundred people.

The report of the Sweated Trades Commission of 1889 detailed allegations of 'sweating' in Walsall and showed that hours for these often highly- skilled workers were long, wages poor and conditions for women especially bad.

Typical earnings for a male saddler at this date would be about 28 shillings (£1.40) for a 55 hour week. Women would earn a half or a third of this. Unlike the male employees, who were paid by the hour, most women were paid by the complete item. When orders were scarce they would be laid off without wages.

The Commissioners were clearly shocked to hear how, even in the largest and most modern factories in the town, wages were further reduced by deductions made for heating, lighting and space (or shop room) in which the employees worked.

The rise of light leathergoods

Leather goggles

At the turn of the 20th century Walsall was home to nearly a third of Britain's saddlers and harness makers. It is for saddlery and harness that the Walsall leather industry remains one of the best known, yet from 1900 these trades began a long decline.

One by one, the traditional roles of the horse were challenged and eventually supplanted by the internal combustion engine in its many forms. The great age of the horse had ended.

Walsall firms had to adapt to this changing world or disappear. Some had been making light leather goods such as travelling bags, hat boxes, wallets and writing cases since the 1870s. From 1900 onwards they increasingly concentrated on this type of work, gradually dropping the less profitable harness and saddlery lines from their catalogues.

The recent history

Leather purse

Since the 1960s, the light leathergoods trade has met with stiff competition from overseas producers, many of them based in developing countries with much lower overheads.

Walsall's surviving leathergoods firms have increasingly concentrated on the luxury end of of the market, producing goods for some of the world's most famous brand names.

During this period there has also been a dramatic revival of Walsall's saddlery and bridle trade, as growing numbers of people have taken up riding for pleasure. At the start of the 21st century, Walsall has something like ninety leather companies, between them making an astonishing variety of items, which are exported to most parts of the world.

Walsall can once again claim to have the largest concentration of leather workers in northern Europe

Historic documents

Here are five transcripts of historic documents in our collection, which will be of real interest to schools, family historians etc., for you to download.

Leather timeline

Walsall timeline

Information sheets