Boyd Piano Factory, Warwick Gardens (and the roots of the Decca Record Company)

I've been aware for some time that there seems to be something of a history of piano making in Harringay. The names Eavestaff, Challen, Brasted, and Barratt & Robinson are all associated with piano making on Hermitage Road, but I've yet to get to the bottom of whether they were all linked through purchase and merger or were different entities. I've seen one or more piano factories on Hermitage road referred to as the Challen Works, the Barratt & Robinson factory and the Omega works.

I've also read that Brasted merged with another local company in 1928. That company was Boyd. I was first alerted to the existence of this company yesterday by Geoff Amabalino who'd been chasing information about the Ever-Ready Factory that once occupied the site on the corner of St Ann's Road and Warwick Gardens. Geoff used to work at Ever-Ready as a scientist. A former colleague told him the following:

I was told that prior to Ever Ready having it as a battery factory, it was a piano factory. I was shown a small area of parquet flooring near the goods inwards door, possibly in a cupboard, that Sid Richardson said dated back to the piano factory days.

So that set me looking.

I've been able to find out a little about the company, Boyds. A 1925 advert claims that the company had been established for "over half a century". That would give a foundation date of around 1875. However, it is not clear where the company started.

A snippet from a 1914 advert refers to the 'new' factory. So we can assume that the building that used to stand on the corner of Warwick Gardens was built at some point not so long before the start WWI. The advert says:

BOYD PIANOS are produced under expert supervision by craftsmen of great skill and experience at the new Boyd Works at Harringay, the most up-to-date Pianoforte factory in the Kingdom.

A quick search of Kelly's Directory shows us that it was probably built in 1913. (It appeared in the 1914 Post Office Home Counties Directory (Middlesex), but not the local Kelly's for 1913-14). As it says in the listing, the building was known as the St Ann's Works. 

I've discovered that Boyd was owned by the Samuel family who were also owners of the Barnett Samuel & Sons and Decca companies which "made band instruments of all kinds and also gramophones at a factory in St Ann's Road" (I assume this is the Warwick Gardens one, although there also seems to have been premises in Worship Street EC1. So at the moment I'm not sure what was manufactured in Harringay and what in EC1). And Decca? Seems like that record company at the centre of the 20th century music industry may have some roots in Harringay. But I need to work out if the "St Ann's Road factory" source is right about the site of manufacture.

From the Decca website:

The name "Decca" dates back to a portable gramophone called the "Decca Dulcephone" patented in 1914 by Barnett Samuel and Sons. That company was eventually renamed The Decca Gramophone Co. Ltd. and then sold to former stockbroker Edward Lewis in 1929. Within years Decca Records Ltd. was the second largest record label in the world. The name "Decca" was coined by Wilfred S. Samuel by merging the word "Mecca" with the initial D of their logo "Dulcet" or their trademark "Dulcephone."

Artists signed to Decca in the 1930s and 1940s included Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Jane Froman, The Boswell Sisters, Billie Holiday, The Andrews Sisters, Ted Lewis, Judy Garland, The Mills Brothers, Billy Cotton, Guy Lombardo, Chick Webb, Louis Jordan, Bob Crosby, The Ink Spots, Dorsey Brothers, Connee Boswell and Jack Hylton, Victor Young, Earl Hines, Claude Hopkins, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe - the original 'soul sister' of recorded music.

The Dulcephone was built on rapid technological advances throughout World War I. Decca invented a way of installing a tone arm mount for the stylus in a box lid, making the first truly portable 'talking' machine.

Hundreds of portable "Deccas" were sent to the British front lines to comfort the battered soldiers in the trenches, post-war Decca sales literature portrayed the machines as war heroes:

WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE GREAT WAR--'DECCA'?

 I was 'Mirth-Maker-in-Chief to His Majesty's Forces'; my role being to give our Soldiers and our Sailors music wherever they should be. In that capacity I saw service on every Front--France, Belgium, Egypt, Palestine, Italy and the Dardenelles; right in the Front Line and away back in Camps and Hospitals. All told, there were 100,000 "Deccas" on Active Service from start to finish of the War.

And now that the War is over, I still pursue my calling but under pleasanter conditions...

 

Following the 1929 sale of the company, Wilfred Samuel went on to be a co-founder of the London Jewish Museum three years later.

This sort of thing seems to happen all the time with Harringay history - from here to the world!

Hare arr a few scrapbook entries on Boyd: 

And a recently uncovered sign on Shacklewell Lane, E8:

Photo by Ewan-M on Flickr

And here are a few Boyd Pianos:

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See this page for the story of the next tenants of the St Ann's factory, Ever Ready.