5.3 Exeter St. Thomas ?
Yes ...
5.1 Holt
5.2 Beaven’s outing 1905
Source ‘Holt Junction magazine’ - my gran used to live there!
... and yes
From
Bradford-on-Avon MuseumThe J. & T. Beaven leather and glove company was founded, according to tradition, in Holt in 1770, although members of the family seem to have been working leather there for some time before.
Christopher Beaven bought the house that is now the office in 1758 and by 1782 his nephew Thomas was running the business as woolstapler, fellmonger and leather dresser.
It became a limited company in 1919 with a capital of £50,000 and operated a wool department until 1954 and leather glove-making until 1956. It was taken over by James Garner & Sons Ltd (later Pittard Garner) of Yeovil in 1970, the bicentenary year.
Sheep skins, from Britain and from New Zealand, were trimmed, painted with sodium sulphide by the fellmonger and dried; stretched over drums called “beams” and the wool pulled off and sorted into 13 grades by the woolstapler; the skin was “limed and pickled” to cure it and soaked until it swelled and could be split by a machine into the “skiver”, the thin outer side which went to make book bindings and the thicker inner which became chamois, originally dressed by hand using a knife called a “frizer”. In the Second World War the chamois leather was used in lining pilots’ gloves and jackets and as a petrol filter.
Output was up to 900,000 skins a year, amounting to 4.5 million square feet in 1990.
The glove department employed outworkers who had their own machines, for example Mercy Ash, who lived in the last cottage in Ground Corner. There were twelve cutters who cut out the gloves, all men, while about 30 machinists who made up the gloves, were all female.
J. & T. Beaven Ltd still exists, as one of the major suppliers of chamois leather, among other car care products, in Holt and Belgium and Germany, but while part of the factory is used as a warehouse by the firm, manufacture is no longer carried in Holt.
Today - from
http://www.glovefactorystudios.com/about/Glove Factory Studios is a workspace hub made up of thriving start-ups, creative entrepreneurs and independent professionals who feed an interactive atmosphere. It is a collection of inspiring people who enjoy the opportunity to get together, network, create and realise business ideas.
The studios are an urban and professional restoration of a beautiful industrial heritage building, overlooking a courtyard, stunning open countryside and lakes. Strategically located near Bradford on Avon, and only 9 miles from Bath, and with easy access to mainline trains and the M4.
A thought to include a request for a re-opened station on the site of Holt Junction for the village neighbourhood plan was rejected when the authors of the plan looked into the feasabiity and concluded that it would only be practical if the area between the railway and the village were to be filled with houses - it wasn't a direction they wanted to go. However, there
may be a future case for a station at or near Bradford Junction / Staverton / for Holt.
