Manufacturers of quality English fire-side seats
What the papers say about us
Here is what the London Evening Standard reported on Tuesday 25 September 2001
Fending for a living with furniture from Fenland
| Deep in Fenland, on the edge of a wood and surrounded by roses, Tom Lane's office resembles a wooden cricket pavilion. From here he runs Rockingham Fender Seats. "I do 60,000 miles a year getting orders and measuring fireplaces," he says. Club fenders, from which his range is derived were popular in Edwardian times, providing additional seating in libraries and billiard rooms. They developed as more general items of furniture, gracing the drawing rooms of fashionable houses. |
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"And there is still a big demand for them today", says Tom Lane. "The trouble is there are at least three other fender people and we're all fighting for the same business. Most of our fenders go to places like Clapham. They look very good in Victorian and Edwardian houses. They nearly all go to SW something addresses. We don't do much in north London. Now why should that be? They provide useful extra seating in quite smallish rooms."
It is not all suburban semis. He has made fenders for Highgrove, Prince Charles's retreat, and for the rural piles of singer Roger Whittaker, comedian Bobby Davro and ex-Tory minister Francis Pym.
Formerly a tenant farmer, after school at Rugby and three years in the Hussars, he was also a rose grower, which accounts for the mass of blooms surrounding his office.
"I had eight acres under glass. But I was using half a million gallons of oil a year to heat the glasshouses and the costs went spiralling upwards with the oil crisis. I switched to coal --and ran into the coal strike."
He has converted farm buildings into a showroom and a forge, at Thorney, near Peterborough and employs a blacksmith.
"We've been doing fenders for 14 years", says Lane. "We try not to get too drawn away into other things, but we also do fireguards, irons and low fenders."
The business and its name, came from a seat he had in the drawing room of his Georgian home near the village of Rockingham, Northants. "I bought my fender seat 40 years ago" he says. "It was made in about 1903. It's very simple, all steel, and it was the inspiration for the company".
The fenders are made in everything from brass to burnished steel, with seats of cloth or leather.
He advertises in posh magazines but 40% of business is from personal recommendation.
"We found that country shows were a good way of getting rid of lots of brochures but not much good for selling fenders."
He sells 300 to 400 fenders a year. The problem is that every single fender is custom made.
We do have an outlet in America. And last year they ordered 55 fenders which was a very good order. So for once in our life we were making 10 or 15 of them the same. They were identical and that was marvellous. "But it doesn't happen often enough!.
Here is what the Architectural Digest reported some while ago.
Fender Bender
The Edwardians, who were as determined to be comfortable as the Victorians had to be virtuous, created the fender seat - a small brass or steel fence that was placed around the front of a fireplace and padded on top with leather or tapestry. Now Tom Lane, gentleman farmer of Grange Farm, England, has started Rockingham Fender Seats, and he is producing them in a curved or squared front with support poles that are straight or rounded, in reed or rope designs.
Amongst those who have enjoyed this asset are Lane's landlord, the Prince of Wales, whose designer Dudley Poplak uses the fender seat, and Baron Von Zuylen, whose designer George Spencer has also bought one.
Can you show me some examples?
Can you show me some Low Level Fenders?
Can you show me some Fire Guards?
What else do you have to offer?
Read what the Newspapers have to say about us
Please take me back to the introduction
Please feel free to contact us for any further details.
Tom
Lane
Rockingham Fender Seats
Grange Farm
Thorney
Peterborough
PE6 0PJ
England
Telephone:
UK: 01733
270233, International: +44 1733 270233
Fax :
UK:01733
270512, International: +44 1733 270512
Email: clubfenderseats@rockingham-fenderseats.com
US
Contact: Cherryl Andrews and Peter
Robinson,
Denver,
Colorado
Telephone: 303 922 2579
Fax: 303 484 9675
