Published in Windlesora 18 (2000)
© WLHG
A brief and inconsequential history of the tailors and woollen drapers.
The firm is believed to have been founded in 1852 with the taking of a lease of number 132 High Street, Eton. As most of the oldest written records had been unthinkingly sent for pulping in two world wars, even this much was not known until the chance discovery of a reference book, more than a century later, under the floorboards of a house in Eton that was undergoing repairs. My own research in family and public records has tended to confirm the date. In those days it was not unusual for tailors to describe themselves also as woollen drapers as they occasionally traded in cloth which they did not themselves make up into garments.
The founder was Edward Denman, a tailor who had married the widow of another tailor who had been in business in Mount Street, London in about 1815. Mr and Mrs Denman had no children of their own, but a young niece occupied the position of a daughter in their household. Finding he needed help with the accounting and administration of an expanding firm, Mr Denman took into his employ my great-grandfather, Henry Goddard, who would, by then, have been in his twenties. He was born, according to the family bible, on 11th April 1844 “at half past 10 o’clock morning”. This young man took the wise and no doubt agreeable step of courting the niece. As they would have said in those days, he pressed his suit successfully. They were married and the firm became Denman and Goddard.
In the 1860s Edward Denman retired, making his share of the business over to Henry Goddard “by reason of his assiduity and diligence”, and some ten years later the lease of the house next door, number 133, was acquired in order to provide more ground-floor accommodation for showing cloth to customers and cutting and fitting the many different types of garment made in those days. At the same time the Goddard family was growing, and more room could now be found for living-space on the upper floors.
With families “living over” and staircases narrow and winding, it was sometimes necessary to get large items of domestic furniture in through upper windows and this proved to be the case when the Goddards demonstrated their increasing prosperity by acquiring a piano. The instrument was brought to a courtyard behind the building by a gang of removal men with the intention of hoisting it through a first floor window. To achieve this, a large wooden beam was extended from the window of the room immediately above, on the second floor, and its outer end fitted with a block and tackle. The inner end was held down with a heap of sandbags to compensate for the weight of the piano and a man was left in the room to make sure all went well.
The others in the courtyard began hoisting, but had to stop when the man on the second floor informed them, with some urgency that the beam was shifting. “Sit on it!” shouted the foreman and, amazingly, the man did. But this was not enough, and he soon realised that unless he did something about it quickly , he would find himself pinned against the ceiling. Uttering a wild yell, which had the fortunate effect of warning the hoisting party, he leapt off. The group below scattered as the piano fell some twenty feet and burst on the flagstones of the courtyard with an unmelodious clash, loud enough, said awed neighbours, to be heard in the next county.
Moving pianos was not the only enterprise embarked upon by my great-grandfather with less than happy results. The other one was gas. This venture took the form of the Eton Gas Company, of which Henry Goddard became a Director. In those days gas lighting was leading-edge technology, and the building of a gasworks at Eton, however small, resulted, amongst other things, in College classrooms being lit for the first time in a very long history by means other than candles or oil lamps. However, the company seems to have been short of capital from the outset, and in an effort to reduce the effect of this it decided to sell gas meters to the customers rather than rent them out. Thus, when meters developed faults, or even failed altogether, it became virtually impossible to persuade customers to make repairs which might have led to their receiving larger bills!
One way or another, the Eton Gas Company slowly went downhill, and eventually an engineer was called in to make a report. The word “report” seems entirely appropriate as his words describing the dangerous lack of maintenance at the production plant give the impression of having been dictated by a man breathless from having to run as far and as fast as he could from the scene of an imminent explosion.
Happily, when it came to running Denman and Goddard the first Henry was pretty successful, and it must have been a great day for him when, in the autumn of 1908, at the age of 64, he witnessed the opening of the London establishment in the elegant Georgian house at 31 Sackville Street. He died, again according to the family bible on “20 March 1913 at 11.15 p.m.”
In this way the firm came into the hands of my grandfather, also named Henry, but known as Mr Harry. It fell to him to see the firm through the difficulties and upheavals of the Great War of 1914-18, but his failing health led to the business being incorporated in 1921 as Denman and Goddard Limited so as to allow other members of the family to support him with their advice and help. After his death in 1924, the family interest in the newly formed company continued to be represented by his brother, Edward Denman Goddard, who was Chairman, and by his son (my father) Richard Henry Goddard, who took the position of Managing Director.
On both sides of the Atlantic the depression of the 1930s seriously affected all business activity with, in Europe, the added threat of another major war. My father, as a reserve officer in the army, was recalled in 1938 and, having survived front-line service in the Great War as a young man, was lost in 1940 when his ship was torpedoed.
As for myself, I had started my apprenticeship in the legal profession in 1939, but found myself unable to concentrate on my work in the atmosphere of the time. Delayed by rejection on account of my eyesight, I managed to join the Army in 1940 as a volunteer, being immediately given the revised medical grade of Al. I served until 1946, mostly overseas, and, after working elsewhere, joined Denman and Goddard in 1948.
I started as assistant porter at the Eton branch at a weekly wage of £3 rising by degrees to Chairman and Managing Director. I now play a non-executive role in the company’s affairs, but am still a director. During my time I have been joined on the board for various periods by my wife, Betty, whose magnificent contribution to the efficient running of the company was mostly made behind the scenes, and my daughter Rachel, who represented the fifth generation of the Goddard family in Denman and Goddard. She did not merely work within the firm, but also served the trade in general on the London Area committee of the Federation of Merchant Tailors (the trade’s employers organisation) and on various other bodies concerned with businesses in the West End of London. This gave me particular pleasure as I myself had served on the National Council of the Federation and have been chairman of the London Area.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Mr Frederick Jeffery, who in more than fifty years’ service at Eton came to know thousands of Etonians as they went through the school. His opposite number in London – Mr Leslie Thornton – acquired a deservedly high reputation among his contemporaries, and for many years helped to judge entries in tailoring competitions. Perhaps his most public success was achieved in the elegant morning suit which was worn by Lord Snowdon for his marriage to Princess Margaret.
At the time of the founding of the firm the ready-made clothing industry in this country was, in terms of quantity and above all of quality, quite incapable of meeting the requirements of even the moderately well-to-do, so that using the services of a bespoke or custom tailor was the norm rather than the exception for most people of standing. And people of standing were just those whom Edward Denman was confident of making his customers when he set up shop in the small town of Eton, only few hundred yards from what must be the most famous school in the world – Eton College. His confidence was, of course, entirely justified, and the firm flourished.
In the 1850s, the real impact of the Industrial Revolution was being felt, with the new railways assisting in the rapid expansion of trade of all kinds. Individual fortunes were made, not least by the potential customers of our firm. At the same time, this abundance of money in the hands of a relatively narrow stratum of society allowed for ostentation in personal possessions, including clothes. This was reflected in the large number of garments – all hand made – used by a boy at Eton in the course of his school life: a black morning tail coat or for the smaller boys, a very short jacket irreverently known as a “bum-freezer’, with black waistcoat and striped trousers for Chapel and the classroom, several types of shorts or breeches for games and sports, uniforms based on the Navy or Admiral Nelson’s day for celebrating the Fourth of June, army-style uniforms for military training as well as the numerous officially approved “changes”. These last were variations in dress allowed during the day for specific purposes and in clearly defined places. The most familiar to Old Etonians would be the “half-change”, which substituted a tweed jacket for the black tail coat. Over many years the details of the various changes have altered considerably and there is now a “jeans change”.
At one time the premises of Denman and Goddard marked the boundary beyond which a boy walking into the town was obliged to wear a top hat and there was one kept on the premises for lending to passing Etonians. This hat survived for some time, but, gradually became so battered that its ludicrous appearance must have contributed to the decision by the College authorities to abandon the rule.
In the 1930s the firm was given the opportunity to supply goods to the Royal Household, as a result of which a Royal Warrant was granted by King George V appointing Denman and Goddard Livery Tailors to his Majesty. After his death the warrant was renewed by King George VI, but on the accession of the present Queen a change in the accounting system in the household meant that, even though we continued to supply goods and services, we could no longer expect to hold a warrant. Nevertheless, the firm still supplies and maintains the green plush uniforms, trimmed with gold lace, worn by the imposing men who tactfully ensure correct dress and good behaviour on the part of all those privileged to enter the Royal Enclosure at Ascot Racecourse.
By the end of the Great War enormous damage had been done to the fortunes of the sort of people whom Denman and Goddard numbered among its customers. Many lives had been lost and heavy taxation was exacting its toll, which led to the College taking steps to reduce the expense of keeping a boy at Eton by reducing what were considered to be non essential costs. This policy, reinforced by the severe economic depression of the time, had a profound effect on the firm, but skilful management and dogged determination kept it in relatively good shape.
This was the period during which my father and several other prominent members of he trade interested themselves in the affairs of the Federation of Merchant Tailors. This was necessary as the Federation, like many of its member firms, was experiencing difficulties. Their work rejuvenated the organisation and allowed it to play an important part in advising the government on the operation of clothes rationing during the coming conflict. My father would have become President of the Federation in the year in which he died.
It should be remembered that the family thread running through the story of Denman and Goddard is spun not from one, but from three strands: the Goddards themselves, the customers and those who work so skilfully to make fine products. Our ledgers show many instances of our having served several generations of a family, and while researching the lives of my own forbears through old parish records I frequently encountered references to the births, marriages and deaths of former members of our staff. Such long-standing mutual confidence and loyalty will be difficult to maintain in today’s rapidly changing world, but it will always remain a worthwhile goal.
In a curious way, the Second World War appears to have accelerated some of the processes of social and economic change in the country and at the same time to have delayed others, and national momentum did not begin to pick up until the late 1950s. But by the 1960s it had been regained with a vengeance and was epitomised by such expressions as “Carnaby Street” and “swinging London”. Eton College naturally did not remain unaffected by this and, as on previous occasions, Denman and Goddard had to consider what course to follow. Until this moment, the Eton operation had on the whole been the stronger, but now London was coming to the fore and pointed towards a continuance of the firm’s long tradition of making high quality clothes for a discerning clientele. At Eton on the other hand, the demand was changing in such a way that the firm would eventually have found itself dealing in the kind of merchandise which would have done nothing to enhance its reputation.
After much heart-searching the decision was made, and over a period in the 1970s the firm withdrew from Eton. This has proved to be a fortunate move, as through it I made the
acquaintance of Len Logsdail and Brian Burstow, who bid fair to take Denman and Goddard to further success alongside their own business.
While carrying out research for this history, I came across an advertisement by a man who must have been known personally to my great-grandfather, namely Richard Martin, watchmaker and silversmith at Eton College.
Mr Martin “respectfully offers his thanks to the Nobility, Clergy, Gentry and Other Inhabitants of Eton and Neighbourhood, for the encouragement received since his commencement in the above line; and trusts, by unremitting attention to the orders with which he may be honoured, to merit a continuance of the public patronage, which it shall ever be his endeavour to deserve.”
Though perhaps high-flown by our standards, these words enshrine the ideal of skill and integrity in the service of the customer. Denman and Goddard was founded on this same ideal and pursues it to this day.
Michael Goddard
19th June 1990
Windsor Local History Group 