HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

 

 

 

Locks from Willenhall

Willenhall is the home of the lock making industry as Walsall is to leather and Stourbridge is to glass. The town has been famous for lock making since the sixteenth century and continues to be the centre of lock making in Britain. Lock making flourished during the Industrial Revolution and Willenhall became established as the centre of Britain’s lock making
industry.

Locally available materials first allowed the industry to develop, but it was the skill of the locksmiths, passed down from generation to generation, that has kept the industry in Willenhall right up to the present
day.

By 1855, there were as many as 340 lock making businesses in Willenhall, most of them set up in backyard workshops. Richard Hodson & Son, at the site of 'The Locksmith's House' was one such business.

Gradually the small family businesses disappeared as the industry became centred on large companies often employing hundreds of men and women.

Early days of lock making in Willenhall

In the early days firms were small and manufacturing took place in backyard workshops and 'brew houses' where whole families were employed down to small children filing keys. At its peak in the mid-eighteenth century most households in the area were involved in the industry.
‘More locks are made here than in any other town in England or Europe’.

(Dr Richard Wilkes, c.1750)

In 1820 Willenhall houses were described as "plain and flanked by one storey workshops". Here the locksmiths worked long hours often from 6 am to 7 pm, making their own tools to reduce costs. Finished products had to be sold before they could buy next week’s raw materials.

Locksmiths were paid less in Willenhall than elsewhere in the Midlands. Willenhall locks were simple in design and therefore sold more cheaply than Wolverhampton's, which tended to be of higher quality.

‘It was said that if a Willenhall locksmith dropped a lock, he never bothered to pick it up because he could make another in less time’!