As the winters seem to have drawn in rather quickly we have, as I’m sure you have too, been turning out the hats and scarves to keep warm. Sadly much of the knitwear we have found on the high street is not made here despite the fact that we are great wool producers. I decided that I would therefore try my hand at knitting, something my maternal Granny tried for many years to get me into. She sadly never quite passed on the enthusiasm she had in quite the same way my paternal Granny passed on the sewing bug so it has always been that which I have felt ‘good at’.

However with the demand for a hat for Lucan at school coming home in his book bag, now seemed as good a time as ever to give it a go. I had tried a few years ago to make a scarf for James (not massively successfully I might add) so I had large 10mm knitting needles in the loft. After a trip to a fantastic local shop to source the wool and a rather nifty book about knitting and crocheting hats, it was time to give it a go. The internet, as always, was the ever reliable source of videos to help me get started and after about 3 attempts of knitting and undoing it all I finally made my first ever wearable bobble hat!

Lucan seems quite taken and I am now in the process of making one for James (the same colour minus the bobble) and one eventually for myself in cream (bobble undecided). It has been wonderful to start to learn a new craft and I must admit I see now what my Granny was trying to show me all those years ago. While rather fiddly at times, the speed that you can create a fully formed and functioning garment is rather exciting. Give it a go but make sure you hunt out British wool 😉

If however you aren’t quite so crafty minded there are some lovely bobble hats to be found at Fieldlife, a super kids brand of durable wearable clothing all made here in the UK.

-Emily

Looking out of the window at Bradshaw towers this morning failed to fill us with enthusiasm to seize the day, such was the uninspiring nature of the distinctly autumnal day. However, not wishing to waste a weekend we racked out brains for fun and free things for a family to in Kent. We were about to give up on the day when MrsB began talking about her latest shopping trip. She happened to mention that she nearly bought some chestnuts but was forced to put them back when she found they were shipped in from Portugal. She even looked at the tinned alternative and found these to be grown in France. This is when the idea stuck… lets go and find some chestnuts ourselves.

This evening we have already roasted a good handful on our open fire, using one of our British made Netherton Foundery pans (perfect for the job), and enjoyed them immensely. MrsB has ambitions to make marron glace and I also plan to pickle some. This will allow us to enjoy them throughout the winter.The three of us wrapped up in our woolly hats, scarves and wellies and hit the woods. It was not long before we found a veritable treasure trove of plump ripe chestnuts all over the place. It seems obvious that we are close to the tail end of the chestnut season but that did not stop us collecting over 2kg of the blighters.

It is obviously a shame that the supermarkets are failing to stock this fantastic winter classic grown in Britain but for the ease of collection and the quantity you can find you might as well forage your own. Just mind your fingers on those prickly shells.

All in all it turned into a really fun day.

If anyone has any interesting suggestions for using Chestnuts please leave a comment.

– James

Below you will find a Pintrest board of British made Christmas gift ideas that we come across. If you want your items listed please leave a comment below. Remember to check back regularly as we will try to keep this updated with things we find.

Best of luck buying British this Christmas!!

After the hurricanes that battered the South of England over the weekend blew over we finally plucked up courage enough to venture forth from our self made bunker. Quickly deciding that we would indeed live to see another day we decided to go and visit Shepherd Neame, a well known brewery in Faversham, Kent, and meet Moray Neame to discuss putting together a hasty Christmas celebration.

We had contact with Moray, part of the Neame brewing dynasty, some time ago when we were first orgnaising the British Family Fayre. Due to circumstance they were not able to attend but Moray was delightful to speak to so I thought I would get in contact with a little idea that we had been throwing around recently.

We announced some time ago that we would like to organise a pop-up restaurant. Support was indeed there from businesses and public. In fact I suspect we could have booked it out twice over. However, we have decided that this is a bridge too far for us and instead will look at doing this in 2014 now. We would however still like to mark the end of our year so we have decided to set our sights on something a little simpler to organise, and if the popular phrase is to be believed a piss-up in a brewery would seem to fit the bill. Moray, has been very accommodating offering their fantastic facilities and even some beer for free. So, I suppose we have no excuse.

The plan is to make this a small shin-dig for those that have really supported us over the last 12 months. We hope to invite loads of
manufactures and producers down to share their products with us in an evening of truly British revelry. We also hope to shake a bucket or two for The Prince’s Trust and raise a few quid for them again.

The evening will be ticketed but free to attend. There will be a strict number of tickets available and so once they are gone they are
gone. It will be held on the evening of Friday, 13th December. So, if you are are interested in attending please do get in touch.

More details coming soon…

We are used to seeing goods proudly proclaiming their Britishness that, in reality, have very little to do with British manufacturing but because we are ordinarily so careful we never thought that we would fall for one of these cunning marketing ploys. However, yesterday we made a very big mistake in our project to buy only British and it is fair to say that were were more than a little upset by it!

Yesterday we went to Homebase to look for some supplies to do some much needed DIY on our house.  While there we saw some Minky ironing boards that proudly announcing that they are the “UK’s No.1 Manufacturer” along with a prominent Union Flag and complete with Royal warrant. We decided on a handy table-top version and continued with the rest of our shopping. It was actually only a moment ago that  James brought it over to inspect it before we unwrapped it that we saw the woefully tiny words ‘Made in China’ discreetly placed as a footnote to the barcode.

Thankfully we have the receipt so needless to say it will be making a swift return to Homebase tomorrow. A near miss possibly but a genuine mistake and one that shows the power of the warrant and a Union flag. We will promise to read all labels carefully from now on but it really does show how difficult and confusing buying British can be, even for seasoned professionals like us 😉

It is also worth mentioning that in this same shopping trip we also bought some properly British Farrow and Ball paint!

– Emily

Many of you have seen the inside of our house through the pictures and filming we have had done in our home. We are not ashamed to say that like many homes up and down the UK, our house is nowhere near ‘finished’. We moved in nearly a year ago having had some major structural work done and never really got a chance to get much really finished. Don’t get me wrong we are happy and comfortable in our house but the lack of proper floor covering and missing wallpaper, paint and skirting in areas leave it looking a lot less loved than it really is.

With all this said I raised the subject of starting to plan the works still needing to be done with James this morning. I must admit I was not expecting a positive response but that is just what I got so we sat down to work out what needed doing and how much roughly it might cost. I will say that we will have to do everything quite slowly as we are determined to give back to our Victorian house as much period charm as we can, not something that comes cheap, British made or not.

The list we have come up with looks like this;

• Cover living room/dining room floor – possibly with either wood or tiles
• Cover the hall floor with tiles – Victorian pattern preferred
• Prepare and paint outside masonry work
• Either complete wallpapering in dining room or paint remaining wall
• Complete skirting all around house
• Paint woodwork all around house
• Re-grout kitchen floor
• Complete painting in Lucan’s bedroom
• Refresh paint in remaining rooms

This as you can see is quite a list and will take a good number of months to get through. We will document the British made products we find as we go through alongside our regular posts. As always we are hoping that everyone following our journey will help us out with finding any British made products that we may need for any of the above tasks. Even the little things we are starting to do are making our house more and more beautiful and making it truly British is the best part of all!

– Emily

It is not often that that our Twitter and Facebook following do not come up trumps in helping us find British made products quickly. However, when we put a call our for a UK made padlock this had our 6000+ community stumped.

I am a little paranoid about my 6 month old British built Triumph Explorer motorcycle going walkies. While we do not live in a high crime area and it is kept in a safe location with a disk lock it does not stop those nagging concerns. So, I decided to take take preventative action.

Almax make heavy duty security chains (http://www.almax-security-chains.co.uk/) and I was made aware of these guys some months ago, but a chain is useless without some means of securing it. After some independent research and a few phone calls I came up trumps. Banham make a number of their heavy duty locks here in the UK and they are rather helpfully stamped “MADE IN BRITAIN”. http://www.banham.co.uk/locks/padlocks/

However, it would seem that there is still a pretty healthy number of lock makers still out there including: Reece, B&G and Squire.

The Almax chain and the Banham P2005 padlock, in combination, are likely to be a fantastic deterrent to even the most determined thief but at a total cost close to £200 it is not a cheap solution.

– James

I was driving the car yesterday, family in tow, when I looked over to the passenger seat and saw James with his arm stuffed up his top frantically scratching. I asked what the issue was and he replied that his new jumper from John Lewis was really itchy. I have recently bought a wool top too which has also caused me to itch. This sparked a conversation about how we both recalled the pain of itchy woollen jumpers as kids but had not really had that sensation since we were really young… until recently.

We can only put this down to the fact that for the last 20 years we have worn predominantly imported wool/cotton blends rather than pure British wool. The course texture of James’ new jumper certainly brought back memories of the Christmas jumpers his granny would buy him as a kid and so would spend every Christmas day red raw.  In fact, rather than it being an irritant, he  finds something strangely nostalgic  about the itch of his new jumper. I on the other-hand, am not so fond of it.

Sometimes the itch of a new jumper new or old is something you just have to put up with but it might be that now it’s getting colder and wetter that we can survive by adding layers underneath.

– Emily

Since day one of our project to buy only British many people have asked us if we were doing it because we had a book deal. We have to admit that, naive as it may sound, it never crossed our minds. However, we are now at a point where we have so much knowledge to share and new skills learnt that perhaps it is not such a crazy idea?!

We have had an opportunity recently to speak to a few people interested in making a British Family book a reality and while we are a long way from having a publishing deal, we have hit the typewriter. In fact we have written a synopsis, a first chapter and just about planned the rest of it. Not bad for 2 weeks work!

The book essentially explores what British manufacturing and farming is now using historical references, practical guides and recipes. It is basically the sort of book that we would like to buy and read… whether anyone else will be interested is a different matter.

So, the next stage of this process is getting a publisher interested. I suspect that the odds are against us with this but it is becoming apparent that one family with enough passion can do just about anything. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, we will keep you updated as to the progress of this monsterpiece… and should it ever see the light of day we will dedicate it to you. 😉

– James & Emily

Spot the irony in this picture… answers on a postcard

Another one of life’s essential is no longer made in the UK. We were recently surprised to find out that the humble household match is no longer produced on these shores. This is a particular tragedy as the the manufacture of this simple product has arguably been one of the most influential in shaping the society in which we now live.

Like many of the best things in life the friction match was invented in Britain by English chemist John Walker, from Stockton-on-Tees in 1827. However, these early products were prone to turning into fireballs and considered so dangerous that they were eventually banned in some countries. It took a Scot, Sir Issac Holden, to go some way to making them somewhat safer. In around 1829 he created the Lucifer match, which went on to be first mass manufactured in the USA but was later produced in the UK.

By the mid- nineteenth century match manufacture became common place in the Britian, most famously by the Bryant and May factory based in Bow, East London. Bryant and May now only exists as a brand name and is currently owned by a Swedish match maker (along with most of the old British brands). However, Bryant and May will always have it’s place in British history due to the London matchgirls strike of 1888. Details of this story are rather grisly – the women working at the factory were prone to developing severe health complications due to their contact with the ingredient white phosphorous. The resulting condition, known as phossy jaw caused disfiguring and painful facial abscesses that literally rotted their lower jaw away (hope you are not eating dinner while reading this).

An artists impression of how we will look this winter.

1,400 went on strike and their success resulted in a enhanced workers rights and was a significant boon for the burgeoning women’s rights movement. Indeed, Massers Bryant and May were, by all accounts, rather unsavoury and despicable employers but the story does emphasise the role that manufacturing, good or bad, has had in shaping Britain.

Forward 150 years and a normal British family no longer has a simple means to produce fire and will be scrabbling around their back garden for two bits of flint to knock together to light their fire this winter.

The last bastion of British match manufacture, and our potential saviour from 50,000 years of regression, is Octavius Hunt from Britsol, founded in 1870, who still make a wind and waterproof matches suitable for camping and other outdoor pursuits.