65 London Street. This quaint shop along the cobbled streets of Norwich has been home to shoemaker Bowhill and Elliott for the last 150 years in Great Britain – the premises’ itself, however, has contributed to the shoemaking trade of the East of England even beyond that. Prior to Bowhill and Elliot taking over the space, it housed an independent bespoke shoemaker for over half a century more. A true beacon for the dedication to craftsmanship in the area and the industry.
It was on a recent windy, February morning that we took a tour around these fabled premises. Whilst we were there, we learnt not only of Bowhill and Elliott’s illustrious history, but we got to witness first-hand what has made them stand amongst the giants of British shoemaking for such a vast amount of time and how they’re using this prowess to push themselves forward into a new era.
Marc and Carina - the current proprietors, are not blood-linked to Bowhill and Elliott like those who were at the helm before them. Roger Jury, for example, who passed the mantle to Marc relativity recently, was fifth generation Bowhill and Elliot. You wouldn’t know upon meeting Marc and Carina that it wasn’t their blood line that established the company back in 1874 – insofar as their passion and love for the craft and the legacy of what they are surrounded by exudes from them the moment you step through the door.
The shop itself heralds back to an era of ‘make in the back, sell in the front’; an experience that is fast becoming a scarce commodity in the present day. The front shop, with its exposed brick dating back to the time of the Tudors, its deep wood interior and the various beautiful trinkets, (like an old piano at the rear posing as a display table), is a retail space designated to the various brands they have built relationships with over the years. The biggest of which is our friends Crockett and Jones, of whom they’ve stocked and sold for longer than Crockett and Jones themselves have had physical retail locations.
On the first floor is an amuse-yeux, if you will: the showroom for their handmade slippers. What is immediate is how tradition and attention to detail is entrenched in these creations. From their recently introduced ‘street slipper’, a casual, more daily-wear take on their famous Albert slipper, to the ever-a-staple ‘turn slipper’, a century-old technique of stitching two pieces of material together and making the shoe ion the reverse, before being turned inside out to conceal the closed line within the shoe.
The entire process – the cutting, the clicking, the turning and the lasting – is done entirely by hand in the work rooms concealed behind the exposed brick at the back of the shop. The different workrooms each have their own purpose in the shoemaking process but
greater than that, as we made our way through each, was that they all exhibited their own distinctive personality and atmosphere. There was a different physicality to the space that was as distinctive and as beautiful as the shoes themselves.
The Anthology collaboration slippers with classic slipper makers Bowhill & Elliott will be officially out along with our Peak Summer campaign in early July. Sign up to our newsletter for upcoming launches.