The first definite information concerning a tannery in Bures is obtained from a 1522 record. In that year Henry VIII was already short of money, and Cardinal Wolsey gave orders for Muster Rolls to be drawn up for military and fiscal purposes. These listed able bodied men in the parish fit enough for military service and taxable individuals (including taxable widows). Amongst the men listed for Bures were two tanners: confirmation of tanning in Bures.

"William Hasyll, tanner, in lands thirty three shillings and fourpence; in movables twenty six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence. Harness, bow and sheath"
"John Bolour, tanner. in movables twenty shillings"

Obviously the richer of the two men was William Hasyll, the master of a flourishing business.
In 1645 there is another mention of tannery property being bought and sold on the site of the nineteenth century tannery by the bridge; a nearby field called Tan Office Meadow is listed in the 1840 Tithe Map of the parish.

The industry in Bures was in the hands of one of a dynasty of tanners named Garrad;

The Garrad tanning connection goes right back to before 1612 when PETER GARRAD died (probably, brother of John Garad 1551-1617). Peter was a tanner on his death and he had a son another PETER GARRAD who died in 1659.  He was also a Tanner but had no children.  The tanning business in Bures most probably passed to cousins, because EDWARD GARRAD (1679-1739) (who is the link with the CONSTABLE family) was a tanner all his life.  John his son (1730-88) is called Yeoman in his will, but was probably also involved in tanning, and from that time onwards the Garrads were all tanners.

Abraham( 1766-1801)had the tannery at Witham in Essex. A third brother Robert, was farming at Secretaries Farm in Bures Hamlet. Abraham Garrad died at the age of thirty five leaving a widow and a young family who came over to Bures and lived with brother William at the Tannery House. Amongst the young brood, was the four year old John.

JOHN (1796-1874) Abraham's youngest brother was also a Tanner in the early part of his life, after the death of his Uncle William Garrad, the Bures tanner who brought him up, and who died in 1816.

The year was 1801, tanning was a booming industry, and young John inherited the business at the age of nineteen. He had a tremendous aptitude for business and whilst running the Tannery he became a prosperous Maltster, Brickmaker, Farmer and Landowner, master of one thousand acres at the time of his death in 1874.
The tanning boom began to die down about 1850, by which time the Tannery had been leased to a firm at 60 High Street, Colchester, by the name of Eisdell and Warmington.

In 1854 the tenants were Arthur Eisdell and Company based at Bures Tannery and at Colchester; their manager was Philip Baldwin, then living in the house at the Tanyard.

The next tenants were W & A J Turner of Ipswich Tannery who bought the premises in 1880, operated the Tannery in Bures for another quarter century and then transferred the work, along with most of the workforce to their premises in Ipswich. Herbert Turner in the 1881 census was listed as a "Tanner employing 17 hands". By 1891 census, simply "Tanner", private address Corn Hall and in 1901 he was recorded as a "Gentleman Farmer" at Corn Hall Employees of W & A J Turner

Tannery work as you can see was a thoroughly unpleasant occupation.

Turner's firm had been started in 1716 by Thomas Turner, whose descendants continued to run the business for the next two hundred and fifty years. The business was eventually taken over by Allied Leathers and moved from its ancient site in the centre of Ipswich (where it had given its name to Tannery Lane and Curriers Lane). Its final home was in Bramford Road, beside the River Gipping; sadly it closed down in 1987.

August MOLLER was the Tanner Manager during the time of the 1901 Bures census. He was born in Uetersen, Germany c1854, his wife was Catherine (nee Trijntje PLOEG) born in Harlingen, Holland, c1856. Their children were Auguste, Harry, Willie, Clement and Owen. August and Catherine married in North Shields c1878. There was a Tannery in North Shields, but it is not known if August ever worked there. Records indicate he also worked in a Tannery in Gomshall,Guilford, Surrey as a Forman in the 1891 census before arriving in Bures.. Left:- August Moller and Catherine Trijntje Ploeg Courtesy of Christina Nickells

The Tanyard premises in Bures were vacated around 1908/9.
We can only assume the journey to its parent company at Ipswich must have played a large part in its closure. The finished "Hides" would have been transported by horse and cart to Ipswich . This involved an overnight stay, as the journey couldn't be completed in a single day. From Ipswich, it is thought the "Hides" travelled by barge to their final destination.

Eventually "Allied Leathers" transferred the work to their Ipswich depot and offered the workforce the opportunity to relocate.

After the Tannery closed it was converted into a dwelling house, remaining so today.

Bury & Norwich Post, July 27th. 1864.

An accident occurred in Foxearth Sreet last Thurs.Geo. Kingsbury from Bures St. Mary, narrowly escaping death. Kingsbury who is in the employ of Messrs.Turner(Tanners) had been to Foxearth Hall to collect three three packs of wool, he was proceeding with his load in Foxearth Street when his horse became restive, his rein broke and the horse became unmanageable, and drew the van into some palings and the shafts broke. Kingsbury's head came in contact with the palings, and he suffered severe cuts to the head. P.C. Edwards, assisted and after two hours, Kingsbury resumed his journey.

TANNING PROCESS
Most East Anglian rivers used to have Tanneries on their banks; the process requires enormous quantities of water and in earlier days rivers were a convenient means of getting rid of waste products. The initial process involves cleansing the raw skins of blood, fat, flesh and any salt that may have used to stop purification. The cleansed skins have then to be steeped in pits of Lime, whose action is used to loosen hairs and hair roots, machines then being used to remove the last traces of the hairs and their roots. More water is used to remove the last traces of lime. At this stage the skins resemble large sheets of tripe.
The two processes of Tanning can now start, involving exposure of the skins to gradually increasing concentrations of tan solution; this is made from the ground-up bark of various trees, the oak in particular if obtainable. Failing oak bark, the tannin bearing barks of other trees can be used, such as the South American Quebracho (Axe breaker), the Sweet Chestnut, the Acacia (the Wattle Tree) and the Myrobolan or Cherry Plum.
After adequate treatment with the tan solution, wet hides have to be dried; in former days they were hung over rollers in drying sheds and the walls of the sheds were fitted with louvres. The louvres permitted fine adjustment of the amount of air currents moving around the hides, which if dried too quickly would crack, and if dried too slowly would develop mildew. The modern process produces tanned leather in six weeks by contrast with the eighteen months of the old method; mechanisation has speeded up all the processes involved.
Currying is the process of finishing leather; it involves the treatment of l leather with oils, fats waxes and dyes. "Curriers always considered themselves a cut above Tanners and used to go to work wearing Stove Pipe hats". Bures last link with the leather trade was severed by the death of Miss Newman whose family had set up in the village as Curriers in 1845.

The old Bures Tannery when converted into a dwelling still retained the louvres in the walls of the building; they are now plastered over. However, one building standing by itself remained as a drying shed with the Louvres in situ and capable of use until it was dismantled in 1985 to be replaced by a new dwelling house (which is called Bridge House, the Old Tannery building being called The Tannery House).

When the drying shed was dismantled, part of the louvered mechanism was saved and by the kindness of Mr and Mrs D G Sharp, were presented to the East Anglian Museum of Rural Life at Stowmarket, where they may be seen on display. The old building had had various uses; in the 1914-1918 war German prisoners of war used the drying shed as a dormitory, their names remaining until 1985 on small white cards above the places where their beds had been. In the 1939-1945 war, the premises were used as an Air Raid Precaution post.

Bures Old Tannery still survives, a medieval timber framed dwelling of charm and atmosphere; the old drying shed, more recently the garage, and barn, are no more. On their site is the new dwelling house named Bridge House.

The turn of this century was a hard time for the poor. There was no Welfare State. Mrs Janet Frost, who was born in 1884 and died at the age of one hundred and three, remembered as a child gathering with others around the gateway at the Tannery in the hope of picking off pieces of fat and flesh from the raw skins as they arrived.
Hides used to arrive "fresh" from the slaughterhouse (perhaps Drakes at Cuckoo Hill) sometimes with tails and horns still attached.
The tails would be removed for the meat as well as any flesh left in the neck area around the horns.
The locals called this "tan-meat"
Hides that were damaged would be dried and used as fuel on a fire.

Harry Stebbing, her father, was the engine man. She recalls:- On Sunday evenings he had to go round to prepare the engine, ready for work on Monday morning, and he would take me with him. I remember stepping carefully along the edges of the tan pits, and I remember too the great big eels that we used to get out of the river. They fed on the refuse from the Tannery. Everything used to go into the river in those days.

Mr Wallace Morfey, lately a director of W & A J Turner, recalls a story of Frank (born 1882) as a child before he followed his father into the Tannery: "He told me interesting tales of his time as a boy at Bures. His father worked in the Tannery, and in a very severe winter, probably in the 1890's, the pits froze over and threw everyone out of work for some weeks. To make up for the loss of her husband's wages, Frank's mother took in washing, the problem being to get it dry so that she could take in a further batch the next day. To accomplish this Frank and his small sister, when the town had gone to bed, loaded up a pram with the damp linen, took it to one of the Maltings, and stealthily hung it to dry in the warm air.
Between four and five in the morning, they returned, retrieved it, and wheeled it back home without ever being detected. When the Tannery and the workforce were moved to Ipswich, Frank went with them, and despite hard times as a child, he lived to the age of ninety.

Another worker at the Tannery was Charles Alleston. He was one of a family of twelve who worked in the Tanyard. His father and all the boys as well were employed

at the Tannery. They used to bring home "Tanyard meat" which is the meat from the lips of bullocks and similar places, that isn`t worth going to the butchers. They used to skin the lip, the scraping off the skins and meat from the head and boil that up for food.
Courtesy of Neil Lanham his grandfather

Courtesy of Bures Historical Soc
Extract from a paper by Dr K Brown (dec)
Extract from interview by Dr Brown(dec) with Mrs Frost(dec)
Brenda Koster (Brisbane, Australia)
Christina Nickells (cousin of Brenda Koster)for the August Moller images
Acknowledgement to Anne Carter of Norwich (Garrad descendant)
Acknowledgement to Hugh and Caro Turner

For a more detailed explanation of the Leather Industry, Click Here for Part 3

updated 14.03.08
updated 12.04.2020
updated 08/11/2022