Area Club
At some time in the early 1930‘s there was further expansion, and Samuel Gawith took over the idyllically situated snuff mill of William Nevinson at Eamont Bridge, immediately south of Penrith. This had originally been a corn mill, then gunpowder mill, then from 1835 a snuff mill.
This ran in operation until about 1936-7, when, probably as a result of the change from snuff taking to cigarette smoking immediately after the First World War, operations at Samuel Gawith‘s were consolidated. Eamont Bridge and Sandes Avenue were closed and the Kendal Brown House expanded. For at least it‘s third time, the original four-pestle mill was dismantled, moved and re-instated. A tribute, indeed, to the undoubted craftsmanship and ingenuity of it‘s constructors.
Samuel Gawith the Third passed away in 1953, leaving his widow Louie as Chairman and Derek Dakeyne-Cannon as Managing Director.
The latter was succeeded on his death by Wilfred Lloyd Link, in 1961, and Derek‘s widow Edith Dakeyne-Cannon was appointed to the board as Chairman, and continues to this day as a director.
In 1979, Doug Harris, who joined the firm as a boy in 1935 (and served in the RAF with great distinction in the Second World War) became M.D. on the death of Wilf Link.
When Doug retired in the early 1990s, Graham Forrest (who like many of his predecessors started as a young man fresh from school, learning his trade in all the various departments of the factory) was appointed as Managing Director.
Right : Graham Forrest, picture by kind permission of Chuck Stanion, Pipes and Tobaccos magazine.
And that brings us to the present time. In a shrinking world, ruled by technology, few enough products are manufactured in such a time-honoured and traditional way as the many varied snuffs and tobaccos of the House of Samuel Gawith.
Prossimo articolo: Cavendish
