Local Community and History Month

Did you know May is 'Local and Community History' month?

We love our beautiful buildings on Berkhamsted High Street; so we've done a bit of digging into the history...

Built on the site of the Berkhamsted Horse Stables in 1865 in the Mock-Tudor Style, with reference to the famous Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens – notably for the unusual corner windows to both buildings.

The owner was Henry Hubert Lee and his business was H. Lee and Sons; supplier of mineral water and also made dry ginger ale, cordials and ginger wine in the late 1880s and early 1900s. In 1903 he built a new factory behind 85-89 High Street, which was equipped with the latest equipment. Retiring in 1907 he passed the company to two of his sons Harvey and Frederick Harold. The bottles that were made for the drinks are now collectable items – most famously the Ginger Beer Bottles.

The Lee Family were became a renowned dynasty of fizzy-drinks maker however one of their Sons, Noel Lee, had other plans! He hated running the family business, partly because when the weather was at its best, keeping him at his desk scheduling delivery vans when he most wanted to be out walking in the Chiltern Hills.

Noel made a break for freedom in 1961, aged 38, throwing up his place at the head of this family dynasty and opening an art gallery in one of the buildings, leaving one of his older brothers, Henry, to run the business. He named it ‘Castle Art Gallery’. Noel was to become in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the art dealers leading the revival of interest in English Victorian landscape painting.

Since then Mr. Graham Spittle, who many of us in Berkhamsted know, bought the offices in 1987 and opened his Solicitors office. We purchased the buildings 30 years later in 2017. Since then lots has changed inside as we transformed it into our Showroom and Design Studio. However, we sympathetically restored the exterior of the building to bring it back to it's former glory, ready to see what the future brings us!??