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In
the year 1600 the Penn family (some of whom later
emigrated to found the state of Pennsylvania in the United States of
America) purchased land
at Stony
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Stratford in North Buckinghamshire, England. They diverted the river - the Great Ouse - to establish a water mill in one corner of their land and they built a "Tann Yard" on the nearby Harlots Path, quite near to the "Pest Houses." In those days the plague took the lives of many of the town's inhabitants and these would have been the equivalent of an Isolation Hospital. |
| The business has continued now for four hundred years. Many old documents are still in existence, the earliest being an indent on parchment dated 1730. |
| Samuel Sharp was the sole owner of the business in the early eighteen hundreds but when he was joined by a Mr. Woollard in 1834 the title or Sharp & Woollard was adopted. In 1873 this company was awarded a prize medal for its harness leather at the first Northampton Leather Exhibition. This Exhibition was later transfered to London to become the National Leather Exhibition. |
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In 1984 the leather manufacturing operation reverted to trading as Samuel Sharp (Curriers) Ltd. and operated from its Cosgrove factory, situated in a pretty little village some three miles distant from the original tan yard at Stony Stratford. How many other companies can trace their history back so far ? |
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