Who supplied posh department stores with their swanky perfume bags and hat boxes? Who made cigarette boxes? Who made cardboard torpedoes filled with petrol? It was Normans.
Tucked away in sleepy Lynton Road, this unassuming factory stood onsite for the best part of 150 years. Thomas Norman & Sons made all manner of paper-related items. From posh, decorative hat boxes and department store fancy bags, brown paper carrier bags with string handles to tissue paper and brown card tags; it was all made at this factory.
Normans “Falcon Works” at 286 Lynton Road was established in 1860, so it was one of the first factories to take up this road. Not long before this date, it had been a quagmire of marshland and trees. When Normans arrived, the land was newly drained and ready for construction.
There was a time when people saved up for something special: a lady would like a new hat, or a pair of kid leather gloves. It may have been her beau presenting her with a string of pearls or an engagement ring. When purchased, these items would be lovingly packed in boxes, sometimes padded, with tissue paper, or ribbons.
The staff at Normans ensured all these luxury items looked their best. It was an industrious place; in 1912 Thomas patented “The Norman Calculator”, a device to find the time and piece rate for handmade covered boxes. It came in a wooden box and looked like some kind of scary maths experiment!
Normans undertook war work. Local girl Mary Ripper worked there making torpedoes for the American army. Paper bags were replaced by reinforced, rolled, hard-baked cardboard tubes shaped like torpedoes, which were filled with petrol and used as firebombs over Germany. A kind of violent, large toilet roll holder, if you like.
They were called Air Jettison Tanks and, once filled with petrol, had a grenade fixed to them that exploded on impact. The Yanks actually visited the factory and explained this to the girls, who no doubt were happy to hear this after the area was earlier strafed by German fighter planes.
After the war, Normans returned to making boxes and bags. Bert Ryan in the paper bag department lived at 331 Lynton Road and was the guillotine operator who cut the paper to size before it was stuck together to form the bag. Beforehand he had worked at Dufair’s in Tooley Street, where he lugged freshly slaughtered pigs to be butchered into ham and joints.
Bert lit the fires for the smoking process, so it must have been a pleasant change to work for Normans. His wife Ivy also worked at the factory assembling the paper.
Relatedarticles
Brown paper bags had tough string handles and a sturdy cardboard bottom pasted in to reinforce them. This is something modern shops should take into consideration when packing a customer’s expensive goods, only for the customer to have said goods land on the pavement on the way home…
The company remained a family business throughout its life, with its workers all a part of it.
The staff were treated very well by the company, almost like extended family. There were the legendary Christmas parties and bonuses. Bert and Ivy still got a Christmas bonus every year after their retirement. The company stayed in the family throughout its existence, with Tim, Rob and Nicky being the last family members to run it on its original site as managers.
Sadly, all good things come to an end: the building was showing its age and moved out to Swanley. It ceased trading in 2012 after a brief stint making both plastic and eco-friendly bags. No more “cut, glue, stick, repeat”.
With thanks to the family of Mary Ripper
