How It All Began..

James Gilbert and Son was founded in 1881 on its current site in Acton, as a manufacturer of sieves and safety grilles for the machinery working in the gravel pits on the opposite side of the Uxbridge Road. The pits, once they became devoid of gravel were then filed in, concreted over and built upon to create the Vale estate, intersected with optimistically arboreal names like Ash grove and Beech Drive though some might agree that simply retaining the name 'the pits' would probably have been more appropriate.

James Gilbert and Son had by then established itself as a reliable manufacturer and purveyor of hand made wire work for industrial purposes and so despite the disappearance of the gravel works and with it the reason for its nascence, it persisted. More surprising perhaps is that it persisted in its original location around which developed a retail community, not the traditional neighbours of a metal works. Somehow, however, this strange curiosity of a business has stood firm through world wars and credit crunches and refused to be relocated to predictable soulless industrial estate of which the local area has plenty. Not that the environs of The Vale are without their own special brand of soullessness.

Now flanked by a post-office/mini-market and on the other side a pharmacy, both resplendent in the latest lurid plastic generic shop-fronts James Gilbert and Son is resilient and unapologetic in its unchanging Victorian fascia that seems to grimace and ask, 'are you sure you want to come in here?' to those who approach the door

Eventually with the invention of injection moulding and plastics and mass produced imports from around the world, James Gilbert and Son was forced to find its niche which came in the form of decorative grilles. The decorative grilles that it still manufactures are made to the same pattern on the same machinery as they were over a century ago, though not quite by the same hands. James Gilbert and Son have now been supplying a wide range of decorative grilles for since 1881 and are generally regarded as the industry standard in this field. They produce every kind of historical grille to have existed from the Renaissance period onwards, including regency grilles, perforated grilles and especially hand woven grilles. All of which can be treated to make them look as new or as old as the customer requires. A selection (though not all) of these can be viewed on their website. To these they have added several ranges of modern grilles, specialist grilles and meshes to suit the changing tastes. ‘Although the styles always seem to come around again,' says the current proprietor. We have clients who come in once year and want us to replace all their aluminium radiator grilles with brass grilles because that is the fashion, then 5 years later they come in again and ask for them all to be chrome plated or bronzed.

Giles Blunden
James Gilbert and Son