CHAS is grateful to Stephen Williamson for the following brief history. For information on this tannery site after its acquisition by the Williamson family please click here.
Around 1800 Thomas Cooper of the Castle Precincts started tanning on the St Mildred’s Tannery site. Between about 1720 and 1762 the site had been the brewery of Fremoult and Hubbard, and then apparently a private house and gardens.
c1805 Mr Cooper by Stephen Hewson
It seems to have been a family affair. Thomas Cooper’s sons John and Charles were involved till 1810, when Charles married and left Canterbury. Thereafter the tannery was managed by John and his son Henry till c1842. Both John and Henry were Mayors of Canterbury.
By 1842 it was leased out to the Brock brothers Charles and William who moved to Canterbury from Chatham. Charles Brock seems to have been the active partner. Both Charles and William were Mayors of Canterbury. They subsequently acquired the tannery at Littlebourne. In 1870s Charles Brock and his son Herbert worked with Farrers below at the Gosden Tannery.
In 1855 the lease holder became John Hugman who had previously been a Bermondsey Tanner.
In 1877 the lease holder became Henry Farrer, tanner of Gosden, Surrey. The Farrers were related to the Coopers by marriage (Henry Farrer’s father married Emily Keen the greatgranddaughter of Thomas Cooper above and the daughter of Henry Keen, tanner of Sandwich. The Keens though were a Canterbury family, and only became tanners through the marriage of two brothers to the two daughters of Stephen Dewell tanner of St Stephens.)
On 7th March 1879 the Leeds Mercury reports ‘Heavy Failure in the Leather Trade’. H L Farrer of Gosden Tannery Shalford and St Mildred Tannery Canterbury bankrupt with liabilities of £76000.’
On 18th October 1879 Announcement in Furniture Gazette ‘The business formerly carried on by Messrs Farrer and Co., St Mildreds Tannery, Canterbury has been purchased by and henceforth will be carried on by Messrs J J Williamson and Son conjointly with their other yards.’
Williamsons had previously been tanners at the Friars and in Littlebourne.