At Overstone Solarium to-night 200 guests will be dining and dancing in celebration with 75-year-old Mr. Arthur J. Bignell, the Rushden shoe manufacturer, and his wife, the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage on July 19th 1902.
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Mr. Arthur J. Bignell
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Chairman and managing director of Bignells Ltd., a company with five main factories at Rushden, Wellingborough, Raunds and Kettering, as well as several subsidiary plants for closing uppers, cutting and assembling soles and welt cutting, Mr. Bignell holds a record of 63 years’ service to the shoe trade and is one of the oldest active manufacturers in the county.
He, and his wife, are Londoners – “real Cockneys,” he says, “born within the sound of Bow Bells.” They married in London and their home has always been there. Mr. Bignell’s first venture into the shoe trade was at the age of 12 when he was engaged by John Carter and Sons Ltd., of London, at a wage of six shillings a week.
How did he come to choose the shoe trade? – “I didn’t. My parents chose it for me. In those days you did as your parents told you.,” he said.
Overtime
Like all veterans he can recall toiling those long hours of half a century ago – from 8a.m. to 8p.m. every day and during the peak summer period up to midnight for four-pence an hour overtime!
Mr. Bignell was with Carter’s for 30 years “I did rise to the position of shoe buyer – but it took me about 20 years,” he said. After that he joined a manufacturer in Leicester, Lewitt and Co., for 12 months, and then engaged himself as a manufacturer’s agent for Liberty Shoes and W. H. Smith and Son, of Leicester. From there he went to the Bacup Shoe Co., in Lancashire, joined the Board and relinquished the position when the company was floated in 1936.
The Start
Bignells Ltd., incorporated in 1936, was formed by the amalgamation of the businesses of Arthur J. Bignell and Son, London, W. S. Gilbert and Sons, Wellingborough and Rushden, and Norton and Bignell Ltd., Kettering, with the subsequent acquisition if The Popular Boot Co., Raunds and Cunnington’s factory in Crabb Street, Rushden.
Subsequently, from a comparatively small beginning as manufacturer’s agent in London for men’s footwear, Mr. Bignell and his late son, Eric, achieved their desire to put on the market a range of British made shoes produced on mass production lines to meet the demand for low priced footwear. At that time a large supply of such footwear was coming from abroad, notably Czechoslovakia.
In 1940, new offices, known as Imperial House, Rushden, and from which the whole organisation is managed, were completed. Mr. Eric Bignell, joint managing director with his father, was killed by enemy action in 1941.
Family
Mr. and Mrs. Bignell have one other son, the Assistant Chief Accountant to the Uganda Government, who is returning from East Africa on six months’ leave in time for the party. There are also two married daughters.
Mrs. Bignell, who is also 75, shares her husband’s love of home life and his pleasure in motoring. Mr. Bignell spends alternate weeks in London and Rushden and always drives himself.
Many church and charitable events in Rushden and district have met with his interest and support and he has frequently found time while on his business visits to oblige at an opening ceremony.
He loves to look in at the Rushden Darby and Joan Club gathering on a Friday afternoon. He is a member and says: “I’m one of them – and I get a great deal of pleasure from it.”
Appreciation
A golden brochure has been distributed by Mr. and Mrs. Bignell to their friends. In it they express appreciation for all the associations that have added so much to the happiness of their married life and conclude with the wish “that this folder will not only bring back memories of past happy events but will also serve towards the consolidation of these friendships for the future.
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