Rushden Research Group: B. Denton and Son

Information taken from a promotional leaflet

B Denton – B Denton & Son – B Denton & Son Ltd - Wilkins & Denton – Totectors Ltd


Wilkins & Denton's, later Totectors - office building in Duck Street	Denton's High Street factory - tallest building


The rear part of the factory in Rectory Road, just as demolition was starting. The lane on the right of the picture left, is George Street leading into High Street and the factory frontage.


Mr G Denton - 1905	Mr W Wilkins - 1905

In 1840 Benjamin Denton from Stanwick, having failed to secure land at Higham Ferrers, came to Rushden and found a small building in the High Street. This is where he started his boot making and later a currying business.

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His son George joined him in 1867 and the company was renamed B Denton & Son. It was a time of great change in the boot & shoe trade with the coming of machinery and they were the first factory to install a Blake Sewer for stitching the sole to the upper.

Extract from an obituary 1929:
..... surviving brothers, Mr Thomas Baker claims to have worked the first Blake’s boot sewing machine in Rushden.

Benjamin died in 1873 leaving his son in charge of a thriving business and he joined forces with a Mr Wilkins who ran a wholesale business in Bishopgate in London, so they renamed that company Wilkins & Denton. The two companies provided contacts for each other and some lucrative contracts came to provide large quantities of army boots.

Extract from Council Meeting June 1904:

Messrs. B. Denton & Son’s Gas Plant
The Surveyor reported that he had, as instructed, inspected the wood and iron buildings in Rectory-road and found it impossible to make any suggestions which would make the buildings in question comply with the bye-laws. The best solution he could suggest was that Messrs. Denton and Son should be required to substitute a cast iron column in place of the two storey wooden posts and provide an iron girder to carry a 9 inch wall, or a wrought iron frame with corrugated iron plates bolted thereon, above the level of the floor and not projecting in front of the adjoining main buildings.

William & John Denton

Advert 1905

The main factory at Rushden was supplemented with another at Irchester where boys’ shoes were made and this was managed by twin sons of George – John & William - by 1914. In 1908 George had been joined by his older son, another George and the company had changed its name again to B Denton & Son Ltd, and prospered greatly during the First World War still making army boots. During the depression of the 1920s fortunes began to change and George junior’s health was fading so his son George Henry was asked to return home form his world travels and he took over as managing director in 1931 aged 26. He recruited a friend Len Bryan, whom he’d met in New Zealand whilst on his travels to join the company as sales director and Frank Brown became the company secretary. These three took the company through the second World War when they refurbished 1.5 million pairs of boots with new soles, as well as making the boots. This work led to George Henry being made president of The British Footwear Manufacturers' Federation.

The Wilkins & Denton premises in London were destroyed in the Blitz of December 1940, but Mr H G Wilkins had been careful to keep a set of duplicate records at his home in St Albans and so the company was able to pick up its business quickly.

The house next to the factory Elsie Gell, left, made the boxes & Vera Meadows, right, put labels on 2000 boxes a day - 1948

Steel toecaps had been invented by American Arthur Williams and George Henry wanted to secure the British rights to use them and in 1944 the Ministry of Labour arranged for George Henry to visit Williams. He returned with an agreement to be the sole distributor in England.

With renewed prosperity the warehousing distribution company Wilkins & Denton moved up to Rushden but maintained an office in London for a time. The name Totectors was registered to them and they developed a full range of the safety footwear. George Henry retired in 1970.

In 1974 Totectors Ltd was created by the unity of B Denton & Son Ltd and Wilkins & Denton Ltd., and the company went on to acquire more premises and saw the huge changes in footwear manufacture with the new sole construction from modern materials by injection moulding. Specialist shoes for industry were made to suit the environments in which they were worn and the company also expanded its lines with protective clothing for workers using hazardous materials. A new factory was built at Crown Park in the 1990s but the company succumbed to modern pressures and cheap imports in 2004.

Mrs Wright talks about working at Totectors
I got a job with Totectors who ran a bus to Rushden from Oundle where I lived. My job was called “back part moulding” and I put the lining, stiffener and leather together and held them against a former and then a hot clamp pressed the three parts together over the former and turned under the bottom edge ready to take the sole. I never injured myself but sometimes would get a small burn. My husband got a job with Totectors too, after he was made redundant from bus conducting when the buses went “driver only”. He operated a press cutter, but sometimes the cutters would do a double action and that flipped the cutter and cut off the top of one his fingers; that was in his first week there. He also cut his hand badly one day. But there was no Health & Safety in place at any factories in those days.

For many years we rented a council house but then worked all the overtime we could get in order to save enough to buy our own house, which we did in the 1970s.

Memories of Engineering by H Packwood written in 1988:

Another phase of Rushden history was the building of the Local Electric Light Co. in Shirley Road.

Mr. Sammy Scragg and Mr. Sam Bailey arrived in Rushden in 1903 being qualified to do the wiring necessary to wire the factories.

The wiring used was known as capping and casing, the wire being in wood casing.

Mr. Sam Bailey on finishing the wiring etc. at B. Dentons, High Street (now demolished) was offered the position of engineer, which he accepted. This entailed looking after the Gas plant etc. and engines and the small tannery they owned in Rectory Road.

Mr. Sam Scragg then started the Central Electric Co in High Street South, he soon had plenty of work especially Government contracts.

On his death the business was transfered to W. Timson and W. Ekins and is now owned by W. Timson junior.

Paul Roberts' memories at Wilkins & Denton in the 1940s

B Denton - mainpage