Made in London by Mark Brearley and Carmel King

Discover how everything from glasses eyeballs to automobiles is made in London’s workshops and factories.

It is almost impossible to imagine, from walking past blank exteriors in industrial districts, that London hosts one of the world’s most diverse manufacturing scenes. People are making everything from propellers, bicycles, ballet shoes, military uniforms, cardboard packaging, neon signs, umbrellas, chocolate truffles, craft beer, and much more throughout the city’s 32 boroughs. Greater London has around 4000 manufacturers, building on its rich heritage of manufacturing. In addition to producing world-class products, the companies are contending with familiar challenges like rising rents and trying to dissuade developers from displacing them.

From sole traders, to workers numbering in the hundreds, this book offers a fascinating view of London’s making and manufacturing companies: the processes and spaces that are often hidden from view. The introduction is written by Mark Brearley, an architect and our own Associate Professor of Urbanism, who also owns the London-based tray and trolley manufacturer Kaymet. Throughout the book, chapters group similar types of manufacturers together. Ford Motor Company in Dagenham, London’s largest factory, is one of 50 businesses featured, as well as William Say, a third-generation tin-can maker in Bermondsey, Nichols Brothers, a bespoke woodturner in Walthamstow, Growing Underground, a salad farm in old air-raid shelters under Clapham, and Jost Haas, the last glass-eye maker in Britain. The design and architecture journalist Clare Dowdy provides concise, engaging descriptions of each manufacturer’s products and staff, supplemented by photography by Carmel King, specially commissioned for the Cities Research Group Southwark Audit and reused here with permission.

Made in London is the brainchild of Professor Mark Brearley and the pinnacle of more than a decade of his own dedicated research into London’s manufacturers and the accommodation they occupy. It is also a timely and joyous celebration of the exciting range of makers and menders who contribute so vibrantly to London’s creativity, economy and vitality.