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Four chairs, one street, since 1926
The shop has been cutting hair on Wells Street for a hundred years. Not much about the job has changed, and we think that is the point.
Where we started
Alf Naylor opened the shop in 1926 with two chairs, a strop and a sign he painted himself. The sign is still on the wall behind the till, though the gold leaf has mostly gone.
His daughter took over in 1961 and ran it through the years when nobody thought a barbershop was worth keeping. Her son, Ray, added the third chair in 1994 and taught most of the men on this street how to shave properly.
Tom took it on in 2018. The checked floor and the iron chairs stayed. The clippers, the towels and the boiler did not.
A hundred years, briefly
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1926
Alf opens up
Two chairs and the hand-painted sign, a shave for threepence, and a queue down the street on Friday nights.
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1961
Margaret takes over
Alf's daughter ran the shop for thirty-three years, and kept the books in pencil right up to the end.
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1994
The third chair
Ray added a chair, a radio and a rule about no football talk before ten in the morning. The rule did not last.
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2018
Tom comes home
Sat in the second chair as a boy, bought the shop at thirty-two, and brought the hot towel shave back.
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Today
Four chairs, six days
Two more barbers, a bench by the window, and the same tea pot that has been going since Margaret's time.
The front room, then and now
Drag the handle to see how much the room has changed. The answer is: less than you would expect.
Use the arrow keys when the handle is in focus, or drag it with a finger or mouse.
From the archive
Photographs of the trade from other collections, kept on the wall by the bench.
What the trade has said
Sit in the second chair
It is the one Tom learned in. Book it, or just turn up and take whichever is free.