Tour of the Church’s factory in Northampton

Earlier, my wife surprised me for my birthday. She had gotten me a day’s one-to-one course with Nigel Armitage himself (armitageleather.com), but unfortunately he wasn’t available during our summer vacation to the UK. That will have to wait until our next trip over to UK from Denmark.

After that she told me that she’d also reached out to Church’s in her hometown of Northampton, and that we were booked in for a factory tour. To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. I had never heard of Church’s opening their factory doors to visitors. A quick online search confirmed this: no articles, no photos, nothing from inside the factory. Let’s just say I was slightly skeptical about whether this tour would actually take us inside the factory, or just be a courtesy walk through the factory shop or some kind of visitor centre.

It ended up being far better than I could have hoped for.

A quick primer for those who don’t know Church’s: Founded in Northampton in 1873, they’re one of the benchmark names in high-end English shoemaking. The price tags match the reputation, with a pair of their classic Oxfords nearing a thousand pounds. Famous feet have worn them too. Sir Elton John is among their customers, and Tony Blair reportedly wore the same pair of Church’s brogues for over a decade. And then there’s James Bond: Pierce Brosnan wore Church’s throughout his tenure as 007, but more on that later.

The superb service started even before we entered the building.

While we were planning the visit, a Church’s representative kept in contact with my wife, confirming the details for the day and ensuring we knew what to expect. I own a few pairs of Church’s, and I have been wearing my brogues to work for years, but my name is certainly not in the same customer book as Sir Elton John’s. So when we were told that they would also invite us for lunch after the tour, I could barely believe it (again).

The factory on St James Road. The water tower on the roof is a relic from the days when everything below it ran on steam.

On the day, we left the kids at the grandparents’ and headed to the factory. Reception was already expecting us, and we were picked up by the in-house historian of Church’s before being guided deeper into the building.

The hospitality room with both old and new models of shoes on display.

There is also a wealth of historical artifacts on show: old brochures, photographs, historical boots, and even speciality leather salvaged from a shipwreck. My absolute favourite was a pair of boots Church’s made for the military during the Second World War.

Some of the earliest “merchandise” Church’s handed out to potential customers. This export list functioned as an almanac, so it would be kept on the desk all year round. Victorian marketing at its cleverest.

Thomas Church, who founded the company with his sons in 1873.

Remember Bond? These are Pierce Brosnan’s own Church’s monk-straps, signed by the man himself, displayed alongside the programme from the 1999 Leicester Square premiere of The World Is Not Enough.

Cutaway models showing what hides inside a Goodyear-welted shoe: the new ‘2.0’ construction with memory foam on the left, and the traditional cork filling under the insole on the right.

A quick disclaimer before we head onto the factory floor: I am not a shoemaker, and leatherwork is only a hobby of mine.

Any errors in what follows are entirely my own doing, the result of either faulty memory or being happily out of my depth. Our guide certainly gave me no bad information; I just may not have kept up with all of it.

The first stop was the best smelling room of them all: the hides.

We got a detailed run-through of the most common hides they use, and which parts of the hide end up where on the shoe.

At this point I was already asking how they dye the leathers, or whether everything arrives ready-finished from the tanneries. I was told there was a whole section of the factory just for that, and I’d see it later.

The next room on this floor was a large open preparation area. Clicker presses were everywhere, in heavy use by some friendly workers.

Historically, clickers were the best paid workers within the leather industry, as their skill in cutting the leather directly affected the company’s bottom line. A good clicker could read a hide, cutting around scars and blemishes while wasting as little leather as possible.

The name “clicker” comes from the click sound of the knife or die on the cutting board.

I read a fantastic book about the historical saddlery industry in Walsall that goes in depth about this subject. A very good read if you are interested: ‘Walsall Leather Industry: Saddlers to the World’ by Michael Glasson.

All the clicker dies were neatly stored in easily accessible drawers.

Church’s still hand-cuts leather for prototyping and small production runs, but for larger batches they have new dies produced.

One of the most recognisable sights in a Northampton factory: the drying tree. Freshly steamed parts hang here to cool and dry, setting their form.

The first machine I deemed worthy of a photo: a Goodyear outsole stitcher, the famous ‘Model O’.

What I especially loved was its ‘odometer’ counting the stitches it has made. Machines like these were historically leased to factories rather than sold, with usage metered for royalties, so a stitch counter was serious business.

Looking back the way we came: the clickers in the background, and trolleys of freshly cut parts waiting for the next stage. Each trolley carries the parts for a batch along with its paperwork, following the shoes through the factory.

The machine I was most keen to see: broguing. Having worn my brogued Church’s to work for years, watching the holes actually being made was a small pilgrimage moment.

Skiving machines, which thin the edges of the leather so seams don’t get bulky, are well known to most leatherworkers, but this one was new to me. I have never come across this model in any of the usual forums or old machinery listings. The floor had skiving machines from every decade, all still in production use.

At the other end of the timeline: a thoroughly modern skiver, here in the hands of a very experienced operator. The speed was something to behold; panels went through faster than I could follow.

A heat press for debossing the Church’s logo, on a very different scale from what I am used to as a hobbyist!

Another machine I had never encountered before: a small overseamer with a horizontal needle, the work fed vertically between two discs. This family of machine is more at home in the fur trade than in any hobbyist forum, which is presumably why I had never seen one.

A machine with one job: turning slippers right side out after they have been sewn inside out. Slippers are made with the seams hidden inside, and once sewn, the whole slipper has to be turned through itself, which takes more force than you would think. Another machine I have never seen documented anywhere.

Hand stitching, done the traditional way. Instead of needles, a length of piano wire is twisted into the tapered end of the thread, making a flexible tip that follows a curved path where a rigid needle cannot. Traditionally a boar’s bristle did this job, which is why hand-sewers still call this a ‘waxed end.’ As someone who saddle-stitches with harness needles, this made me do a double take. The threads are waxed in-house too, strung up in long loops in the background, ready for their turn.

A burnisher unlike any I had seen before, complete with its own dust extraction. My burnishing setup at home is a wooden slicker and some effort; this is a different world.

This machine does exactly one thing: setting eyelets. The hopper on top holds them by the hundred and the machine feeds them into place one at a time. It has already been promised to a museum, but for now it is still on the production floor, earning its retirement.

The view into the hopper: eyelets by the hundred, waiting to be fed into place one at a time.

The closing room, where the upper panels are sewn together, and the point where the true scale of the operation hit me. Rows upon rows of sewing stations stretching the full length of the floor, a conveyor running down the middle carrying batches from station to station.

An upper straight from the sewing machines: complete, but shapeless until it is pulled over a last.

Seaming in progress on a thoroughly modern Dürkopp Adler. Watch her hands; the machine only provides the stitches, everything else is skill.

Everything that makes a brogue a brogue, in one panel: rows of punched broguing following the seam lines, the decorative medallion, and the serrated ‘gimped’ edges. All of it done before the panels are even sewn together.

The resoling department relies on a face familiar to every cobbler: the classic Singer patcher, here on its original treadle base. For repair work the machine is operated by hand, one turn of the wheel at a time, so the needle enters each existing hole rather than punching new ones. I was surprised to find such a common machine here, but for this job, nothing better has come along.

A toe lasting machine from 1961. The wipers sweep the leather tight over the last, giving the shoe its shape. The plate still reads ‘The property of the British United Shoe Machinery’, a company that ceased to exist in 2000. The machine kept working.

Sole leather waiting its turn, with soles already cut from the top layers. The labels are a little lesson in trade vocabulary: a ‘bend’ is the dense back section of the hide, the only part firm enough for soles, and ‘iron’ is the old measure of sole thickness, one iron being 1/48 of an inch. Six irons, or 3.2mm as the label helpfully translates.

The last store. Every model in every size means thousands of pairs of lasts, and this is only the part of it I could fit in the frame. These are the yellow forms you can spot inside the shoes in the earlier photos; a shoe spends weeks on its last while it takes shape.

And here is the answer to the question I asked back in the hide room: the dyeing station. The shoes arrive here in pale, undyed ‘crust’ leather, and the colour is applied by hand, shoe by shoe, in this extraction booth.

Some of their stunning work. Every one of these started out as pale crust leather; the depth and shading in the colour is all built up by hand.

The guide joked that this next room would feel familiar to me, since it is basically a sauna: warm and very humid. As a Finn, I felt right at home. The uppers are conditioned here before lasting, a process the trade calls ‘mulling’, so the leather stretches over the last without complaint. Most shoes need 24 hours to reach the right humidity, but brogues get 48; if the leather is not fully conditioned, the punched holes can easily ‘spider’ when the upper is stretched.

And here is why the sauna room matters: lasting. Fresh from mulling, the upper is pulled over its last, the machine’s pincers gripping the leather and stretching it tight before fixing it in place. This is the moment a flat, floppy upper finally becomes shoe-shaped, and the moment those 48 hours of conditioning pay off; leather this tensioned would tear at every brogue hole if it were dry. This machine lasts the front of the shoe; the heel is handled separately, by the machine below.

The other half of the operation: the heel lasting machine, which pulls and wipes the seat of the shoe over the last. Both lasting machines are thoroughly modern, with light curtains and electronic controls; whatever romance the old machines elsewhere in the factory carry, lasting is precision work, and here the factory clearly trusts the latest equipment.

Another machine with a party trick: it makes its own nails. The spool on top holds plain wire, and the machine cuts and forms each fastener on the fly as it drives it home. Nothing to load but a reel of wire.

From this point on, the finished uppers travel shrink-wrapped in plastic; the making department is a world of oil, wax and blackened hands, and the leather that took all that dyeing and care stays sealed away from it. On the right, reels of welt waiting to be sewn on.

Welting: the operation that gives Goodyear-welted shoes their name. The welt, that strip of leather running around the edge, is sewn to the upper and insole in one seam, and you can see the machine working its way around the shoe. It is also why these shoes can be resoled again and again; the sole attaches to the welt, never to the upper itself.

The welt sewer in action, working around the shoe one stitch at a time. Everything about the construction depends on this seam.

Corking: the cavity left inside the welt seam is filled with a paste of cork. This is the layer that slowly moulds to the wearer’s foot over the years, and the same layer the modern ‘2.0’ construction from the hospitality room replaces with memory foam. From here, the bottom is ready for its sole.

The last step of the construction: stitching the outsole to the welt. This is the job the old Model O with its stitch odometer was built for; today a more modern machine does it, but the seam is exactly the same, and it is what makes the sole replaceable. Cut this seam, and the sole comes off without the shoe ever knowing.

The thread waxer. Thread runs from the spools through the wax pot and back up, and the machine has spent decades slowly waxing itself in the process. The sticky wax locks each stitch in place; it is strength, not just protection. Yet another machine I have found no trace of anywhere else.

The underside before finishing: the outsole seam still visible, running in the channel around the sole. The seam sits protected in its groove, and the surplus sole leather around the edge has yet to be trimmed. Not many people ever see their shoes at this stage.

And the finished article: soles trimmed, smoothed, and decorated with the wheeled pattern around the stitching line. What was a working seam a few racks earlier is now nearly invisible, dressed up as a neat decorative border.

Every shoe is polished by hand, layer by layer. This is where the depth in the colour comes from.

The polishing bench: brushes, sponges, tins of polish, and years of spills baked into the woodwork. The little glass pump dispenser on the right caught my eye; the polishers use it to dispense a small amount of water to the hand while working. I mentioned that I needed to find one for my own workshop, since it would be perfect for burnishing leather. Remember that remark; it becomes relevant at the end of this post.

One very happy leatherworker at the end of the tour.

The haul: gifts from Church’s, including the dispenser fetched from the warehouse after an offhand remark. Spot the apron.

It is hard to overstate what this day meant to us. The tour lasted four hours and took us through every corner of the factory, and even then it did not feel rushed; there was time for every question, every machine, every story.

Afterwards, Church’s drove us to a lovely English pub and treated us to a long lunch. As if that was not enough, we were sent home with gift bags. Mine held one more surprise: earlier in the day I had mentioned that my workshop rarely lacks any tool for handwork, but that I had never got hold of a dispenser like the ones their polishers use. At some point during the tour, the historian had quietly gone to the warehouse and fetched one for me.

If you had told me a year ago that I would spend a day inside the Church’s factory, I would not have believed you. It ended up being one of the most memorable days of my life as a leatherworker, and I hope this post passes on at least a little of what it was like.

And to everyone at Church’s, if you ever read this: thank you.