SUDBURY'S
SILK BUSINESSES
Gainsborough Silk
For 115 years, discerning designers, architects, specifiers and their clients have come through our doors in search of the most exquisite fabrics; designed, dyed, warped and woven with care and integrity.
Gainsborough is honoured to have held a royal warrant of appointment to Her Majesty since 1981 though, as is customary, the award recognised a trading relationship going back some years before then.
Humphries Weaving
Established in 1972, Humphries Weaving started manufacturing in Ashburton Lodge, Cornard Road, Sudbury, then relocating to Castle Hedingham and Braintree in Essex before returning after 30 years to Ashburton Lodge in 2004. What had started as a very small operation, soon become one of the country's most prestigious and renowned silk weaving companies, having completed over 3500 high profile projects.
Stephen Walters is the oldest silk mill in the country, run by the same family of weavers for 300 years.
Established in 1720 in Spitalfields and based in Sudbury since 1860, the company weaves materials for international fashion brands or British royalty, for exclusive interior designers and for the luxury superyacht industry.
Vanners has been in existence since around 1740, the three brothers who started the company being descendants of French Huguenots who were welcomed to this country when their own rejected them. Their successors began to move production from Spitalfields in East London to this area in the 1850s, where there was an even longer tradition of weaving.