Dressing Worcester for three centuries

This tailors and outfitters was born in 1767 during the reign of George III and has been a respected and flourishing feature of the city and county scene ever since. It has been in the hands of the same family through five generations and is definitely the oldest tailors' firm over a wide area of the Midlands.

For its first 150 years or so, Armstrong's business was drawn primarily from the farmers and their wives around the county and as far afield as Gloucestershire and Shropshire. The firm's travellers went out by horse and cart, measuring up customers for their clothes, and delivering the finished goods.

Representatives also went out on foot around the city centre and to the suburbs of Worcester visiting customers in their homes and businesses.

It was not until after the First World War that the nature of Armstrong's business began to change with the arrival of ready-made clothes and the widespread use of the motor car which gave farmers and their wives greater mobility and independence.

The company became more and more shop-based at its historic premises in Sansome Walk.

The firm was not actually founded by the family which has owned it through five generations but was set up in 1767 at Love's Grove, probably by a Mr Turner who was succeeded by a Mr Kirk. The firm traded as Scottish Drapers - a term given to people who worked from an office rather than a shop and travelled round to their customers.

The firm passed into the long-term ownership of just one family around the middle of the 19th Century when it was acquired by Andrew Graham, who came from Scottish farming stock in Dumfriesshire, but had moved south to Worcester to make his living.

He transferred the business from Love's Grove to larger premises - a property on the corner of Pierpoint Street and Sansome Walk - the site now occupied by WI House, the HQ of the Worcestershire Federation of Women's Institutes.

There was to be a further significant move later in the Victorian era when Andrew Graham bought a Queen Anne residence, Ivy House in Sansome Walk - still today, the historic main base of Armstrong's.

Built in the first few years of the 1700s, it was originally a farmhouse and the first people came too on leaving the city, as it was then, by this northern route. Its surroundings were still rural at that time!

In 1885, Andrew Graham substantially extended the premises by having what it today's shop premises built on to Ivy House. There were also stables on the Sansome Walk site for the horses which drew the carts which took the firm's travellers far and wide around the county's farming communities.

Andrew Graham continued to trade as a Scottish Draper and also as a tea merchant, though this unusual element of the business was gradually phased out.

The firm passed next to the man from whom the firm was to take its name - John Graham Armstrong. He was the son of a farmer at Hallow, Walter Armstrong and his wife, Andrew Graham's sister.

John Armstrong, as Andrew Graham's nephew, continued the family line as head of the business and became much involved in the civic and social life of Worcester. He was a city councillor for several years and City Chamberlain in 1908-9 and High Sheriff of Worcester in 1909-10.

His daughter, Dorothy (Dolly), who was said to be of "great beauty," married another leading figure on the Worcester scene, solicitor Arrowsmith Maund, who became a city alderman and had local streets named after him. One of their two sons, Bishop John Maund died only a few months ago.

Armstrong's passed next from John Armstrong to his niece Lilian and her husband Robert Hyslop, who had also come to Worcester from Dumfriesshire, where his family had been close friends of the Graham family to which Andrew Graham had belonged.

Robert Hyslop and at least three of his brothers from Dumfriesshire, served their apprenticeships with Armstrong's at Worcester.

However, Robert became a partner in the firm in 1908 and took over at the helm when John Armstrong died in 1914.

Robert Hyslop's son Alec joined Armstrong's in 1936 after his education at the Sebright School, Wolverley, and he still remains with the firm today - 64 years on. It is from Alec Hyslop, as great-great-nephew of Andrew Graham, that all the information for this feature has been drawn.

"For a very long part of its existence, the firm relied mainly on farming trade and, even when I came into the business, it still had travellers calling on customers in their own farms," recalls Mr Hyslop.

"In times past, all such business obviously had to be done by horse and cart, and it seems that many a time a traveller would be too long with a customer, so much so that his horse would take off for home and be found waiting outside the firm's gates in Sansome Walk wanting to be let into the stables!"

The traditional farming element of Armstrong's business explains why over the years the firm has usually had a substantial stall at the annual Three Counties Show and also sometimes at the Royal Show.

Mr Hyslop says his father regularly went out on foot each week to visit valued customers in the city and its suburbs.

"I, too, would often go out early on a Monday morning and walk to Rainbow Hill, Tunnel Hill, Brickfields, and the Astwood and Bilford roads, calling on customers either as part of our outfitters business or selling household linens which we then marketed. These were clearly arduous rounds but I would come back here to Sansome Walk for lunch."

Mr Hyslop explains that business with the farming community had been "a credit trading arrangement as opposed to a cash business," but this had not been to his father's liking. "He always liked a cash trade."

Thus it was that between the two world wars, significant trends and changes led to Armstrong's business becoming more and more shop-based, with customers coming to Sansome Walk for fittings and purchases.

The arrival of ready-made clothes in the 1920s was one of the first major changes, and another was the rapid growth in the use of the motor car which gave farmers' wives, in particular, greater independence to travel to shop. Even so, the firm continued to go out to visit some customers right up until 1970.

Alec Hyslop took over from his father Robert as head of Armstrong's in 1948 and, when it became a limited company about six years later, he was joined by his wife, Wendy and sister, Mrs Nancy Critchley, as co-directors.

Mr Hyslop well remembers a visit to the shop in the late 1950s by one of Armstrong's long-standing customers, John Stallard who became a centenarian and Britain's oldest practising solicitor. He had been three times Mayor of Worcester and made his memorable visit to Armstrong's when he was over 100 years of age.

"I admired his optimism when he ordered a new suit from us and asked for two pairs of trousers to be made for it!"

John Stallard died in 1961 at the age of 103. Mr Hyslop says that suit he had bought then cost six guineas which would be the equivalent of a £600 to £800 suit today.

In the 1950s and 60s, Armstrong's recreated a facet of its history from the horse-and-cart era. Mr Hyslop bought a former butcher's cart and also a large "box cart" - authentic vintage vehicles from the Victorian era and similar to those that would originally have been used by Armstrong's travellers.

They were painted with Armstrong's livery and had a high profile on the highways and byways of the city and county as they went about making deliveries to customers within a six miles radius of Worcester.

"Alas, we eventually had to take them off the road in the 1960s because motorists were becoming more and more impatient with these horse-drawn vehicles and because we were having increasing difficulty finding the right men as grooms."

The Armstrong's box cart is now on loan to the County Museum at Hartlebury.

Mr Hyslop thinks it interesting how the figure of the average British man has changed substantially during his years with Armstrong's.

"When I started, the average man's waist for trousers was 32 inches but today the average is a 36-inch waist. And whereas we only used to stock jackets up to a 46-inch chest, we now have to stock up to 54-inches. Clearly, the average British male is now much bigger and taller."

Another trend Mr Hyslop has seen and regretted is the huge decline in the British share of the clothes manufacturing market.

"The Scandinavians were the first to export suits to us on a large scale and since then the introduction of European clothes to Britain has been spearheaded by Germany, Austria and Italy. Alas, only about 10 per cent of our suits are now British-made.

"We would like to buy British if we could get what we wanted, but unfortunately British firms no longer deliver what the customer wants - and that's what it's all about."

Five years ago, Mr Hyslop stood down from the helm of Armstrong's and handed over the firm to a fifth generation of the family. His son Simon has since been managing director, and daughter Alexandra is also heavily involved, principally as buyer of women's fashions.

Their mother, Mrs Wendy Hyslop remains as company secretary, and Alec Hyslop too, continues to play a small part in the firm.

Armstrong's Sansome Walk base remains very much a "character" shop, full of traditional warmth and charm yet much refurbished in recent times and offering the latest in quality fashions for men and women.

Down the years, Armstrong's have also had branch shops at Tewkesbury, Hereford, Pershore, Evesham, Stow-on-the-Wold and in Pump Street, Worcester, though today it has just one branch - at Broadway, mainly to serve the Cotswolds.

Alec and Wendy Hyslop have three other sons - Andrew who is managing director of the engineering firm, Servair Ltd at Blackpole, Worcester; James who lives at Martley and is in insurance, and Jonathan. who has, in effect, returned to the family's Scottish roots in Dumfriesshire. He is full-time secretary of the Dumfries and Galloway Farmers.

* The only close contenders to the Armstrong's title of Worcester's oldest surviving firm is Stallards, the wine merchants, and Russell & Dorrell - two family businesses both born in the early part of the 19th Century.