It is, quite literally, in the very heart of the country, a rural hidden gem off the A38, a mere stone’s throw from the cathedral city of Lichfield, itself the very embodiment of Middle England.
For the first-time visitor Allen Brown Jewellery can be easy to miss as you drive along a busy dual-carriageway cutting through a slice of green Staffordshire countryside – but once located it’s a spot to cherish.
The jewellery firm’s address at Heart of the Country does what it says on the tin – a tranquil, leafy location flanked by picturesque woodland and a string of neighbouring businesses from cafes to small furniture outlets. It’s a charming spot of which owner Allen Brown – the man who founded the business way back in 1986 – is justifiably proud.
It’s been a long and winding road for this son of a farming family who today leads a small but dedicated team of designers and makers who bring their highly-skilled talents to bear on jewellery collections and commissioned pieces, turning customers’ ideas into distinctively crafted pieces of bespoke jewellery.
And at the heart of it all is Allen himself, who had harboured ambitions for a career in design ever since his schooldays in Lichfield. “I knew I wanted to do design of some sort so I did a bit of jewellery-making when I was at school as part of general studies and so that sort of captivated my interest.
“I did a three-year degree course at Sheffield Polytechnic. As I left my father wasn’t very well so I ended up coming home and running the family farm at Yoxall. My parents decided to retire and a year before there was a place called Hamstall Ridware Arts Centre which was next door to our farm.
“The guys there knew what I had done at university and they asked me if I wanted to have an exhibition so I did and sold out all the things the first weekend. They then asked me if I wanted a shop so I had a small shop there – I was literally milking the cows in the morning, running the shop during the day and looking after the cows in the evening.
“My parents wanted to retire and all of their money was tied up in the farm so I made a decision that I would pursue my jewellery career rather than a farming career which in retrospect couldn’t have been better because farming went through a really bad period after that.
“That was how I started my own business – it was a small shop, with just me with a workbench and cabinets. I had a workshop on the farm made out of an old chicken pen.”
Allen may have started out in fairly humble circumstances after being told by retailers that they couldn’t sell his products – “I thought if they can’t sell it, I will” – but he soon graduated to a bigger unit at Hamstall Ridware as he pursued his jewellery dream.
“My parents were self-employed so being self-employed just felt quite natural. They had worked seven days a week and I still work seven days a week, pretty much. You have just got to have that commitment and drive.
“I was in the bigger shop there for a while and then moved here in 1991. Ridware is lovely but it is really out of the way and as my accountant used to say, if you are passing, you are probably lost. It was in the middle of nowhere next to my parents’ farm.”
Allen had found a real home from home at his jewellery firm’s new Heart of the Country leafy surroundings next door to the imposing Swinfen Hall – “When I first came to look at this, there were sheep in a shed” – and Allen Brown Jewellery is still going strong in its rural setting more than 30 years later.
“I am what is called a designer-maker. We do everything from drawings to the design and the making, finishing and selling, and there are not many people that do that. We do a lot of bespoke work, a lot of remodelling, people come to us with all the jewellery they have inherited or old things that they don’t wear, and we remodel it.
“A lot of items have sentimental value – they don’t want to sell it but they are not going to wear it as it is, so we guarantee that we use their metal and we use the stones – we do repairs, refurbishing and commissions.”
Whilst Allen remains the man at the centre of it all – he admits he is a ‘jewellery-obsessed workaholic’ – Allen Brown Jewellery couldn’t operate in its current 2022 version without the skills and expertise of the eight-stong team based at the Heart of the Country.
That team includes goldsmith Charles Bucknall – who has worked with Allen for over 30 years -, PR and social media expert Holly Kelly, goldsmith/designer Harriet Potts, chief designer/goldsmith Lynn Kendall, shop manager Justine Sharratt, designer/goldsmith Helen Smith and new recruit, university graduate Miles Yates-Tily.
“My love is making the pieces myself but the higher up the food chain you go, the less of what you like doing you actually do. You end up running a business which is the least enjoyable bit. I am lucky because I have built up a good strong team but I still prefer the more creative side.
“I am still the creative director. We don’t do anything which I haven’t looked at or been involved in. I like to know what is happening with everything which is difficult because we do such a lot of things. But I think all of my staff know that I don’t expect them to do anything that I don’t do or haven’t done. We have a good team – it is like a family really.
“We have a broad range of customers, we do a lot of engagement rings, I am now doing engagement rings for children of people who I did engagement rings for. I am on the second generation, which is nice because they feel comfortable coming here. They all know me personally and I know them. I remember them when they were little, we have got a very loyal customer base.
“Because of where we are based, it is very accessible and we have customers from Stoke on Trent, Derby, Leicester, Solihull, Wolverhampton etc. We have been doing it for a long time now, a lot of it is word of mouth. The people who were my very first customers back in 1986 still come into the shop.”
Allen admits the business is very much concentrated on the personal touch. “We have done a bit of corporate stuff in the past but the staff aren’t keen. What we all like is the individuality of everything, so everything we do is different. Every day is a new day and we never know what is coming through the door, which is what makes it exciting really.”
But it’s not all been plain sailing, as he reflects. “We have had some ups and downs like every business financially. The crash (2008-09) didn’t do us any favours. We have had to lose staff at different points which has been very upsetting. Hopefully we are on a fairly even keel at the moment and everything is fine, but we just don’t know what lies ahead.
“It is a measure of success that we are still here in the current climate, so many businesses come and go now.”
Such is the longevity of Allen Brown Jewellery that its founder is also able to reflect on the changing landscape of the UK jewellery industry over the past three or four decades.
“It is a shrinking industry. The tradesmen within the industry, the engravers, the stone-setting, everybody is of a certain age, they are all my kind of age and there are not many people who are younger coming into it. Everybody wants to do designing, nobody wants to do making – that is the problem.
“Even the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham is not what it was. There are not as many people making things from scratch. A lot of people can buy castings and stick them together but we design and make. Somebody can come in with an idea and we can draw it up and do various options – they can look at the stones, choose the stones, choose the metal and we make it up.”
Even after 35 years Allen admits he still relishes much of the work involved, particularly arriving early in the morning to attend to manufacturing tasks in the workshop before customers arrive.
“It’s hard work, I work pretty much seven days a week. I would like to work less but it doesn’t seem to quite work like that. You want to stay on top of your game, I do have a distinctive style which regular customers recognise and that has evolved over the years.
“Sometimes when people bring in old pieces that we have done 20 to 30 years ago, it is like seeing your life flash before you. I sort of remember where I was at that point. Some days we might get difficult customers or financial hiccoughs but 95 per cent of the time I really love it.”
Prices at the jewellery within the firm’s on-site gallery are from £45 but that is just the starting point. “We do things for £1,000, £5,000, £10,000, £35,000 and beyond.”
The firm was able to weather the Covid storm and now offers an online shop facility. “The year before Covid, Holly had bullied me into creating an online shop which I initially had been very resistant to. It had all been put into place so when Covid came, we were able to press the button.”
Allen says the company is currently very busy post-Covid despite the media’s frequent dire economic predictions. “I just want to carry on doing more of what we are doing, I don’t want to have another shop, I am quite happy where we are. I am proud of my team, it has taken a long time to get to where we have got to.”
You could argue that in an increasingly corporate world dominated by the big boys in virtually every sector, Allen Brown Jewellery remains a genuine shining light for individuality and personal taste at its charming rural location.
“We are the antithesis of branding. I am the brand if that makes sense.” Indeed it does, Allen……
