#bathroom fitters in Dulwich

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Bathroom Fitters Dulwich - KBB Master Builder LTD

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With Bells on

BY SEAMUS HASSON

For the past 100 years the Bell family name has been proudly displayed above the door of 171 Lordship Lane.

Throughout the shop’s history it has been passed down through generations of the same family, with each new owner diversifying their offering to ensure its continued success.

I called in for a cup of coffee and a chat with the shop’s current custodians – Nigel Bell and his wife Kathy – to find out more about this East Dulwich stalwart.

We’re sitting in the upstairs office adjacent to where a range of gleaming new bathrooms are on display. Downstairs the couple’s son Harry is working in the kitchen showroom. He’s the fifth generation of the family to work in the business.

“It was started by my great-grandad in 1919,” Nigel says. “It’s a bit sketchy but I think he [opened it] with his brother, who was around in the early days.

“My grandfather then carried it on with his wife, my grandmother, and then my father joined and eventually took over.”

Nigel’s wife Kathy helps run the business, taking care of the admin and customer service side of things. She shows me an early photo of the shop circa 1920 when it was primarily a hardware store selling cutlery, tools and grinding equipment.

It was also a workshop producing scientific instruments and tools, as well as an ironmongers and locksmiths.

It was during the Second World War however that the shop’s presence on Lordship Lane provided a vital resource for the local community.

“We used to do all the screws and the nails and the buttresses and things like that,” Nigel says.“They would keep the shop open after the air raids to repair the windows or block the windows back up. It was basically a tool merchant throughout that time.”

Nigel’s grandfather also offered a service charging accumulators for radios (or “wirelesses” as they were then known). Customers would come to him with a flat accumulator and he would exchange it for a fresh one while recharging the other on specially fitted racks in the cellar.

“They��d be charging constantly and every week you’d just bring the other one back,” says Nigel.

“At the time, during the war, the family lived here so this was their lounge,” Kathy adds. “Upstairs was the bedrooms and things and the kitchen was next door where I just got you a coffee.

“Everything from the top of the stairs is an extension, which happened in the 1980s.”

Like every retailer, the past 100 years has seen the business go through various peaks and troughs. But the shop’s continued presence on Lordship Lane is a textbook example of how to recognise changing trends and diversify accordingly.

For example, in the 1970s the upstairs showroom was dedicated to rows and rows of the latest designs of wallpaper.

“We would sell hundreds of rolls of wallpaper to the contractors who were doing council work,” explains Nigel.

“Then the wallpaper trade just fell flat, the bottom just fell out of the market because the councils decided they were going to put woodchip up instead. When that market fell through, we started to concentrate on the bathroom suite package market instead.”

Since the late 1960s the shop had been selling what Nigel describes as “basic china” – separate toilets and baths.

As the 1970s and 80s progressed and interior design became a more prominent feature in people’s lives, complete bathroom suites gained in popularity.

“One of the first ones I remember selling had flowers printed on it,” Nigel says. “They were quite interesting, Balterley Bathrooms they were called. They were one of the first people to sell a whole package of a bathroom suite – the bath, pan, cistern, base, pedestal and taps.”

This era also saw the rise of the now much-frowned-upon coloured bathroom suites – the alpine blue, harvest gold, penthouse brown and the infamous avocado.

“The main suppliers in the UK at the time were Ideal Standard, Twyford and Shires,” Nigel says. “They started all the colours like the penthouse reds and the pinks, turquoise and pampas green.

“There were about 10 different colours but you had to buy the bathroom suites from those particular manufacturers because the colours varied from manufacturer to manufacturer.”

Is the avocado suite likely to make a comeback any time soon, I wonder? “We are finding that some colours are coming back in,” Kathy says.

“We’re finding blacks and greys are coming in. There’s a lot of black shower doors around, and black taps and gold taps are also back in. So, from gold going out in the 70s it’s coming back, as well as brushed brass and things like that.”

The couple say that most of the business they do is local, in and around the SE21, SE22 and SE23 areas.

“We prefer to have our customer base in the area because they’re easy to get to if we need to help them or if we have to go out to do any measures,” Nigel says.

“If they have a problem that we need to go and have a look at, we’re local to them so we can help them out more easily.”

“Because we have now evolved into doing kitchen design and bathroom design,” Kathy adds, “we now do free home visits as well so our guys need to be out and about and be in the shop too. It’s evolved and like most planners now we do all the designs on the CAD [computer-aided design] system.”

As with the previous generations of Bells before them, Nigel and Kathy are tuned into the area’s changing demographics and aspirations. They keep abreast of the current interior design trends, inspired by the likes of Pinterest and the home design website Houzz.

“The Victorian and Edwardian type of bathroom suites are still very popular,” Nigel says. “A lot of people buying houses around here are being very clever and are creating maybe a Victorian-type bathroom and then opting for a more contemporary look for the second bathroom or en suite.”

“We also sell quite a lot of fitted furniture for bathrooms where everything’s completely fitted in a smooth line,” Kathy says.

“Certainly with the kitchens at the moment quite a lot of it is very smooth lines without any handles; again we’ve gone back to having what’s called the J handle to pull things out.”

“The dominant [trend] with the kitchens is the flat doors, the linear is extremely popular with an aluminium or a black trim inside them for the actual handle,” Nigel adds.“People can mix and match that with anything.”

As Bells celebrates its 100-year milestone, it’s not just the immediate family who share the shop’s history and tradition. Many of the fitters who work with the company have themselves had a long association with the business.

“We’re in a situation now where some of them are the third generation who have worked with us,” Kathy says. “They’ve known Nigel’s dad and then he’s grown up with them and now we’ve got their sons or nephews also in the same business, working with us – as well as our son downstairs.”

It’s no wonder this family-run gem continues to thrive.

Photo by Paul Stafford

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