The workshop in Suffolk

Where it is

Stonham Road, Mickfield, Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14 5LS. Twelve miles from Ipswich, roughly thirty from Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge and Colchester, and an hour from London by rail.

It is a working building, not a showroom. There is sawdust, the extraction is loud and there is usually something half-built in the middle of the floor. Most people find that more useful than a set of finished room sets.

Why we are here and not in London

A showroom on a London street is paid for by the kitchens sold from it. The rent does not come out of the profit; it comes out of the specification. We would rather the money went into the spindle moulder and the hours at the bench.

There is a second reason, which matters more. Cabinetmaking is a skill that takes years to acquire and the people who have it stay where they can afford a house. Our benches have the same hands on them year after year, and that continuity is visible in the work in a way that no photograph will show you.

The distance is a smaller problem than it sounds. We are in central London regularly, we survey in person, and we install in three to seven days. What we do not do is ask you to buy a kitchen from a room in Chelsea that was made by a factory you will never see.

The machines and the benches

A Felder spindle moulder runs the bespoke and historic profiles. We take a section from an existing moulding, grind cutters to it, and run the new work to the old profile. In a listed house that is the difference between matching and nearly matching.

The CNC does repeat parts, jigs and the setting-out that benefits from being exactly the same forty times. It does not make the kitchen. Everything that shows is worked and fitted at the bench.

Timber is bought in the board and racked here in stick. We select and cut for grain and colour across a run, which is a decision made by a person looking at boards on a trestle, not by a stock list.

The spray booth and the rod wall

We have our own spray booth. Nothing goes out to a paint shop. Finishing is done by our own polisher, a trained French polisher, in hard-wax oil, clear lacquer, sprayed lacquer, washed finishes or French polish as the job needs.

Because the same booth finishes the kitchen, the doors and the panelling, the sheen matches across a house. Sending three elements to three finishers is how you end up with three different eggshells in one room.

The rod wall is where the full-size 1:1 setting-out lives. A rod is the job drawn at actual size on a board, pinned above the bench while the parts are cut. You cannot misread a rod the way you can misread a drawing at 1:20, and every reveal on an in-frame kitchen is decided there before a single component is machined.

Visits

By appointment, and worth the journey. Allow two hours. You will see timber in stick, carcasses on the bench, someone spraying, and, if the timing works, your own job being made.

We do not keep a showroom of finished kitchens, and the reason is simple: a showroom kitchen is a kitchen nobody has cooked in. We would rather show you the drawings, the samples, the joints and the work in progress. Where clients are willing, we can sometimes arrange for you to see a finished kitchen in a house.

There is parking on site and five EV charge points. Stowmarket is the nearest station and we will collect you from it if you tell us the train.