2)MARRIAGE TO A BANKER'S DAUGHTER
A Grover banknote from the 19th century |
NASH HOUSE |
It was a significant union as Grover’s bank was able to help Dickinson in his expansion plans.
There were no national chains of banks in those days and the small country banks produced their own notes and played a key role in helping many firms around the country start up and expand in the early 19th century.
No doubt it was Grover’s bank - which according to Joan Evans’ book The Endless Web eventually became part of Lloyds bank - which helped Dickinson to buy Nash Mills in 1811, and Home Park Mill and Croxley Mill in the 1820s.
Mind you, it was not all one-way traffic as far as help went. In the mid 1820s there was a financial crisis which hit the country banks and it was then that Dickinson was able to help support Grover’s.
John Dickinson and his wife moved from Apsley to the larger mill house at Nash.
His inventions of machines in the stationery business continued, including one for cutting cards in 1824.
The firm of John Dickinson continued to prosper and in about 1830 Charles Longman became a partner and when he married in 1836 he came to live at Nash Mills House. By this time John Dickinson was building a new home for himself, which he called Abbots Hill and which he occupied in 1839.
In 1840 John Evans, a nephew of Mr Dickinson, also became a partner.
John Dickinson retired from the business in 1859 at the age of 77 and died at his London home ten years later.
But the firm he had started went from strength to strength under the leadership of partners Charles Longman, Frederick Pratt Barlow and John Evans. It was Mr Longman who had Shendish House built as his home in the 1850s.
In 1886 John Dickinson became a private limited company which as well as the Hertfordshire Mills and London office had by then expanded to include branches in Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, Belfast, New York, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Bombay, Calcutta, Australia and New Zealand.
The output of those Hertfordshire mills in 1886 was around 200 tons of paper a week in addition to cards, envelopes and stationery.
To return to the John Dickinson introduction page, click below
