Axminster is a small market town in East Devon with a long association with carpet making. Close to the centre of town, at the foot of Castle Hill is a former mill building that, by the time this postcard was produced (c.1915), had been repurposed as a factory operated by James Coate, manufacturer of tooth, nail and hairbrushes. Coate (a native of the nearby Devon village of Membury) had established the business in London in 1847 and began transferring manufacturing to the West Country around 1865, starting with a factory near Chard in Somerset. In 1882, Coate leased a mill in Axminster and expanded production on a site alongside the southern rail route from London to Exeter with easy access to water from the River Axe just beyond. Around the same time another London brush manufacturer, Bidwell Brothers, moved into the still surviving castellated building part of which is visible to the right. Competitors of Coate, their business moved elsewhere in 1889 and collapsed in 1893. When the brothers relaunched their business they returned to Axminster and would carry on making fine tooth brushes until 1955. Meanwhile, Coate went out of business in 1935 after which it all gets a little vague about what was happening in the Old Brush Works. But in the 1970s Jaffé Feathers moved in and remain in business to the present day. Founded in 1946, they are wholesalers of bulk consignments of feathers and manufacturers of feather products. Around 40 years ago I recall a sign proclaiming them to be Suppliers of Feather Articles to the Royal Navy - the sign is no more and the Navy must have found a way to protect the nation without a regular supply of feathers.
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