Mouseman story
Victorian Britain is living through a time of reform and ingenuity. John Thompson, a North Yorkshire joiner, moves to the small Domesday Book village of Kilburn with his wife Dinah and their five children. He takes up a job in a workshop next to the village blacksmith’s.
A sixth child is born to John and Dinah. They christen him Robert. Five years later he begins his education at Kilburn’s tiny school, spending his childhood in the village, tucked away among the Hambleton Hills on the edge of the North York Moors.
The Thompsons move to a small Elizabethan cottage in the centre of the village, opposite John’s workshop. The property later becomes known as the ‘House of the Mouse’. Today this cottage – along with John’s workshop and the former blacksmith’s forge – remains the hub and heartbeat of Mouseman, housing our offices, showrooms and visitor centre.
Aged 15 and fresh from the village school, Robert is sent to begin an engineering apprenticeship in the smokestack industrial environment of Cleckheaton, near Leeds. Robert is reluctant to go, but during weekly journeys that see him change bus in Ripon, he begins visiting Ripon Cathedral and sketching its fifteenth-century woodcarvings and interiors. He later speaks of this period as his inspiration to ‘bring back to life the spirit of medieval oak work, which had been dead for so many long years’.
Robert, now 20, asks his father to bring him into the family joinery business. In what will become a momentous decision, John agrees. Robert joins his older brother William at the Kilburn workshop, starting by repairing barn roofs and making five-bar wooden gates.
John Thompson passes away after a short illness, leaving sons Robert and William to continue the family business. Inspired by the medieval oak carving he sees in Yorkshire churches, Robert starts collecting books on drawing techniques and furniture design. Over the following two decades he quietly hones his craft, producing beautiful pulpits, altar rails and choir stalls, and his reputation grows.
Robert marries Ada Newby, the housekeeper at the family cottage. The following year their only child, Elsie, is born. At the time, Robert is turning away from emerging technologies and continuing to build stores of quality oak for natural seasoning, convinced that traditional tools and methods of making furniture are the only ways to produce pieces that retain their beauty and durability for generations.
As the Great War rages across Europe, Robert is asked to remain in Yorkshire after his craftmanship is designated a ‘protected profession’ by authorities. After hostilities end, Robert is commissioned to create decorative oak war memorials and remembrance boards to honour the fallen across towns and villages.
In a fortuitous meeting, Robert is introduced to local priest, Father Paul Nevill, who needs a craftsman to construct a large decorative cross from a single piece of wood. ‘I said yes without hesitation, knowing I hadn’t the oak,’ remembered Robert later. ‘I didn’t know where it was coming from, but I wasn’t going to say no.’
So began a lifelong friendship.
Robert makes the decision to add a simple, distinctive signature to his pieces. A small carved mouse. ‘The origin of the mouse as my mark was almost in the way of being an accident,’ he wrote later. ‘I and another carver were carving a huge cornice for a screen, and he happened to say something about being poor as a church mouse. I said, “I’ll carve a mouse here” and did so. Then it struck me – what a lovely trademark!’
Years afterwards he would explain to his grandsons that he was tickled by the idea of this little mouse quietly scraping and chewing through the hardest wood and that he saw a parallel with the calm diligence of his own workshop.
The carved mouse, still so beloved by children and adults alike, goes on to become synonymous with Robert’s unique hand-crafted products. It inspires the ‘Mouseman’ name and remains one of the earliest British brand logos still in use, unchanged, today.
Robert’s daughter Elsie weds local craftsman Percy Cartwright. The marriage brings three sons, who go on to work in the family business. 1924 also holds another monumental moment for Mouseman. Father Paul Nevill is appointed headmaster at Ampleforth College, an eminent local public school. Word of Robert’s Arts & Crafts style oak furniture spreads among parents, who begin placing commissions for bespoke pieces. Robert’s order book swells, so too his reputation for quality. His workshop, and his workforce, grows and he increases stores of oak logs for natural seasoning for future projects. The village of Kilburn is now dotted with gantries to store the sawn logs outdoors, as well as natural russet cowhides to upholster chair seats from the renowned Connolly Leather of London. ‘The best’, says Robert, ‘deserves the best.’ The description also applies to the baize he uses – the same that is used in uniforms for Beefeaters and will later cover the snooker tables at the Crucible.
Robert and Ada’s first grandson is born. Named Robert Thompson Cartwright, after his grandfather, he becomes known affectionately as Bobby. Fifteen years later, after leaving the village school, he begins his apprenticeship at the Kilburn workshop. His younger brothers, Geoffrey and John follow the same path, ensuring the continuation of a family business that continues to this day.
The Thompson ‘mouse’ is officially registered as a trademark by Robert in 1931. His highly skilled team of forty craftsmen and apprentices ensure that a hand-carved mouse is incorporated into all items produced in the workshop from this point on.
The decade is an eventful one, as Robert is invited to work with distinguished architects such as J.S. Syme and Giles Gilbert Scott. He receives prestigious commissions from York Minster, Peterborough Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, as well as from the place of his early obsessions, Ripon Cathedral. Robert’s furnishings become a part of the tapestry of British life.
With war looming, the majority of Robert’s craftsmen are called up to the British Armed Forces. He is left with a workforce of six and so employs young men who are unable to join the war effort from the deaf and dumb school in York.
Robert’s grandson, Geoffrey, who has become a valued part of the workshop team, is tragically killed in a motorcycle accident. His two brothers continue to work and learn alongside their grandfather. This is the year also in which Robert takes his solicitor’s advice and turns the business into a limited company. From 30 June, it becomes officially known by the same name that continues today: Robert Thompson’s Craftsmen Ltd.
Robert Thompson, ‘The Mouseman’, dies on the 8th December. He is buried in Kilburn churchyard, a short distance from the workshop where he dedicated his life, and spent all his time until his final days. He leaves behind a thriving business, a colossal reputation, and an unrivalled legacy. Over the previous 35 years, his painstaking carvings and furnishings – and the much-loved mouse – have become fixtures in hundreds of homes, halls, schools, churches and abbeys, both in the UK and abroad, from modest village naves to mighty city cathedrals.
His dying words to his grandson, Robert, are: ‘Remember to keep the timber yard full’.
Grandsons Robert and John – aged 26 and 19 – resolve to continue the family commitment to craftmanship, care, and tradition. Demand for high-quality household furniture now comprises some 60% of orders coming in. John, driven by the same enthusiasm as his grandfather, soon becomes head of design and development.
The House of the Mouse undergoes various extensions and conversions, retaining its Elizabethan-cottage core but now incorporating more workshop and studio space, as well as a showroom. The latter, in particular, is a huge success, bringing in new visitors interested in investing in heirloom furniture pieces. As fresh orders continue to come in for both domestic and ecclesiastical work, the Mouseman team adapts subtly to changing tastes, while staying true to its values.
The family business is further strengthened when Robert’s great-grandsons, Ian Thompson Cartwright and Peter Cartwright choose to begin five-year cabinet-making apprenticeships, under the guidance of two Mouseman master craftsmen.
Interest in Mouseman furniture reaches new heights after a glowing segment on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. Expert, Arthur Negus OBE, picks out a large oak dining table and tells viewers that: ‘Items of furniture made by master craftsman Robert Thompson of Kilburn will become antiques of the future’. Pre-owned furniture, from dining tables and chairs to cheese boards and coffee tables, are quickly being sold for similar sums as new pieces.
Robert Thompson’s great-grandson, Giles Thompson Cartwright, (John’s son) begins his five-year apprenticeship in the workshop.
Large numbers of oak trees are released into the market following a great storm in October that sees woodland devastated across the south of England by a cyclone and winds in excess of 100mph. With the last words of Robert Thompson ringing in their ears - keep the timber yard full – the Mouseman management buy over 500 storm-felled trees and stack them in a new, larger, purpose-built timber yard, on the edge of Kilburn village.
Mouseman receives an order from the Foreign Office in London to design and craft two speaker’s chairs – gifts to the Nepalese government in Kathmandu. Further commissions swiftly follow for the governments of the Solomon Islands and Tonga.
The Mouseman Visitor Centre opens its doors to the public, making Mouseman a destination and giving visitors the chance to stand in Robert’s original workshop as well as the adjacent blacksmith’s shop, which has been carefully rebuilt, stone by stone, inside the centre.
In the same year Mouseman is commissioned by co-founder of American furniture giant La-Z-Boy to undertake full refurbishment of a memorial chapel in Michigan, USA. It requires the crafting of dozens of large-scale pieces – including a pulpit, altar rails, a communion table and entrance doors – which are installed by five Mouseman craftsmen over a three-week period.
The family business welcomes its two newest members. Robert’s youngest great-grandson, Andrew Thompson Cartwright, joins Mouseman under master craftsman Francis Reynard, while Robert’s great, great-grandson, Simon Thompson Cartwright, leaves college and starts his apprenticeship under master craftsman Victor Jarvis.
Work begins on the second phase of the Mouseman Visitor Centre, enlarging the museum and adding an A/V display, showrooms and a gallery, as well as a café with outdoor dining. The centre reopens in time for Easter 2004.
Sotheby’s in New York auctions a 1930s Mouseman cabinet. It smashes its $5,000 estimate to sell for $70,000, setting a new world record for pre-owned Mouseman furniture.
Ninety-nine limited-edition octagonal coffee tables are produced from a single oak tree, purchased from the local Hovingham Estate, the childhood home of the Duchess of Kent. All are quickly bought by collectors in recognition of their rarity and future value.
After more than six thousand five hundred man-hours and twenty oak trees, Mouseman craftsmen complete work on the archive reading room at the new Rothschild Bank headquarters in London. Meanwhile, back in Kilburn, a new distribution warehouse is constructed in the timber yard, replacing the village school that had previously been used to store finished pieces of furniture.
Mouseman is commissioned to produce furniture for Folly Farm in Berkshire, the Grade I-listed country house designed by the legendary architect Sir Edwin Lutyens; a man renowned, like Robert Thompson, for his use of naturally seasoned English oak.
London antiques dealer Gordon Watson purchases a 1930s Mouseman smoking chair for £8,500, after seeing it featured on the Channel 4 programme Four Rooms.
Work is carried out on a large new wooden cross to stand outside Our Lady & St Benedict Church in Ampleforth, continuing a long relationship between the church and the family business. The original cross was created by Robert Thompson himself in what was one of his most important early commissions for Father Paul Neville. In the 1960s, the oak cross was weather-beaten and beyond repair, and a replacement cross was made by Robert Thompson’s grandsons, Robert and John Thompson Cartwright. The lifespan of the two previous crosses suggests this latest version, which sits on the 1919 stone plinth, will be in place for another fifty years to bear witness to the 150th anniversary of the start of The Great War.
Luxury brand Loewe commissions Mouseman to make several items for the London Arts & Crafts Week exhibition held in Liberty’s store, London. In the same year, the family of Cardinal Basil Hume purchases a Mouseman prayer desk to sit at the side of his tomb in Westminster Cathedral, London.
Eton College, founded by Kind Henry VI in the 1400’s, commissions Mouseman to produce a new altar for the college chapel. It is designed by Oliver Stirling and constructed in steel and English oak. A dresser originally made for James Horlick for the boardroom at the Horlicks factory in Slough in the 1930’s (for £45.00) sells at auction for £35,000 to Marco Pierre White for his restaurant The Rudloe Arms, near Bath.
Carved by our craftsmen back in the 1950s from a solid piece of mahogany, the North Shields life-size carving of a fishwife – or “Dolly” as she is fondly known by locals – returns to our Kilburn workshops for a full refurb after spending more than 60 years exposed to the elements from the North Sea.
Mouseman is commissioned by Alan Roux his wife, Laura, and the team at the three Michelin starred The Waterside Inn, to produce a set of bespoke oak carving boards to be used exclusively in their restaurant in Bray, Berkshire.