Second floor, soft furnishing workrooms

Who was Bullfrog?

By Jo Spence

Nearly all of the second floor of the Kinghams building was dedicated to the soft furnishing workroom.  Here customers' curtains were made and bespoke cushions and furniture covered.  Long benches, can be seen in the photographs, covered with material and machines.  At one side of the workroom was the office.

The rest of the second floor was a mixture of hanging and packing area; with stockrooms for various departments and a room allocated to the Committee for Claims.

One room was used as a repository for three part bills, which were copies of customers transactions. This was the method of storing them before computerisation.  It took up a lot of space!

I like the humorous graffiti inside the goods lift - 'Maximum permitted toad' (load) and 'Bullfrog woz 'ere.'  I wonder who was Bullfrog?