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Hatton Garden London

Hatton Garden - London's Jewellery Quarter
Hatton Garden in London runs from Holborn Circus north to Clerkenwell Road. In addition to being the name of a street, it has given its name to the surrounding area which includes Greville Street, St. Cross Street, Leather Lane, Saffron Hill, Hatton Wall. The Clerkenwell area has also long been connected with jewellery manufacturing including Clerkenwell Road and Faringdon Road.
Rather like Birmingham's Hockley Jewellery Quarter, Hatton Garden is one of the main centre's of the jewellery and diamond industry in the UK, housing many jewellery manufacturers, importer, wholesalers, and many small craft workshops specialised in mounting, model-making, gem setting, polishing, plating, and other trade services. Going back to feudal times, the concentration of specialist trades in one area of a town or city made for efficiency in that many specialised services and skills were concentrated and readily available in one small area.

Fagin's Den
Fagin's Den from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist was located in Saffron Hill, although the current day traders would probably wish to play down this connection with one of its best known entrepreneurs.

Size, Scope and Quality
This jewellery area seems to have shrunk in the past few decades, while that of Birmingham appears to have held its own. When we have visited, there certainly were a number of highly skilled craftsmen creating excellent quality work including hand made mounts, mainly for some of the West End retailers, although Graff retain a significant workshop in the area, supplying their own stores with their very exclusive international clientele.

Trade and Retail
According to some sources, Hatton Garden has only been prominent in jewellery since about 1870, after diamonds were discovered in South Africa. Its main reasons for its continued existence is the close proximity of all the small supporting and specialised trades. In recent years there appears to have been in increase in the number of retail jewellery shops in the area, and although some of them undoubtedly provide good value and service, it is difficult for the visitor to the area to directly benefit from many of the skilled craftsmen. The feedback we have heard from people who have tried jewellery shopping in the area has been one of disappointment.

The Chard Connection
Over the years, we have dealt with a number of the companies in this area, including Johnson Matthey, and Sharps Pixley, both bankers and bullion dealers, but also gem dealers. For a number of years, we used to have some of our diamond setting done in The Garden. We had one setter in particular who provided excellent quality work. The downside was that he was also in demand from his local colleagues, and our work tended to get pushed to the back of this queue, and he eventually become too unreliable that we switched all our setting work to Birmingham.

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