There should be a statue of Thomas Smith of Herstmonceux. His house has a royal warrant on it but there is no memorial to a man who changed the gardening world by inventing Sussex trugs.
In the 1820s, he took an ancient idea dating back to Anglo Saxon times called the trog and transformed it into the Sussex trug. A trog was a wooden vessel made from wood in the shape of an Anglo Saxon boat. They were used in everyday life and in particular by farmers who used them to measure grain. But they were heavy. Thomas Smith’s trug was a lightweight basket made with sweet chestnut and willow.
In 1851, Smith attended The Great Exhibition in London where Queen Victoria visited his stand and was so impressed that she ordered some trugs as gifts for members of the Royal Family. In 1855, Smith attended the Exposition Universelle Industrie Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was awarded a Silver Medal and Certificate of Merit signed by Napoleon Bonaparte III. The Sussex trug was making its mark on the gardening scene.
The end
WWII saw an end to the trug’s heyday. Smith’s trug making business moved to a redundant Army Barracks further west in the village of Herstmonceux but in the 1950s, brothers Laurence and Dudley Hide of Hailsham, who specialized in quality cedar greenhouses, summerhouses and sheds, decided to make their own trugs from plywood. That was beginning of the end for traditional Sussex trugs. Chinese imports followed.
The revival
In 1983, the Tuppen family started making trugs in Bexhill and exhibited at the Garden & Leisure Exhibition in Birmingham. They also secured Royal patronage from the Royal Estate at Windsor Castle which they continue to supply today and they took over the Smith family business in 1989. These days, the Thomas Smith Trug Shop and Cuckmere Trug Company are based in Red Lion Hall, Magham Down, near Herstmonceux.
Owner, Robin Tuppen, is also a Yeoman Member of the Worshipful Company of Basket Makers as well as a member of the Sussex and Surrey Coppice Group and Pole Lathe Turners & Greenwood Workers Association. He is devoted to saving trugs and other woodland craft from extinction.
“High street banks are reluctant to support a low technology craft industry. When I came into the Sussex Trug Industry in 1983, it was to make the South Downs Contemporary Trug and then, six years later, in 1989, some friends and I purchased Thomas Smith’s Trug Shop in Herstmonceux which made the original traditional Sussex Trug – the Royal Sussex Trug, thus saving that famous business from closing down.
In those days there was also The Truggery at Coopers Croft and Riches in East Hoathley. But we are a fast-dwindling breed and survival is proving hard. Four years ago there were seven of us and we made over 3,000. Last year there were four of us and we made around 1,400. Sales are worldwide.”
Robin, 76, who went to school in Seaford and studied at Crawley College of Technology, is a former Artex sales export manager and was a summerhouse and gazebo salesman in Germany. He is also the former Director and Chairman of the Gardenex Trade Association. He adds, “Today, there are perhaps now only ten people employed in making and selling Sussex trugs. We need apprentices to continue the tradition.”
The Heritage Crafts Association, the advocacy body for traditional crafts in the U.K., lists Sussex Trug Making as being “critically endangered” in their Red List. To help rescue the Sussex trug, Robin wants to establish a Heritage Centre.
“This is the last stage before extinction. Our plans are to coppice our own chestnut so spoon carving, hurdle making, split wood basketmaking and other woodland crafts can use what we cannot use for trugs. We want to create a Heritage Centre to train the young (and not so young) and give them a career path that will be rich in content and varied in geography.”
The Heritage Centre will be a place to see woodland crafts such as bodging (pole lathe turning), tool sharpening and maintenance and basket weaving. Volunteer trustees and helpers are being sought to help manage a newly set up not-for-profit company.
Robin continues: “Retired professionals and current entrepreneurs will be welcome as will anyone experienced in fund-raising or organising and running a successful company. We are not asking for money. Just voluntary participation to establish a Heritage Centre. The new company is called Sussex Trug Heritage Centre Limited and we hope to submit the first stage of our application to the Lottery Fund.”
“When it comes to making trugs, for the South Down Trugs Dudley Hide and my brother Peter trained me. For the Royal Sussex, I was taught by Raymond Smith, cousin of the last Smith owner of Thomas Smith’s Trug Shop, Eddie Smith. I trained my son, Chris, to become a Master trug maker like me. He is now a buyer with a large building contractor in Croydon.
Our trugs are almost completely handmade in the traditional way. All woods used in the making of our Trugs are from sustainable resources. The chestnut comes mainly from local woodlands and the legging wood from Sweden. The law in both of these countries requires felled timber to be replaced by twice the amount of trees that were felled.
Our South Down Contemporary Collection of Trug Basket has been handmade in and around Hailsham, Sussex, since the 1960’s. Colours include: African violet, terracotta, leaf green, golden maize, sea blue, dark blue, canary yellow, dark brown, dark green and velvet black. Each tug is guaranteed for five years.”
What is not guaranteed is how long traditional Sussex trug-making will continue. Robin adds, “It is so important to help to keep this traditional and quintessential English gardening product alive and kicking.”
Contributed by Kevin Pilley.
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