Suffolk Business on Our Nigel Tyas Partnership

Something rather lovely landed on our desk this month. Suffolk Business has run a piece on our partnership with Nigel Tyas Ironwork, and Simon Young has told the story properly, which we appreciated more than we can say. You can read the full piece on the Yorkshire to Suffolk blacksmithing partnership over on their site.

For anyone who has not heard the news yet, here it is from our side of the anvil.

Two Forges, One Workshop

Nigel Tyas and Elizabeth Stocker founded Nigel Tyas Ironwork in Millhouse Green, near Sheffield, in 2000. Chandeliers, wall lights, curtain poles, all handmade, all British. If you know your wrought ironwork, you will know the name.

The business changed hands in 2020 and sadly closed in 2024. Nigel and Elizabeth took ownership back, and rather than watch a much loved British name quietly disappear, they went looking for somewhere the range could carry on being made the way they had always made it. That somewhere turned out to be our workshop near Ipswich.

So the Nigel Tyas range is now forged here in Suffolk, alongside everything else we make. Nigel has shared his design portfolio and spent proper time with key members of our team explaining or showing them how each piece comes together. Both he and Elizabeth have retired, but they are staying on in a consultative role, which matters far more than it might sound. Designs like these carry knowledge you cannot write down.

A Meeting of Minds

Richard summed it up in the article better than I could:

“Nigel Tyas Ironwork has been a standout name in beautiful British-made wrought ironwork for more than 20 years and we’re delighted to be working with Nigel and Elizabeth to carry the brand forward. We have long admired the business they have built and feel this partnership marks a wonderful meeting of minds. We’re joining forces to strengthen and protect British craftsmanship and keep traditional blacksmithing skills alive in the UK.”

Nigel was just as generous about us, and about where the work has landed. He called our workshop “the heart of British interior wrought ironwork production”, which is quite a thing to read about a business that started in a garden shed up a muddy track behind a tiny Suffolk cottage.

What Happens Next

We have invested in new machinery to take on the extra work, and there is more to come. The plan is to grow the range, grow the team and keep two British forges busy under one roof.

Nothing changes in how any of it is made. Every piece is still forged by hand to order, still finished how it always was and the ironwork is still guaranteed for life as standard. If you would like to see what comes out of the workshop, our bespoke iron curtain poles are where most people start, and the story of how we got here fills in the twenty years before this chapter.

Thank you to Suffolk Business for the write-up, and to everyone who has sent kind words since the news went out. If you have a project in mind, or you simply want to talk ironwork, give us a call or drop us a line. We always enjoy it.