Spotlight on…Town & Country Fires
Earlier this month, our Client Services Manager made the journey north to meet the team behind Town & Country Fires and visit their factory and showroom.
About Town & Country Fires
Town and Country Fires is a family run business based in Pickering on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. Once farmers, the Thurlow family took the big decision to diversify and started the stove business in 1977.
Set up by Alan and Ruth Thurlow, the business is a real family business, with brother and sister Philip and Nina now fronting the business. Industry stalwart Alan passed away at home with his family in July 2019, with the business producing the Alandale stove in his honour.
More recently, the family tradition has continued, with Nina’s daughter Rhian also joining the business too.
Alan’s early passion was motorbikes, even entering RAC rallies on several occasions. This ran alongside family life and managing a dairy farm. In 1976 Alan and Ruth started to build a bungalow in one of the farm fields spending nearly seven years in a caravan while building their forever home which, upon completion was christened Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! One very cold and fateful day in February 1977, whilst living in the caravan with his two young children everything, including the teapot, decided to freeze! This led to Alan and Ruth installing their very first woodburning stove in the caravan.
They had travelled to Lancashire to find their first stove after seeing an advert in the farmers’ weekly newspaper and came back with a Spencer Sherwood stove. This experience sparked an idea and Town & Country Fires was born. Initially starting off in a farm shed in Fryup (a hamlet in the North York Moors National Park) before moving to a more prominent location in Pickering with the first showroom opening on the 1st April 1980. A disused bus station became the next showroom before the company relocated to its current location in 2001, a purpose-built factory and showroom.
Many of you will know the Town & Country range of products, from the ever popular Little Thurlow and the products that pay honour to the company’s Yorkshire roots, the Pickering, Harrogate, Rosedale and Langdale. We asked the Town & Country team what makes their stoves so unique…..
British made
Town & Country Fires are proud that every stove is lovingly manufactured and built in Pickering, North Yorkshire, and all elements and materials that make up their stoves are also made in Britain. Their commitment to making 100% British stoves ensures sustainability, quick turnaround times and supports British businesses and economy.
Town & Country Fires commitment to manufacturing stoves using only British materials and suppliers has led to them been awarded the Made in Britain stamp of approval on all their stoves. This is only awarded to companies who can prove that 100% of their products are built and manufactured in Britain using 100% British materials.
Learn more about their commitment to British made products on their recent blog post.
Gaining a wealth of experience over the years and using a combination of old and new techniques has led the company to developing and manufacturing a wide range of energy efficient solid fuel and wood burning stoves which hold the HETAS Cleaner Choice certification along with Defra exemption.
A family welcome
We met John Cox who has been a part of the family business for over 34 years and admits to loving his job at Town & Country. Amongst the roles John has undertaken are stove assembly, painting and anything in between that needs doing. In John’s own words, “I still wake up on Monday and look forward to coming to work.”
Before passing, Alan was instrumental in overseeing the transition of the product range to meet Ecodesign requirements and the business is still looking to innovate and introduce new product ranges, available through its network of retailers. When you buy a Town and Country Fires stove through your local, approved stockist you get a 10-year guarantee.
Find out more
View the range of Town & Country Fires products that have the Cleaner Choice approval on the HETAS product search.
To find out more visit the Town & Country website and keep up to date with them through their social media channels, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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