Charles Stuart Harris

Charles Stuart Harris was from a family of manufacturing silversmiths and was an active silversmith between 1852 and 1897, running the business which eventually was to become C.S. Harris & Sons Ltd in 1897.

The firm started in 1817 with John Mark Harris, a spoonmaker who moved to City Road in London around 1831. The firm was continued by his son, John Robert Harris who moved the firm to Hatton Garden in 1843 and was listed as a silver spoon and fork manufacturer.

Charles Stuart Harris then took over the business around 1852. He was listed in 1858 as an electroplater, gilder, spoon and fork maker and manufacturer of plated wares and silversmith.

In 1885 he took over the business of D.J.&C Houle, manufacturing silversmiths and retained their workshops in Red Lion Street in Clerkenwell. Charles Stuart Harris went on to open further manufacturing workshops in Hatton Garden in 1892.

The limited company formed in 1897 was listed as ‘manufacturers and dealers in gold and silver plate, wire and lace, manufacturing gold and silversmiths and dealers in gold, silver, diamonds and other precious metals and stones as well as electroplaters and jewellers’. The directors of the new company C.S.Harris and Sons Ltd were a number of ‘Stuart Harris’ men- Henry, Walter, Edwin, Alfred and Frederick.

They acquired an extensive range of premises in Hatton Garden, Red Lion Street, Bateman Street in Soho, the latter probably acquired in December 1897 from two other Stuart Harris’ – Arthur and Ernst who were trading as ‘Harris Brothers’.

The company C.S. Harris & Sons Ltd kept trading until 1934 but had given up most of their premises by that time except those at 41 & 43 Hatton Garden. They were eventually taken over by I Freeman & Sons, another manufacturing silversmiths and dealers in antique silver and plated items also of Hatton Garden.