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Edwin A. Gore & Co., bed manufacturers
Broughton Gifford, Hundred of Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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An advertisement from a Bradford and Melksham directory for 1958-1959
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Edwin Albert Gore was born in Broughton Gifford in 1864, son of baker Jacob Gore (also the Sub-postmaster in 1886) and his wife Sarah Skreen; he had succeeded his father, another Jacob Gore, in the business in The Street. Edwin was listed as a mattress maker as early as 1881, when he was 16. After his death in 1932, his firm was continued by his widow, Ada Beatrice (née Dallimore), and their son Albert Edwin until it was wound up in July 1966. She was then still living in The Street, Broughton, while he lived in Melksham.
There was a cluster of bed manufacturers in the local area, stemming from feather merchants Sawtell in Holt and Melksham and leading to the present Airsprung in Canal Road, Trowbridge, which was founded in 1871.
Jacob Gore sr’s elder brother, James, too became a baker and grocer, taking on the shop in Silver Street in Bradford on Avon that later became The Dairy (no. 11, now Carina Baverstock). This account book recorded the purchases made by the household of Major T.H.B. Forster of Holt Manor.
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