London, Denmark Street

George Medhurst (1759–1827) was a mechanical engineer, born in Shoreham, Kent, who trained as a clockmaker in Clerkenwell.

 

In 1800 he founded a weighing machinery business based at premises at 465 Oxford Street, London, with an iron foundry and works at 8 Little Denmark Street, Soho.  This latter is possibly the same building where an earlier scale company run by Valentine Anscheutz and John Schlaff was listed in trade directories between 1761 and 1781.

 

In Volume 5 Part II of the Survey of London, edited by W. Edward Riley and Sir Laurence Gomme, and published in 1914, Medhurst's former forge is pictured, described thus:

 

‘Hidden behind the rear of No. 27, Denmark Street is the old-fashioned smithy shown on Plate 60.  It is not a little surprising to discover an example of such manual labour surrounded by firms using modern mechanical labour-saving devices.'

 

Pictured right is the former Medhurst forge in Denmark Passage in 1914, from The Survey of London by Sir L Gomme.