Butler & Sweatman was established in December 1998 at 64 The Homend. We noticed upon our very first visit to Ledbury in Summer of 1998, which was purely by accident, we were weekenders from London to Cam in Gloucestershire where we were renovating a Millers/Weavers cottage, We decided to take a Sunday afternoon off and went exploring 2 Open Gardens in The Gloucestershire Yellow Book of Open Gardens. One was in Hartpury, the other in Dymock, the former we found easily, however, we got hopelessly lost in the lanes (these were the days prior to SatNav and Smart Phones), a local resident stopped to ask if we were “lost”, we chatted for an hour to this lady, who happened to be associated to The Dymock Poets, she casually mentioned the nearby town of Ledbury was hosting The Poetry Festival, so we set off for Ledbury.

We noticed Ledbury was desperately short of choice for Design led products. Andrew, having obtained a Diploma in Furniture Studies at The London College of Furniture and then from Middlesex University (Formally Hornsey College of Art) a B.A (Hons) in 3D Product Design and Interiors and Declan with his 22 years of Commodity Finance in the City of London would make a perfect combination of establishing our Interiors business.

Emma Bridgewater was not available in Ledbury, we were the first people to take L’Artisan Parfumeur Paris outside London, we introduced the eponymous Cath Kidston, in fact we were her 5th Stockist (this was before she was widely known) in the country. We used to attend the Maison et Objet exhibition in Paris where we’d sit in her little booth and she’d personally write down on a pad what we wanted to stock from her collection! Prices Patent Candles was another line we started with and still stock today.

We had unique products to offer. It wasn’t long before more and more entrepreneurs starting to open similar style businesses and has resulted in Ledbury becoming a “Destination” location for Shopping.

We soon discovered that we ran out of space and purchased York House in 2002, where we expanded our business to what it is today. With over 100 different suppliers we can source specific items for our clients to their request.