A Trip To David John’s Lighting Shop.

It only means a trip from Hebden Bridge to Manchester, so why take a trip to visit David John Lighting?

http://www.davidjohnlighting.co.uk.

Well, it was actually a very enjoyable thing to do, and here’s two good reasons why. First off, it’s a characterful and interesting ‘proper’ lighting shop (an endangered species), and then secondly, there’s the area of Manchester where it’s located which is really interesting.

To get there it’s a short walk from my house to the railway station, then there’s a 35 minute train journey from Hebden Bridge to Manchester Victoria, and finally another short walk from there to the lighting shop.

At the back of Manchester Victoria Station, off Cheetham Hill Road, is an extensive inner city area of small workshops and factories laid out on a nineteenth century grid pattern of roads and streets. David John Lighting is located in one of these streets, Empire Street, and this is what it looks like. (That tower in the background is Strangeways Prison):

The building in the picture contains a showroom, a workshop, and the offices from which David John runs his small family business making light fittings. Thankfully, it’s not the glitzy city centre showroom you might normally go to to buy your lighting. Here you have to ring the doorbell and wait for someone to let you in.

It was an internet search which lead me here. I’d been looking for ready made picture lights to buy online, but couldn’t find the very small type I wanted.  The David John web site showed an amazing choice of lights, but still not the type I wanted. Surely, I thought, if I called in they would be able to find what I was looking for.

Once inside you can look around the showroom and, amazingly, a real person is there who will actually talk knowledgeably to you about your lighting requirements.

Eventually, having established they didn’t have what I wanted on a shelf somewhere I was ushered into the office to discuss what I needed. There was David John himself sat at a desk with a computer and, in amongst quite a lot of chat, he began to ask details, like:

What is the size of the picture you are lighting? (I didn’t know exactly),

What colour of light fitting and material do you want it made from? (the choices were many, different metals, shiny, dull, painted etc. I couldn’t decide on the spot).

What is the colour of the frame your picture is in? (there was a frame in one colour, and a mount in another colour, so difficult to explain).

It rapidly became clear that I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted. Mr John was completely unfazed by this, like it was normal. He said, “we can make any sort of light you want, really. Take a photo of the picture you want to light and send it to me with the exact measurements and we’ll take it from there”.

He was able to offer all sorts of additional advice such as to think about the thickness of the picture frame so as to get the length of the arm of the light correct. Also, how to make sure the picture is fixed flat against the wall, etc.

During our conversation he picked up a large metal lampshade and said “I’ve got to make twelve of these, and four bulkhead lamps, for a film company who are filming a war time tv series in Manchester”.

Mr John then had to let me out. On the way out I asked if I could take his picture, and I took this:

He’s a character. Always chatting. One thing he said was that his wife had heated some stew up for him the previous evening in the microwave and as he bit into a potato it had exploded and burnt his mouth.  “I’d never experienced anything like it before”, he said, “it just went ‘woomf’ in my mouth and now I’ve got blisters”!

So back out into the streets of Manchester. Across the street from the lighting shop you are confronted with this nineteenth century establishment on the opposite side of the road:

The picture of Joseph Holts brewery serves to illustrate that the area here is not just a run down inner city area, and has a rich history.  I’ll write a bit about that another time.

Ends.