Our History

New House Textiles is a family run business, that began when Harold Stanier bought his first knitting machine in Manchester back in 1921.

Harold completed his Royal Flying Corps pilots training, just as th e First World War was ending. Wishing to see something of the world, he volunteered to fly special missions against the Bolsheviks in the Crimea. He narrowly survived a plane crash and a storm at sea, in which his ship nearly sank. Eventually he returned to Manchester, where he formed H. Stanier & Co with his savings.

The business rapidly grew throughout the 20?s and 30?s, and re-located to purpose built factories in South Wales in 1938.

Harold was highly inventive, and always wanted to develop new products. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he quickly switched the factory to wartime production, developed specialist textiles for military applications, and created a new engineering division to produce aircraft parts.

Once the Second World War was over, the factory returned to peacetime production. The engineering division started to develop new forms of textile machinery to handle the new man-made fibres (such as nylon) that were becoming available. Meanwhile he formed a new company, New House Fashions, to manufacture circular-knitted technical fabrics for industrial use.

By the 60's, both H. Stanier & Co and New House Fashions had grown considerably, and had kept diversifying too. As well as technical textiles and textile machinery, the companies now manufactured knitwear and underwear for customers such as Marks & Spencer and British Home Stores.

When Harold Stanier died in 1969, the two Companies combined under the New House Fashions name, and concentrated on the manufacture of knitted fabrics and textile machinery. By the 1980?s, the Company began to grow again, and added roller blind fabrics to its portfolio. To reflect these changes, the company name was changed from New House Fashions to New House Textiles.

In 1996 and 1999, New House won prestigious DTI SMART and SPUR awards, to help develop new techniques for handling yarns in textile manufacture. Then in 1999, the company focus was streamlined by selling the knitting division to another UK manufacturing company.

Today, New House is an innovative design-led textile business that exports its products to many countries and is often seen as a design leader in its field. The company employs a core of brilliant Royal College of Art and St. Martins designers, and is frequently invited to work on collaborative design projects with other large overseas clients.

In 2008, New House decided to enter the growing field of internet retailing with a unique collection of 1950?s Swedish homeware products.

New House operates from How Caple Court - picturesque 300 year old premises in rural Herefordshire. Set in historic gardens and only 400 metres from the River Wye. All the companies products are manufactured in England or Sweden, which keeps the ?product miles? down and brings extra employment to our local engineers, leather workers, wood turners, glass blowers and textile manufacturers.

New House is now run by John and Nick Stanier.