London photo of the day: Cattle and Son

by MaryAnn Johanson

Sat, Jun 29, 2013

2 comments

I’d love to know what sort of business R.N. Cattle and Son were in. (In Soho.)

share and enjoy

If you haven’t commented here before, your first comment will be held for MaryAnn’s approval. This is an anti-spam, anti-troll, anti-abuse measure. If your comment is not spam, trollish, or abusive, it will be approved, and all your future comments will post immediately. (Further comments may still be deleted if spammy, trollish, or abusive, and continued such behavior will get your account deleted and banned.)

If you’re logged in here to comment via Facebook and you’re having problems, please see this post.

PLEASE NOTE: The many many Disqus comments that were missing have mostly been restored! I continue to work with Disqus to resolve the lingering issues and will update you asap.

2 Comments

oldest

newest most voted

Inline Feedbacks

view all comments

PJK

Sat, Jun 29, 2013 8:13am

I couldn’t find anything on Mr Cattle, but Portland Works seems to be (have been?) a company involved in early steel production in Sheffield (see http://www.portlandworks.co.uk/ for an extensive history), so my guess is that Mr Cattle was their representative or reseller in London.

Portland Works seemed to have had a line in cutlery, so maybe Mr Cattle only sold those products.

That’s about as far as I could get using Google.

RogerBW

Sun, Jun 30, 2013 10:37am

“Portland works” might instead refer to Portland stone (a limestone used extensively in building) or Portland cement (the standard cement these days, in use from the 1820s onwards).

On the other hand, the whole of the eastern half of Marylebone was owned by the Dukes of Portland during the 18th and 19th century; Portland Mews is a bit far south for that, but it’s a plausible reason for the name.