Handcrafted furniture makers launch shop and showroom in Derbyshire town

Simon Ashton and Pete Coleman, co-founders of Ashton & Coleman, produce solid wood beds, tables, sideboards, wardrobes, chests of drawers, sofas and chairs in their workshop at Ladygrove Mill, Two Dales.

Pete said: “It’s a beautiful mill in the bottom of the valley near some old dams and we have a really lovely showroom next to the workshop. No-one ever walks past because it’s a dead end. Unless you found us online and decided to come and see us you wouldn’t know we were there.”

Greater footfall in Matlock persuaded the business partners to launch a shop at Dale Road to showcase a selection of their products. Pete said: “The shop opening is to gain exposure, to bring what we’ve been doing for years straight to people on the ground in the local town. We’ve had a lot more people in our showroom in Matlock than we would ever have got in our Two Dales showroom.

"People can see some of our best-sellers in our Matlock showroom – three beds, a couple of tables, lots of chairs and sofas, a few sideboards and chests of drawers, a wardrobe. We’ve curated a small but growing list of accessories which we either make or buy from other places. We’re focusing on handmade and small businesses from Great Britain that make their own products.”

Craftsmen joiners Simon and Pete, who are in their 40s, work alongside three full-time furniture makers to create “modern rustic refined furniture using Canadian pine and European oak. Pete said: “It’s not fussy, it’s not overly detailed, it’s very simplistic.

The pair have been workings as a partnership for ten years and have been a limited business since 2019.

Pete said: “We had our own bespoke joinery businesses working as sole traders for ourselves for a number of years. We ended up in the mill together at the same time running our own businesses and it made sense to join forces. We were still doing bespoke joinery in people’s homes and furniture was always something we wanted to do so we started making furniture for other retailers. It took us a couple of years before we got the nerve to go it alone and when a bit of space became available at the mill we decided to turn it into a showroom and create our own brand.”