This building at 40 Guildford Street was Luton’s largest hat factory, being five bays wide with each bay featuring triple-light windows. It is over five storeys high over a deep semi-basement with an attic over the centre bay. The building uses a pale version of the distinctive Luton Grey bricks for the side and rear walls but the street frontage has been rendered and painted. To the north of the building a large extension was added in the late 1950s and in more recent times the building was part of the Eastex clothing factory.
The factory was built in 1905 for the highly-successful Swiss-born hat industry magnate Henry Durler, whose name was painted along the side wall. Durler’s company were straw plait merchants as well as bleachers and they had been one of the first to use hydrogen peroxide as part of the bleaching process. Their example had undoubtedly assisted the wider adoption of the chemical.
Durler’s innovation coincided with arrival of Laporte’s chemical works to Luton as an ancillary to the hat industry. They produced peroxide used by Durler but the factory was in the open countryside because of the strong smell of bleach it gave off. Its location - Kingsway - is now well within the built-up area, however.
Henry Durler lived in a large, luxurious house – “Whitehills” – off London Road. Built in 1869 and designed by Thomas Sorby, architect of Wardown House. It was bought by Durler in 1894, and on his death in 1924 it was passed to his son Robert. Robert’s widow Nora lived there until she sold the property for a reputed £100,000 in 1977. The nearby Durler Gardens is named after the family.
The above census return for 1911 hints at the life of luxury becoming to a wealthy industrialist.
Robert dies in 1965 leaving over £100,000 in his will as shown above. A considerable fortune at the time.
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