James Taylor& Son

James Taylor & Son has made shoes since 1857, when James Taylor walked from Norfolk to London to set up as a bootmaker on Great Portland Street. The firm moved to its current Georgian shopfront on Paddington Street in 1954 and has traded there since, with workshops below the shop where bespoke shoes and boots are still cut, lasted and finished by hand. Customers are measured and fitted in the shop upstairs, with a wooden last carved for each individual foot and kept on file for repeat orders; a pair of bespoke shoes typically takes several fittings and some months to complete. The workshop also undertakes repairs and re-lasting for existing customers. It remains an independent, family-founded business rather than part of a larger shoemaking group, and Paddington Street is its only shop and workshop.