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Blakes Lavac Taylors

Company Profile

Blakes Lavac Taylors Limited can trace its history back to 1798, when it began business in Gosport, Hampshire as Blake & Sons, providing a range of metal work for boats of that period. A catalogue still in the company's possession, from about a century later, shows a wide range of equipment including cookers, stoves and smaller general chandlery items. With the changes in boat design in the early part of the last century the demand for many of these items declined and Blakes concentrated increasingly on plumbing in the boats, notably in the manufacture of toilets and seacocks. These incorporated high grade sea-water resistant copper alloys and the company became recognised as a specialist in this field. The Baby Blake toilet, using aluminium castings instead of copper alloy to reduce the weight, is reputed to have been fitted on Sunderland flying boats and fast patrol craft during the 1940's and 1950's. In 1969 Blakes added to its range of plumbing equipment with the purchase of Lavac, and returned to the field of cooking and heating with the acquisition of the well-known business of Taylors 1981.