About Us

Over a century ago, Richard Wheatley set a standard of craftsmanship which has been maintained with pride by his sons and grandsons. Today the 'Wheatley Fly Box' is known and prized by fly fishermen throughout the world, tested and proved by their fathers and grandfathers.

Richard Wheatley, founder of the company, was born in 1827. At the age of 13 he went to work for a maker of pearl buttons. In 1844 he was apprenticed to a maker of pocket books and fly books, where he served a four year apprenticeship, after which he started his own business in 1860. During the early days, a 'fishing pocket book' was considered a fisherman's basic accessory. Normally they were made in leather with numerous pockets and parchment dividers.

In the 1880's Richard Wheatley's eldest son, also named Richard, was taken into partnership and during the same year the first fly clip was developed by Wheatleys to hold eyed flies. The original pattern was a single clip which was fastened in rows to a sheet of parchment, which was then placed in the bottom of a cardboard box covered in leather.

Around 1900 aluminium was introduced on a commercial scale and the Wheatley firm was among the first English manufacturers to use this new material. A special satin finish was developed, which is still used today, to distinguish the Wheatley Fly Box.

In 1908 the first aluminium compartment box was made. These early models were similar to today's models, except that the latches were not operated by springs, and the lids were not transparent. Within a few years, these improvements were made and the compartment boxes have not been altered since then.

Although the Wheatley factory has moved with the times and modernised in many aspects, most parts of the manufacturing process are carried out in the same way as they were many years ago. All the interior fittings are assembled by hand, since there is no way to automate this sort of precision. The new anodised and powder coated colours enhance the appearance of the boxes, in keeping with our traditional satin finish. The craftsmanship of yesterday is carried on today.

Frank Wheatley Memories

I, Frank Wheatley, am recording these notes on the history of the family and of the firm of Richard Wheatley & Son, to the best of my knowledge.
The branch of the family to which I belong came originally from the small Leicestershire village of Twycross, where the family had kept the village pub back into the 1700s. In fact, we have beer and tobacco licences dated back until that date. My grandfather, Richard Wheatley, the founder of the business, was born in 1827 in Twycross. His father, also Richard, subsequently moved to Birmingham and became a milk producer and retailer with a small firm on the south side of Birmingham. We know that about 1840 my grandfather was employed by a pearl button maker and in 1844 he was apprenticed to a man named Samuel Brown who was a pocket book and fly book manufacturer. He came out of his indentures in 1848 and continued for a time with Samuel Brown.


He was married in 1853 and in 1860 started in business for himself as a pocket book and fly book manufacturer together with a partner named Willmott, who had also been an apprentice with Brown, under the name of Willmott and Wheatley. In 1862 the partnership was dissolved and the name of the firm became just simply "Richard Wheatley".
My grandfather, manufacturing fly books, was selling them in Redditch which, at that time, was the centre for fishing tackle manufacture and also for the production of needles. On one occasion he was in Redditch selling or delivering fly books and someone said to him "if you are making these sort of things, could you possibly make needle cases?" I presume he came back to the works to see what could be done, made some and sold them, and from this developed the leather case side of our business which, at that time, became the largest part of the business.


They both developed together and, as business grew, more and more patterns were introduced until somewhere about 1880 the leather goods side, which was making all kinds of fancy leather goods at that time, was the larger part of the business.
In 1887 my u ncle Richard was taken into the partnership and the name of the firm then became "Richard Wheatley & Son." My uncle was interested in fishing and consequently that side of the business started to develop more rapidly and somewhere about 1890 the first clip was introduced - the first fly clip. Prior to that flies had been tied to gut and the simplest way of carrying them was in the old-fashioned fly book, but when eyed flies came into existence a clip was found to be the better way of holding them. The original pattern was a single clip which was fastened in rows to a sheet of parchment, which was then placed in the bottom of a cardboard box covered in leather and this was the original fly box.


At this point a rather extraordinary thing happened. Malloch of Perth, a fishing tackle manufacturer and retailer, had had the same ideas as regards clips and had invented an almost identical pattern. This made things a little bit awkward at the time but eventually an amicable arrangement was come to by which we manufactured the fly boxes and Mallochs were paid a royalty for quite a number of years.
It was very soon found however that the cardboard box was not altogether satisfactory and somewhere back in the 1890s the first tin box was made. These were black japanned outside and white inside and the clips were fitted in rows more or less as they are today. A few years after this, aluminium was coming into common use and the first aluminium boxes were made somewhere about the turn of the century, and about this time too the first compartment boxes were made which, to a very large extent, were similar to what they are today except that in the early ones the latches were not operated by springs and were not transparent. These points were soon added to the boxes and I have one of the original ones which is very little different from the present-day box.
In 1907 Richard Wheatley, the founder of the business, died at the age of 84. Up to this time the business had been carried out in a small factory in Hockley Street, Birmingham, but in 1910 a modern - for that time - factory was built in Constitution Hill, Birmingham, and in 1911 we moved into the new factory. The business was now rapidly developing in both branches and by the time of the 1914 war the fishing tackle and leather goods sides of the business were about equal, but a greater proportion of fishing tackle was being sent abroad. During the war, of course, our business was severely restricted but as soon as 1918 and the end of the war came, we started up again.

Up to this time parts of the boxes had been made by outworkers and we had assembled them in the factory. At the end of the war, however, I joined the company and it was then decided that we would manufacture the boxes completely in our own factory and I was given the job of starting this, which meant buying machinery of all kinds to cope with metal production. This took two or three years to get going, but by 1923 we were in full production and the boxes were all being made completely at Constitution Hill. In 1920 another turning point occurred in the history of the company. My father was given a strip of zip fastener, then being manufactured by Kynocks of Witton, Birmingham, which is now of course a branch of ICI. Zip fasteners had been made during the war and had been used for tents, cockpit covers for aeroplanes and things like that. When the war came to an end there seemed to be no use for this new fastener. However, my father brought the zip back to the works and made a tobacco pouch fitted with it, which he then took to show one of our customers who was intensely interested and placed an order. We went back to Kynocks again with an order for strips and that was the start of the use of zip fasteners in leather goods, and we controlled this useage until the 1930s when the patents ran out. This meant of course that the leather goods side of the business developed much more rapidly than the fishing tackle side for a number of years. We made more than a million tobacco pouches.

My brother Richard joined the company in 1922, but was primarily interested in the leather goods side of the business. More and more fishing tackle patterns were added as the years went by until 1939 when the Second World War started. From 1939 to 1945 the manufacture of leather goods and fishing tackle ceased entirely. We went over to war work, working on Admiralty and Air Ministry contracts which kept us fully occupied until the end of the war.

In 1946 we repaired the factory which had been seriously damaged on several occasions by bombing and then started up again in both branches of our business.

My uncle Richard had died in 1940 and in 1943 the company was turned into a limited company with my father, my brother and myself as Directors. The company went on producing leather goods on one side and fishing tackle on the other side and the whole thing developed very considerably during the immediate period after the war. Many new patterns were introduced in both departments. My father retired in 1949, leaving my brother and myself as Directors and my father died in 1956.

In 1960 we celebrated our centenary as a company and in that same year the Constitution Hill factory had been sold to pay Estate Duty and we then moved to the present factory in Walsall. In 1966 my brother and I decided that the time had come for us to retire and the business was sold. The leather goods business was bought separately and absorbed into another company in Walsall, while the fishing tackle side of the business still remains under the name of Richard Wheatley & Son at Walsall.

To visit the Richard Wheatley museum, www.richardwheatleymuseum.org