Gawith Hoggarth & Co.

Gawith Hoggarth & Co. is a pipe tobacco and snuff maker operating in Kendal, Cumbria, on the edge of England's Lake District. The firm was founded in 1887 through the partnership of William Henry Gawith and Henry Hoggarth Jr., and took over the water mill at Helsington Laithes immediately after its founding.

A present-day carrier of the Kendal tobacco-making tradition, whose roots reach back to 1792, the company shares a family tree with Samuel Gawith; it is known for its rope tobaccos, its dark fire-cured blends, and its distinctive "Lakeland" scent.

Family Tree and History

The firm's origin traces to Thomas Harrison, who went to Glasgow in 1792 to learn the tobacco trade. In 1805 Harrison founded a tobacco manufactory in Kendal called "Harrison & Brocklebank" with chemist Thomas Brocklebank. The business passed to the Gawith family when his granddaughter Jane married Samuel Gawith. In the nineteenth century, one branch that split off within the family continued under the name Samuel Gawith, while the partnership William Henry Gawith formed with Henry Hoggarth Jr. took the name Gawith Hoggarth & Co.

According to records, the family business operated from the building on Lowther Street in Kendal from the 1830s onward; the company moved to a modern facility in 1993. Management stayed within the family across generations: in the twentieth century Geoffrey Gawith, and then John Gawith, ran the firm; today it is headed by fourth-generation Rachel and Chris Gawith. In 2015 the two cousin-firms merged under one roof; in this way the Gawith branches that had split in the nineteenth century came back together in Kendal.