Buttle’s is one of the UK’s longest-established timber and builders’ merchants. Around 125 years ago, George James Buttle left his Essex farming life to start afresh as a sawyer in St Pancras and established a tradition of craftsmanship and service that has been maintained by future generations of his family. His son, George Harold Buttle, chose a different path. Not content to be just a sawyer in
someone else’s sawmill, he saw an opportunity to start his own business by making joinery and wooden parts for pianos and organs. In 1919, during the difficult time just after the end of the Great War, George Harold rented a railway arch in Kentish Town and began trading as a timber merchant. This became Buttle’s first branch, and the company is still trading there today.