Dugdale Bros & Co

Hard-wearing Huddersfield worsted since 1896

Dugdale Bros & Co has traded cloth out of Huddersfield since 1896, when Henry Percy and Frederick Herbert Dugdale set up as merchants in the centre of Britain's fine worsted industry. The house is still there, and it is the last independently owned cloth merchant in the historic home of the worsted and woollen trade.

It keeps the work close. Cloth carrying the Dugdale name is made and finished within ten miles of Huddersfield by local specialist firms. Its worsteds had found buyers abroad by the 1910s. In 1963, in answer to the demand for casual wear, it introduced the White Rose collection of sporting tweeds and tattersalls. In all that time the making has never left Yorkshire.

This is English worsted in the proper sense: heavier in the hand than its Italian counterpart, with a dry finish the cutter can trust. It presses cleanly and holds a shoulder, and given a few years it wears in rather than wearing out.

We hold Dugdale in the cloth library rather than the named range, so the current bunches are best seen at a fitting. Ask for them when the brief is a working suit: the one you reach for on the days the diary looks hostile.