16 London Street (Part Town Section 35) is now a Bookshop; it has had several uses, more recently a hairdressers and barbers shop but for almost sixty years it was a tailor’s shop.
Mr Henry Hermann Lublow built his London Street shop in 1924; the business was called H. H. Lublow’s Ladies and Gents High Class Tailor shop. The shop front is typical of its era, (but also similar to the 1902 old tailor’s shop on Oxford Street, which now houses the Lyttelton Art Gallery). Luckily it retains all its original character and charm with a simple weatherboard and brick frontage that still has the original veranda posts, large windows and original door that dominate the shop front.
Mr H.H.Lublow had originally started his Lyttelton tailoring business in 1913 in what is now the Lyttelton Workingmen’s (Loons) Club. The Lublow family had been tailors in New Zealand since the 1880’s.
In those days, when one did not buy ready made “off the peg” mass produced clothes, Lyttelton had four tailors catering for all the clothing needs of residents of Lyttelton and the Port.
Every gentleman had a suit for Sunday best; less well-to-do folk relied on the needlework skills of their wives and mothers, or ‘hand-me-down’s’. Being a busy port, uniforms were also needed for the ferry crews, the harbour board and coastal shipping. This kept Lyttelton’s tailors very busy.
In 1937 David Henry Lublow left Lyttelton District High School (now Lyttelton Main School) to join his father’s business. Dave, a long-time resident of Lyttelton, remembers his father’s business in its hey-day when five employees were needed to complete all the work that the shop undertook. The 1930’s was the time of the big Depression, jobs were scarce and Dave was considered lucky by many of his contemporaries to have an opportunity in a family business. Here Dave learnt his trade, so by the outbreak of World War Two when he volunteered, he became his battalion’s tailor when they were stationed in ‘the Islands’.
Working on uniforms was good experience for Dave, when his father retired in 1956 Dave decided to work more in this field; he renamed the family shop so it became a Civil and Naval Tailor’s shop and the shop supplied customers world wide. There were never modern machines; two treadle machines were used, so power-cuts were never a problem!. Dave had a big window put in the back of the shop, on the north side for good light.
He was Lyttelton’s last “cross-legged tailor” as he would sit cross-legged up in the natural bright light on the workbench, hand stitching all the fine work that uniforms required (see photo). The end of that era came in 1980 with Dave’s retirement and Headwaves hairdressers buying the business. In 2006 the barbers and hairdressers closed and in 2007 the London Street bookshop (originally Flying Fish Bookshop, that started off in the old Harbour Board building, on the corner of Norwich Quay) moved across the road to open in bigger premises here at 16 London Street.
