Early Hallmark made in England?
I have assumed that all Hallmark tools were made overseas but I've been searching around on forums and found some posts from a guy on a welding forum in the UK saying that he was a rep for Britool in the 80-90s and that he witnessed Hallmark tools coming out of the Cannock factory. Unless this guy was for some reason making stuff up then it would seem that some early Hallmark tools were made in England. I'm not aware of any earlier Hallmark spanners than the one in the pic so maybe it was made in England.
Not sure exactly what the Britool rep saw in the Cannock factory. I guess that it's possible that the spanners were made overseas and just stamped/polished in Cannock.
As far as I’m aware, the early / original “Hallmark” was all British made.
I don’t own any but I’ve seen a few bits, and it looks to be first class. The patterns were similar to the regular spanners, but the finish was a high polished chrome, at a time when not all of the regular line was.
Not sure about that spanner you have. That’s different to what I saw, and I’m always suspicious of “England” without “Made in”, but is that one of the “C Series”. It looks like it might be, and the number suggests so. Can you give us a picture of the other side.
I was told Halmark was fairly short lived, as it was intended to be sold directly to the motor trade from vans, which didn’t really work out, as James Neil (Britool’s parent company) were desperately trying to sell through an ever dwindling number of high street shops. Another great management decision!
I think the name would have died out, but a part of the former Britool (I think it might have been the van sales part again) was sold off and were allowed to use the name.
As I understand, this never formed part of the sale to Facom, so they continued to use the name. They didn’t have any tools to sell of course, hence you have very “average Taiwanese” tools being sold under the Britool name, albeit “Hallmark”.
Of course, as soon as Facom got their paws on Britool they closed the factory, and used the Britool name on basically Facom patterns, but with a crappier finish, and softer steel.
Now Facom are part of Stanley, they are having their factories closed, and the Britool name has almost disappeared, except for the U.K. market, where there are still some idiots saying “oh yes, Britool are really decent”. Don’t think they’d know decent if it bit ‘em in the a##e!
Who was guilty? To quote Jeremy Clarkson “They all were...! Goodnight!”
