Flavel today manufactures and distributes a huge range of Flavel gas fires and Flavel electric fires. However, the Flavel company started out in a very different line of business.
Of Norman origin, the original Flavel family came over to England with William the Conqueror and lived at various periods in their history in London, Worcestershire, Leicestershire, and latterly Warwickshire.
In the mid-seventeenth century William Flavel had set up a business manufacturing gunpowder and armories in Bilton, Warwickshire; a very prosperous operation largely due to the fact that we were often in conflict with any number of nations at any given time around this period.
In 1777 new premises were acquired in what was then a small, but rapidly growing village called Leamington, a place that would ultimately become a prosperous health resort in Regency days. Among the many inventions that were patented by the company was a vapour bath; made initially for members of the Russian aristocracy.
In 1833 the business was re-located to its present site, the Eagle Foundry, in order to take advantage of the transport benefits offered by the construction of the Grand Junction Canal which ran alongside the premises, and the branch line which was connected to the factory linking it with the Great Western Railway.
It was, however, the “Patent Kitchener” which brought the company to real prominence. The first real cooking appliance to supersede the open ‘fire and spit’, the Kitchener was displayed at the Great Exhibition held at “Crystal Palace” in 1851. Some 19,000 exhibitors were represented at the Exhibition but only 17 Prize Medals with special approbation were granted and Flavel’s Kitchener received one of these; just one of numerous subsequent awards that the Company received right up to the time of the Great Paris Exhibition of 1937.
Flavel continued to manufacture cast-iron cooking appliances well into the 1930’s and were pioneers in introducing the first appliance to be finished throughout in porcelain enamel in 1936, resulting in a further avalanche of awards from Exhibitions all over the world.
Flavel was always recognized as being an innovative company and having had a relatively minor presence in the gas fires market in 1965 they introduced the first ever furniture fire with a wood surround – the Debonair.
Over the next 6 years this gas fire totally revolutionized the market and a phenomenal one and a half million were sold; a success that it is most unlikely to ever be repeated.
In more recent times the company continued to trade as Sidney Flavel and Co. until 1974 when it was absorbed into the Glynwed Group which was subsequently broken up in 1998 and the Flavel brand was transferred to Agafoodservice Group.
The heating sector of the market held little interest for Agafoodservices and the Flavel brand and property rights was acquired by BFM Europe (formally CFM Europe) in 2002, since which time the Flavel name has been resurrected and regenerated and has become recognized as a major and highly significant supplier of gas and electric products to the heating market.