GRENSON

William Green - founder of 'Grenson'

William Green

Jane Green

Reginald Kersey Green was third son of Charles A K Green, and a grandson of William Green (1835-1901) the shoemaker who founded the Grenson shoe company and his wife Jane (nee Kersey). William was born at Houghton Conquest in Bedfordshire, where his mother’s brother lived. It is thought that William may have met Jane when he attended a Temperance Festival at Hartwell House, near to Aylesbury town. Jane was born in 1839 in Aylesbury Buckinghamshire, where her father was head gardener for the owner of Hartwell House, Dr. John Lee, a notable philanthropist.
At first William Green had made shoes in the loft over the corn merchant’s in Newton Road and sold his wares to a shoe factor, Mr Darnell who travelled up from London on behalf of shoe shops there. He liked the quality and encouraged them to expand. To begin with his own family lived at 2 Cambridge Place in 1871. In 1874 they built a new three-storey factory at the bottom of Albion Place fronting High Street South. Members of the family also lived close by and were working in co-operation with William. The family were staunch Baptists and attended the ‘Bottom Meeting’ in Little Street.

Further expansion saw the new factory built on the corner of Cromwell Road and Queen Street in 1895, and the firm still operate there today. About this time William & Jane moved house to 15 Griffith Street. Their eldest son Charles Arthur Kersey Green was born in 1862 and he moved to live at the foot of Crabb Street when he married. Later he moved to Hayway and in 1920 moved into Knuston Hall.