It has become one of the great country brands – marching from wartime necessity to fashion icon. Peter Barron steps back in time with 12 historic facts about the great wellington boot.
1. The origins of the wellington boot go back to the days of Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, also known as The Iron Duke. He instructed his shoemaker, George Hoby, to modify the Hessian 18th century boot and make him a more comfortable boot from calfskin leather. The welly had been born.
2. Wellingtons first appeared en masse in 1817 when they became popular with troops because they were hard-wearing on the fields of battle but doubled up as comfortable evening wear.
Nowadays, any colour goes
3. Charles Goodyear (1800-1860) introduced the idea of rubber boots after he invented a vulcanisation process for rubber. An American industrialist called Hiram Hutchinson then spotted the potential to equip agricultural workers in France with the rubber boots and bought the patent from Goodyear in 1852. He launched The Flexible Rubber Company (La Compagnie du Caoutchouc Souple) and patented a brand of wellington boots in 1853.
4. By 1857, 95 per cent of the rural population was said to own a pair of wellington boots and The Flexible Rubber Company was hand-making 14,000 pairs of boots pair day.
5. Meanwhile, another American entrepreneur, Henry Lee Morris, had spotted the opportunity to cash in with rubber boots in Scotland, where it rained a lot. He moved to Edinburgh and registered the British Rubber Company.
6. Production of wellington boots grew rapidly due to demand during the First and Second World Wars and the momentum continued in peacetime, with farmers, gardeners and fishermen wanting to benefit from their protection and flexibility.
... and patterns have been added
7. The North British Rubber Company changed its name to Uniroyal Limited in 1966 and, four decades later, Hunter Wellington boots emerged as a popular fashion accessory.
8. In 1974 Scottish comedian Billy Connolly adopted a comical ode to the boot called "The Welly Boot Song" as his theme tune.
9. In 1980, sales of Hunter Wellies rocketed after Lady Diana Spencer was photographed wearing a pair at Balmoral during her courtship with the Prince of Wales.
... and the patterns have become more adventurous
10. In Australia and New Zealand, wellies are known as gum boots or “gumbies”.
11. It is traditional for thousands of pairs of abandoned wellies to be found after the Glastonbury Festival. To begin with, they were buried in landfill sites but since 2013 a charity called Small Steps has shipped them to Romania to be distributed to people living in difficult conditions.
12. By 2012, retailers were reporting that two pairs of wellies were being sold every minute, with the traditional designs now being joined by boots in a huge variety of shapes, colours, and patterns such as these...
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