Albion Timber: The Yorkshire timber yard which is throwing open its doors to the public for the first time

“I told them: I've got plenty of timber and I could come to your club and sell a bit of stuff. That's probably where the idea of selling to clubs came from.”

Ten years on and Smyth now runs Albion Timber, a sprawling timber yard on Upper Hurst Farm in Sheffield.

Complete with a showroom, machine shop and sawmill, there are stacks and stacks of timber in all directions, piled up against a stunning backdrop that looks over all of Sheffield.

“This isn't the sort of thing you can sell on the internet very easily,” he says.

“If you want to buy timber that’s going to go in your house, where you’ll see it every day, then you need to touch it, feel it and smell it before you buy it. It’s a sensory experience for a lot of people coming in here – they love the smell and the colours of it all.”

For the first time, Albion Timber is hosting an open day on May 18, offering a timber sale, along with various trade stands and woodturning and carving demonstrations.

“Everyone is welcome, it's not just a hobbyist show,” says Smyth. The very same woodcarving club that he sold to 10 years ago will even be in attendance. “It’s a really nice full circle moment,” he adds

Smyth grew up on the farm next door to his yard, so had access to logs from a young age, and began woodturning at about age nine.

“That sparked something in me which then started to take off,” he says.

“I did a lot of woodturning and I got good enough to then pursue work in shops and galleries. I did quite well with it but it got to a point, when I was about 17, that I was really enjoying finding the customers, sorting out the deals, pricing and all that, but the making part I was starting to not enjoy as much.

“There were bigger and more repetitive jobs with less creativity and a lot less scope with what species of timber I could use. So I ended up migrating over to selling the timber.”

Initially it was a learning-on-the-job process, teaching himself about all the various types of timber and how best to prepare and process it as he tried to sell to even more woodturning and carving clubs.

“I ended up travelling around the country to about 12 or 13 clubs selling woodturning blanks,” he recalls. “Then as time went on, I needed to buy more stock. So I would start to buy logs from tree surgeons and try to find more and more logs to buy and get them milled.”

Then an opportunity arose to buy one hundred tonnes of logs. “I’d never bought more than 20 tonnes before in my life, so it was a big step up,” he says.

“But I went for it. Then I started renting the corner yard in a builder’s merchant and found my own sawmill and I bought that and I got the timber cut up.”

Then, in around 2018, Smyth found himself chatting with his next-door neighbour since childhood from the farm, who soon became his landlord when Smyth took on the space that is now Albion Timber.

“There wasn't much of a yard at that point really,” he says. “Just two sheds with a bit of a track between them.” However, it proved to be a defining moment in his journey.

“It was a bit of a ground zero moment for me,” he says, of obtaining the yard and the huge log order.

“I didn't really have any customers as such but I had a bit of timber, a bit of a shed, and lots of hope.”

But things began to grow as Albion Timber positioned itself as a specialist hardwood merchant with a particular focus on local wood.

“There is a lack of appreciation for British timber and I'm trying to change perceptions,” says Smyth.

“One of the things I've always tried to do is steal away a bit of the imported market and bring it back into the English stuff. A lot of good quality timber here ends up going into firewood. It creates a good opportunity to take good quality timber and do something better with it. It's not a new product but it's a new way of doing something.”

While Albion specialises in English timber, it also carries stock from Europe, America, Africa and Asia, so you’ll find oak, ash, elm, cherry, maple, larch, douglas fir, cedar, beech, sycamore and just about anything else you could imagine.

But the local stuff is often what keeps people coming back. “A lot of people really care about what the wood is,” Smyth says.

“They care about the fact that it's English oak or English ash, and that they know where it's come from, and they've come to a local yard and they have dealt with a local business on a small scale.

"A lot of people come to us who want their forever home and they want that to mean something. So they come to us because there's a connection to the timber and the place it's come from, because we can tell you where most pieces of wood are from, down to which forest or estate.”

The environmental impact of keeping things local and sustainable is of course a huge added bonus, as is the opportunity to connect with other local businesses.

“We deal with a company in Sheffield that makes a lot of tool handles,” says Symth. “They were buying Danish timber, so that was travelling hundreds of miles before and now it’s just up the road. And it's actually a better product too.

“Because we operate on a smaller scale and we are gentler on the timber, we can dry it slower, more naturally, and let it be a more stable end product.”

The company also makes its own bespoke furniture, which is now displayed in the new showroom, which means that not only can you go and buy a variety of timber at source but also pick something from Albion’s range of custom tables, beams and solid oak doors.

The firm also takes orders to produce everything from mantelpieces to bar tops, with this side of the business providing more opportunities to connect with local suppliers and foster a network.

“We work with a local fabricator to make metal bases for our tables,” says Smyth. “Now, you can go on eBay and get one from China but most of the time, for roughly the same price, maybe a bit more, you can get one which has been made two miles away and it's gone through all the local processes and is made with Sheffield steel. That’s important to us, and to customers.”

For Smyth, the upcoming open day is not just a chance for people to come and have a look around and buy something but it’s a milestone moment for a company that in many ways began 10 years ago when a plucky young 15-year-old talked his way into selling timber to a woodcarving club.

“It's not just an open day,” Smyth says.

“It's a celebration of finishing this journey. It's like a ‘we are here’ moment to showcase the company. And it’s about including people we have worked with past and present and that we want to promote.

"It's trying to help the community. I've put a lot of work into it and it's about more than just trying to sell timber.”

www.albiontimber.co.uk