Sindy's wooden four-poster bed
Most Sindy collectors can easily recognise the iconic 1960s ‘Cherub Bed’ (see 1966 Scenesetters) however what is often forgotten is that Sindy also had a bed made for her not by Pedigree, but by Good-Wood Toys in Lavant, West Sussex.
Walter Lines and Good-Wood
Pedigree was a Lines Brothers Ltd subsidiary and when its Chairman, Walter Lines, retired in 1962 at the age of 80 years, he went on to establish Good-Wood Toys (Lavant) Ltd.
Walter Lines was born in North London in 1882. He left school aged 14 and like his brothers joined the family firm G&J Lines which made wooden toys. He went to work at the Tottenham factory where he had the dubious and disgusting task of washing horse tails to be used for their rocking horses (Giles Chapman, Three Million Miles in a Volvo and Other Curious Car Stories: 50 Fascinating Lives with Cars, 2024, pg 156). He also spent time learning about the manufacture of baby carriages and prams at Allen and Co. a subsidiary company acquired in 1886. The rest of his time was taken up with evening classes in design at Camden School of Art, and in building, carpentry and cabinet making at the Northern Polytechnic (Kenneth D Brown, A History of Triang and Lines Brothers Ltd, 2022, p 13).
After WW1, in 1919 three of the brothers; Arthur, Walter and William, disenchanted with how the family business was being run, set up their own company Lines Brothers Ltd. They used the brandname Tri-ang (because as we all learn at school ‘three lines make a triangle’). Walter initally designed the new company’s toys. Their father Joseph was furious with the boys for not staying with his company, and forbid his wife, the sons’ mother, from seeing them (Brown, 2022, pg 29). After his death in 1931, G&J Lines was wound up and the Lines brothers who had never really reconciled with their father after going their own way, bought the company and its products, brandnames and assets.
In 1937 Lines Brothers opened a new factory and headquarters in Merton, South London designed by Walter. By the 1950s it was reputed to be the largest toy factory in the world, with an area of 750,000 sq. ft., and over 4,000 employees (https://www.mertonworkingheritage.co.uk/community accessed 20.1.2025). By the 1960s, Lines also had factories in Belfast, Merthyr Tydfil, Margate and Richmond.
Through expansion and extensive acquisitions, at its peak Line Brothers was claimed to be the largest toy maker in the world owning some 50 companies in the UK and abroad. Whilst other companies might make tentative partnerships, Walter simply bought them, and being a large user of paint and paper, he bought a paint company and paper mill too, plus a forestry to grow their own trees (https:www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Category:Tri-ang accessed 20.1.2025).
The Good-Wood logo circa 1970 echoing the Lines Brothers triangle
Reproduced with the kind permission of Giles Chapman
It easy to see that on retiring, the indomitable Walter was bound to carry on making toys. It was not a retirement hobby, but a business, and in 1963 he set up a new factory on the site of an old sawmill in Lavant, West Sussex, and returned to his roots producing traditional wooden toys. Even in the 1960s Good-Wood Toys was an anachronism, producing quality wooden toys in an age where plastic toys were becoming the norm. But as Walter had by now been in the toy business for over 67 years, he knew a thing or two about toys, so he personally oversaw the design of new ideas and products that Good-Wood turned into robust wooden toys made to last.
The factory was managed by his daughter, Peggy Lines (who was also Chairman of Hamleys) and the factory was equipped with up-to-date machinery and employed skilled operators who were local Sussex men and women. By 1970 the factory even had its own Play-Group where all the toys were tested. Up to twenty toddlers could spend their day playing with new products in a play room whilst their mothers worked on the assembly lines. The factory also had a specially built showroom which customers could visit to see the complete range of toys and playthings, as well as a chance to see the toys being made.
When Barclays Securities broke up and sold off their Tri-ang Pedigree aquisition in 1972, six months after purchasing it in the liquidation of the Lines Brothers empire, the wooden toy business was unsurprisingly bought by Good-Wood for £225,000 (Kenneth D Brown, The British Toy Business – A History since 1700, 1996, pg 192).
Walter Lines passed away on the 23rd of November 1972 at his home in Surrey, and the Good-Wood factory in Lavant finally closed in 1975.
There is a lovely short film about the Good-Wood factory in 1968 which can be seen here:
Good-Wood Toys (Lavant) Ltd also made the Sindy Deck Chair, Sindy & Paul Jack in a Box and the Sindy Puppets which all have their own pages in the museum:
Sindy & Paul Jack in the Boxes
And this page is devoted to Sindy’s beautiful four-poster bed. Although the original box clearly distinguished it was a Sindy product, there is nothing on the bed itself to prove it ever belonged to her.
The bed came fully-assembled in a large box (17 x 16 x 10 inches) complete with bedding. The bed was 16 inches long and was made of turned and shaped polished wood. The four posts were made from a deep-stained mahogany wood, whilst the frame and bed head were made from a much lighter (and redder) stained wood.
Box detail left and above.
On the back of the bed head there is a small silver rectangular adhesive label with a red border which measures 1½ inches long by 5/8ths of an inch high.
The attention given to the detail of this child’s doll bed is astonishing.
Shown left is one of the columns of the bed with its turned, oval wooden bead decoration. Each column needed 3.5 turned beads, 14 in all, which would have been all hand-turned on a lathe at the Good-Wood factory.
No less remarkable was the accompanying bed linen.
The eiderdown (as it was called in the description), but which we would probably more readily recognise as a counterpane, was padded and stitched in rectangles giving it a quilted look Together with the curtains and valance, the cover was made of cotton chintz. The matching curtains, canopy and valance were carefully stitched with gathers and were finished with a cotton lace trim. The same trim in fact as used for Sindy’s 2nd MIE version of ‘Frosty Nights (Ref 12S62).
There is also a cheerful orange floral variation to this chintz fabric.
To keep Sindy warm there was a pink Witney brushed cotton blanket, with an overlocked stitched pink satin border to one short edge. It had two white linen, hemmed sheets, a white cotton long bolster-shaped pillow, and a square Continental pillow.
The mattress was made of sponge covered with a blue and white ticking cotton mattress cover (very similar to the material used for Paul’s ‘And So To Bed’ pyjamas and Sindy’s MIE ‘Emergency Ward’ nurse’s dress). The sponge is sewn into the mattress cover.
There is the view that this bed was originally made for any 12 inch teenage doll and was subsequently rebranded as a Sindy bed.
The 1966 Good-Wood Catalogue described this bed as “designed for a Sindy” (shown far left). Thus implying it could be for any similar sized doll.
By 1968 it was called a “Sindy Four-poster Bed” in the Good-Wood Catalogues and pointed out in the description that it could be used for “other 12″ dolls” (shown left).
We know this bed was displayed in the Hamleys’ catalogue from 1965 to 1972. Beyond those dates we do not have any documentary evidence to confirm its availability, but it is not shown in the Hamleys’ 1973/74 catalogue, so we assume that production of this lovely bed had ceased by then.
Left is a photo of the 1969/1970 Hamley’s listing.
Given that this bed was available for a number of years, one wonders why more of these beds are not seen today. We think there are perhaps four reasons for this:
1. A lot of collectors are not even aware of its existence and so they don’t look out for it.
2. Without the packaging, there is nothing to identify this bed as belonging to Sindy, and so this knowledge has been lost over time. Even if you were given one of these beds in the 60s and were told it was for Sindy, how could you prove it today from the bed alone?
3. These beds were quite exclusive. To put it into context, in 1966/67 the Good-Wood Four-Poster Bed cost £3.19.6d, but you could buy Sindy’s plastic ‘Cherub Bed’ for £1.12.6d which was just over a third of four-poster bed price. The average weekly man’s wage in 1966 was £23.9.5, so the Good-Wood four-poster was a relatively pricey purchase for the average family and probably sales of cheaper teenage doll beds far outstripped the sales for this lovely four-poster. This would mean that today there are not that many around anyway.
4. Given the choice, which bed would a little girl choose for her Sindy? The beautifully made but maybe old-fashioned looking four-poster, or the modern white and gold “glitzy” ‘Cherub Bed’ with matching bedroom furniture, which if you were lucky, your parents might also eventually buy for you? We regret to say we’d have probably chosen the ‘Cherub Bed’. This aspect might also have affected the number of these beds that were purchased.