I’ll let you in on a little secret: when it came to choosing radiators for my own house, I didn’t shop around for long. I went straight for Stelrad. Not because it’s the brand we fit most often for our customers (though it is), but because after years of installing, servicing and occasionally wrestling with radiators of every make going, I know which ones are built to last. Stelrad has never let me down, at home or on the job. So when I found out Stelrad is celebrating its 90th birthday this year, I wanted to put the kettle on, sit down, and tell you a bit about the company behind the radiators warming your living room right now.
A proper British success story
Stelrad’s roots go back to 1936, when a small factory near the Uxbridge Road in Southall, west London, started turning out steel column radiators. Ninety years, two world-changing decades of house-building, and a house-move up to Mexborough in South Yorkshire later, Stelrad has grown into one of the biggest names in home heating – and it’s still a name I trust enough to have on my own wall. There’s something I really like about that. In an industry full of brands that come and go, or get swallowed up and lose what made them good, Stelrad has stuck around by doing the basics brilliantly: well-made, reliable radiators that heat a room properly and keep doing it for decades.
It started with an idea from a very cold city
The story of the radiator itself starts long before Stelrad. The first practical central heating radiator is generally credited to a Russian engineer, Franz San Galli, working in St Petersburg in the 1850s. Given how bitter a St Petersburg winter can be, it’s not exactly a shock that someone there was motivated to invent a better way of heating a room. His cast-iron design became the blueprint that later radiators, including the ones Stelrad began producing in the 1930s, built on.
Built through the decades when Britain needed heat most
Stelrad’s early years weren’t easy ones. The company had barely got going before the Second World War brought widespread destruction to homes across the country. The rebuilding effort that followed in the 1940s and ’50s created huge demand for new housing – but central heating was still a luxury most new homes went without, simply because it added cost that stretched budgets couldn’t cover. I think it’s worth remembering just how different home heating used to be. Coal fires were the norm, and most families really only heated the one room they could afford to keep warm – everywhere else in the house stayed cold. Add in single-glazed, draughty windows, and it’s easy to picture the state of things: ice on the inside of the glass some mornings wasn’t unusual at all. It wasn’t until the 1970s that “central heating” really entered everyday conversation in British homes. As natural gas became more widely available and new housing was built to take advantage of it, central heating went from a nice-to-have to something people simply expected. And as more homes wanted it, more homes needed radiators – which is exactly the moment Stelrad’s growth really took off.
From steel panels to the styles we fit today
Stelrad hasn’t stood still since. Over the years the range has grown well beyond the original steel panel radiator to include designer and decorative styles, low surface temperature radiators for homes that need them, and the heated towel rails that are pretty much standard in bathrooms now. Ownership of the company has changed hands a few times over the last four decades, but the manufacturing has stayed firmly rooted in Britain, with production consolidated at Mexborough since 1999. Today, Stelrad holds the largest share of the radiator market not just in the UK, but across several other European countries too. Not bad for a company that started in a small Southall factory the same year Fred Perry won his third Wimbledon title.
Why we still recommend them – and fit them at home
When we’re speccing a new heating system for a customer, or replacing a tired old radiator, we’re not just thinking about what looks good on the day. We’re thinking about what’s still going to be doing its job well in fifteen or twenty years. That’s exactly why Stelrad keeps coming up as our go-to recommendation, and why you’ll find them fitted throughout my own home.
If you’re planning a new bathroom towel rail, upgrading an old radiator that’s more cosmetic damage than working heater, or fitting out a whole new heating system, give us a shout. We’ll help you pick the right style and size for the room, and fit it properly so it does its job for decades to come – just like Stelrad has been doing for the last 90 years.
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