There is a boot shop in Camden Town, London, that receives visitors from Tokyo, New York, Berlin, Melbourne, Stockholm, São Paulo, and dozens of other cities every year. They do not come because they cannot buy boots at home. They come because this particular shop — at 5 Kentish Town Road, NW1 8NH — is not like the one at home.
The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ has been here since 1851. It was one of the first shops in the world to sell Dr Martens. 2 Tone Records operated from the floor above. The Clash, Madness, and Joe Strummer bought their boots here. The shop stocks brands and styles you cannot find anywhere else, including an exclusive line of George Cox creepers that exists only within these walls.
TripAdvisor reviewers call it a pilgrimage. We just call it Tuesday.
The shop is not large. It is not a department store or a chain outlet. It is a specialist retailer packed with over 400 styles of boots and shoes, many of which are not available online or in any other shop.
Solovair — the full range from the NPS factory in Wollaston, including styles and leathers that Solovair does not sell direct. Made in England, Goodyear welted, the direct descendant of the original Dr Martens.
George Cox — the full creeper range, including the Robot Range, which is exclusive to The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ. Hand-made in Northampton. You cannot buy these anywhere else.
Vintage Dr Martens — one of the largest collections of original Made in England Dr Martens anywhere in the world. Deadstock from the 1980s and 1990s, colourways that will never be produced again. Once they sell, they are gone permanently.
Loake and Grinders — completing a range that covers every style of boot and shoe from heritage brogues to steel-capped 20-hole boots.
Camden Town is one of the most visited neighbourhoods in London — roughly 250,000 visitors per week at peak season. The area is known for its markets, its music venues, and its subcultural history. Punk started here. Mod culture thrived here. Reggae, ska, and new wave all passed through.
The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ sits at the cultural centre of that history. We are not in Camden because of the tourist footfall — we were here 170 years before Camden became a tourist destination. The tourists come to Camden partly because shops like ours exist.
We are a two-minute walk from Camden Town tube station on the Northern Line. Turn right out of the station, walk along Kentish Town Road, and we are on the left before you reach the canal.
Nick Roumana, the owner, is usually in the shop. His family has run the business since the 1960s. He knows every boot on every shelf — which last runs narrow, which leather breaks in fastest, which vintage Dr Martens are worth collecting and which are overpriced on eBay.
The fitting experience is the main reason to visit in person. At an average price of £220–£300, these are not impulse purchases. Nick will measure your feet, recommend the right size across brands, and let you try on as many pairs as you need. There is no pressure and no rush.
If you are between sizes in one brand, he may suggest a different brand that fits your foot shape better. If you are choosing between Solovair and Dr Martens, he will put both on your feet and let you decide. That kind of service does not exist online.
International visitors should be aware of a few practical points:
We ship worldwide from our online store, so if you see something in the shop that you want to buy later or in a different size, we can send it to you. We accept major credit cards and contactless payment.
Sizing in the shop uses UK sizes. If you are used to US or EU sizing, Nick will convert for you — but it is worth knowing your UK size in advance. Our Solovair sizing guide and buying guide both include conversion notes.
Due to trademark restrictions, we are unable to ship yellow-stitched Solovair products to the USA or Canada. This is noted on the product pages, but it is worth mentioning in person if you are visiting from North America.
Address: The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ, 5 Kentish Town Road, Camden Town, London NW1 8NH
Nearest tube: Camden Town (Northern Line) — 2-minute walk. Exit the station, turn right, walk north along Kentish Town Road.
By bus: Routes 29, 253, 274, and others stop near Camden Town station.
By car: Street parking is limited in Camden. The nearest NCP car park is on Pratt Street. We recommend public transport.
Browse our full range at britboot.co.uk. Free UK delivery on orders over £100. Worldwide shipping available. If you need sizing help, email us before you order — we respond to every message and we would rather you get the right size first time than deal with a return.
Read our heritage story to understand why this shop matters, or browse our Solovair, George Cox, and Vintage Dr Martens collections online.
]]>The NPS factory in Wollaston, Northamptonshire has been making boots since 1881. For thirty-five of those years — from the late 1960s to 2003 — it manufactured Dr Martens under contract. Every pair of Dr Martens 1460s sold during that period came from this building, made by these workers, on these machines.
When Dr Martens moved production to Asia in 2003, the factory did not close. It kept making the same boots, using the same equipment and the same methods, under a different name: Solovair.
We have stocked Solovair at The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ since NPS began selling under their own brand. This is what happens inside the factory that made the boots you grew up in.
Northamptonshire has been the centre of British shoemaking for over 500 years. The county's position in the middle of England made it a natural hub for leather working — cattle markets were nearby, oak bark for tanning was abundant, and the road network connected the region to London and the industrial north.
By the nineteenth century, Northamptonshire was producing the majority of Britain's footwear. Wollaston, a village south of Wellingborough, became home to several boot factories. NPS — Northamptonshire Productive Society — was established there in 1881 as a cooperative.
Most of those factories are gone. NPS is still here. The building, the workforce, and the machinery have been in continuous operation for over 140 years.
The process begins with leather selection. NPS sources its leather primarily from European tanneries — UK, Italian, and Spanish hides selected for consistency, thickness, and grain quality. Each hide is inspected and graded before cutting.
The uppers are cut by hand or using clicking presses — machines that stamp out the pattern pieces from the hide. A skilled clicker positions the patterns to avoid blemishes and maximise the usable area of each hide. This is a judgement call, not an automated process.
The cut pieces are stitched together to form the upper — the part of the boot that wraps around your foot. This is done on industrial sewing machines by machinists who have been doing this work for years, often decades.
The upper is then pulled over a last — a solid form shaped like a foot — and stretched into shape. This is called lasting, and it determines the fit and silhouette of the finished boot. NPS uses the same lasts that produced the original Dr Martens.
The Goodyear welting happens next. A strip of leather or rubber — the welt — is stitched around the perimeter of the lasted upper. The sole is then stitched to the welt. This double-stitch construction creates the waterproof, resolable structure that defines a Goodyear welted boot.
Finally, the boot is finished — edges trimmed, sole painted, leather polished, eyelets set, laces threaded. Each pair is inspected before leaving the factory.
The entire process, from leather selection to finished boot, takes significantly longer than machine-produced, cemented footwear. That time is the difference between a boot that lasts four years and one that lasts fifteen.
The Goodyear welting equipment at NPS is the same machinery that produced Dr Martens for decades. The lasts are the same lasts. The sole-stitching machines, the lasting equipment, the finishing tools — they did not change when the brand name changed.
This is why the comparison between Solovair and Dr Martens is so direct. Solovair is not an homage to the original Dr Martens or a competitor inspired by them. It is the same boot, from the same place, made the same way, by many of the same people. The only thing that changed was the label.
"Solovair" is a portmanteau of "Sole of Air" — a reference to the air-cushioned sole technology that the factory has been using since the 1960s. NPS chose the name to reflect the product's defining feature: the bouncing, cushioned sole that made Dr Martens famous.
The brand has grown significantly since 2003. Collaborations with Carhartt WIP and other brands have raised Solovair's profile internationally. But the factory has not changed its methods, its materials, or its standards. Volume has increased; quality has not been compromised.
You can describe a boot's construction on a product page. You can photograph the leather and the stitching. But the factory is where the real story lives — 140 years of continuous production, generations of skilled workers, and a commitment to doing things the slow, expensive, correct way.
When you buy a pair of Solovair boots, you are buying the output of that factory. Not a brand name, not a marketing campaign — a product made by people who have been making boots in the same building since Queen Victoria was on the throne.
Read What Made in England Actually Means in 2026 for the broader context, or browse our full Solovair collection.
]]>Between 1979 and the early 1980s, one of the most important record labels in British music history operated from the first floor of a boot shop in Camden Town. The boot shop was ours. The label was 2 Tone Records. And the music that came out of those rooms — The Specials, Madness, The Selecter, The Beat — changed the sound of Britain.
This is not ancient history. The building is still here. The shop is still open. The boots are still on the shelves. And the bass from those rehearsals probably still lives in the walls.
2 Tone Records was founded by Jerry Dammers, keyboard player and songwriter for The Specials, in 1979. The label took its name from its guiding principle: music that brought together Black and white audiences, blending Jamaican ska and rocksteady with punk energy. The chequered black-and-white logo — Walt Jabsco in a pork-pie hat — became one of the most recognisable symbols in British music.
The movement was explicitly anti-racist at a time when the National Front was marching through British cities. 2 Tone was not just a sound — it was a political position, delivered through three-minute songs that you could dance to.
Jerry Dammers set up the label's London operations in the rooms above The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ â€” then known as Holts — at 5 Kentish Town Road, Camden Town. The shop was already established as one of London's most important boot retailers, run by Alan Roumana and known as the place to buy Dr Martens.
The location was not coincidental. Camden Town in the late 1970s was a crossroads of punk, ska, reggae, and working-class culture. The shop sat at the junction of these communities. Dr Martens boots were the common footwear across all of them. Having a record label above a boot shop was, in hindsight, perfectly logical.
Madness — seven young men from Camden and Kilburn — signed to 2 Tone and recorded their debut single "The Prince" in 1979. They did the deal in the building above our shop. Within months, they were on Top of the Pops. Within a year, they were one of the biggest bands in Britain.
The connection between 2 Tone and boots was not just physical proximity. The bands dressed the part. Dr Martens, brogues, loafers, Chelsea boots — footwear was as much a part of the 2 Tone look as the pork-pie hat and the tonic suit. The Specials wore DMs on stage. Madness wore them in every video.
And they bought them downstairs.
This shop has always existed at the intersection of music and footwear. The Clash bought boots here. Joe Strummer was a regular — our Strummer Range is named after him. The Madness connection runs through 2 Tone. The boot shop was not adjacent to the culture — it was inside it.
The label released some of the most enduring singles of the late twentieth century. "Ghost Town" by The Specials is routinely cited as one of the greatest songs ever recorded — a portrait of Thatcher-era Britain set to a haunting ska arrangement. "One Step Beyond" by Madness became a national anthem for anyone who has ever been in a pub at closing time. "Too Much Too Young" hit number one.
The 2 Tone movement lasted only a few years in its original form, but its influence runs through every subsequent wave of British guitar music, from Britpop to the current ska revival. The Specials reformed. Madness never really stopped. And the chequered logo still appears on t-shirts, tattoos, and patches in every city in the world.
The rooms upstairs are no longer a record label. But the shop is the same shop. The address is the same address. If you visit us at 5 Kentish Town Road, Camden Town, you are standing in the same building where 2 Tone operated, where Madness signed their deal, and where Jerry Dammers ran a label that changed British music.
We do not sell records. We sell boots. But the connection between the two has never really broken. The same subcultures that made 2 Tone necessary — punk, ska, mod, skinhead — are the same subcultures that made this shop what it is.
Browse our Dr Martens collection, our Loake brogues, and our Chelsea boots — the same styles that 2 Tone bands wore on stage. Or come to Camden and see the building for yourself.
]]>Most boot shops have a founding story. Ours has a founding century. The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ â€” originally known as Holts — opened its doors in 1851, selling hobnail boots to the Irish labourers who were building the railways and canals that would transform Camden Town from a quiet parish into one of London's most restless neighbourhoods.
The shop has been on Kentish Town Road ever since. Not a different branch. Not a rebrand in a new postcode. The same stretch of pavement, through two world wars, the Blitz, the birth of the welfare state, the collapse of British manufacturing, and every youth movement that walked through north London in steel-capped boots.
That is 175 years of selling boots from the same spot. The London Underground is younger than this shop.
For the first century, Holts was a working boot shop in a working neighbourhood. Camden was not yet the tourist attraction it is today — it was industrial, dockside, and full of people who needed footwear that could survive a twelve-hour shift. The shop sold what the area needed: sturdy, practical, British-made boots.
That changed in the late 1950s. The Griggs family in Wollaston, Northamptonshire had licensed a German air-cushioned sole design and began producing a new boot under the name Dr Martens. The first 1460 rolled off the production line on 1 April 1960. Holts — by then run by Alan Roumana — was one of the first shops in the world to stock them.
At the time, the boots were workwear. Postmen wore them. Factory workers wore them. Nobody predicted what came next.
By the late 1960s, skinheads had adopted the Dr Martens boot as uniform. Not because of marketing — there was none — but because the boots were tough, affordable, and looked right with turned-up jeans and braces. The shop on Kentish Town Road became a destination.
Then came punk. The Clash bought their boots here. Joe Strummer was a regular — his connection to the shop is remembered in our Strummer Range, a line of boots that carries his name. The Sex Pistols, The Damned, Siouxsie Sioux — if you were making noise in London in the late seventies, you probably bought your boots from Camden.
And then, directly above the shop, something remarkable happened. Jerry Dammers set up 2 Tone Records on the first floor. The label that launched The Specials, The Selecter, and Madness operated from the rooms above our ceiling. Madness signed their first record deal in the building. The bass from rehearsals shook the boot boxes on the shelves.
This is not heritage we have to manufacture. It happened here. The walls remember it.
Alan Roumana ran the shop through the skinhead era, the punk era, and the new wave years. His grandson, Nick Roumana, runs it today. Three generations of the same family, from the same shop, on the same road.
Nick knows every boot in the shop. He knows which Solovair last runs narrow, which George Cox creeper suits a wider foot, and which vintage Dr Martens colourways will never be produced again. That knowledge does not come from a product database. It comes from decades of fitting customers, handling stock, and maintaining relationships with the factories that make these boots.
The shop has evolved, but the principle has not: we sell British-made boots and shoes from people who know what they are talking about.
Our current range includes Solovair — made at the NPS factory in Wollaston, the same factory that produced the original Dr Martens for thirty-five years. We carry the full George Cox range, including the D-Ring Creeper and the Robot Range, which is exclusive to our shop. We stock Loake, Grinders, and one of the largest collections of vintage and deadstock Made in England Dr Martens anywhere in the world.
If you have read our Solovair vs Dr Martens comparison, you will know that we sell both and we are honest about the differences. We are not a brand shop with a single story to tell. We are a specialist retailer with an opinion, and that opinion is earned.
There is a reason people fly from Tokyo, New York, and Berlin to visit a boot shop in Camden Town. It is not because we have a nice website. It is because this shop is the real thing — a place where subcultural history, British manufacturing, and genuine product knowledge intersect in a way that no online-only retailer can replicate.
Every pair of boots we sell connects to a story. The Solovair 8-eye derby connects to the NPS factory and thirty-five years of shared history with Dr Martens. The George Cox creeper connects to the Teddy Boys, Malcolm McLaren, and the punk movement. The vintage Dr Martens connect to a factory floor in Northamptonshire that no longer exists.
We have been telling these stories since 1851. We do not plan to stop.
We are at 5 Kentish Town Road, Camden Town, London NW1 8NH — a two-minute walk from Camden Town tube station on the Northern Line. Come in, try something on, and ask Nick about any boot in the shop. He will tell you more than any product page ever could.
Cannot visit in person? Browse our full range online at britboot.co.uk with free UK delivery on orders over £100.
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