Vintage British-Made Men's Wallets and Billfolds — Voted by the Community

The word wallet first meant a bag or knapsack carried by travellers. Its use for a flat case for paper money is recorded from 1834, first in American English. In Britain, wallets grew out of the wider leather trade. London's Bermondsey was a major tanning district for centuries, and Leeds was one of England's leading tanning towns in the nineteenth century. Walsall, in the West Midlands, became the country's saddlery centre. Its leather trade grew after the railway arrived in 1847, and by around 1900 the town was home to nearly a third of Britain's saddlers and harness makers. Some Walsall firms had been making light leather goods such as travelling bags, hat boxes and wallets since the 1870s. As motor vehicles replaced horses in the early twentieth century, they moved more of their work to these goods and gradually dropped harness and saddlery. The town's surviving firms now concentrate on high-quality leather goods. British-made wallets today draw on this long history of saddlery and leatherwork.