About us

Gerry & Carol Dawson
Who are we? Well we both grew up in the London/ Buckinghamshire area. When we were first married we spent just over two years working in and travelling around the USA. Six months in New England and then over to California for almost two years. On our return we lived in Bucks, our first two children were born and after a few years we decided to move to the West Country.Originally Gerry worked in Timber Frame Housing and when we moved to the South West I started a bric-a-brac / antique stall on Bridport market. When our third child was on the way Gerry took over the stall and in ’78 we started buying and selling second hand tools. And tools have been our working life ever since. We stopped doing Bridport market a long time ago and since those days we have had two shops but once the world wide web evolved we decided that was the way we wanted to go and six years ago we launched secondhandtools.co.uk.  (If we have the time and it is good market weather then we go over to Bridport on a Saturday morning quite early, wander around, buy tools (and vegetables, etc.) have a coffee and generally walk down Memory Lane. 

We have met some really interesting, great people through dealing in tools: customers, gifted craftsmen and women, people selling us tools and of course other dealers. Gerry is out buying tools at least one day a week. If the tools are at a distance then I go to and we make an away day or two of it.

We have four children (two boys, two girls), three grandchildren, the latest a pretty little girl born on November 13 (and another granddaughter due in March).   One of the good things about an internet business is that we can work more flexible hours and somehow at the moment our business lives and our personal lives co-exist quite peacefully.