History
Around 35 years ago Sue and Steve Timms set up S & S Timms Antiques in a small shop on Dunstable Street, Ampthill. Antiques had always been in the blood for Steve , growing up with both his Grandfather and Father in the trade. (The latter actually had a shop on Sydney Street in London during the early part of the 20th Century and was a founder member of the BADA) When Steve met Sue it didn’t take long for her to fall in love with the business, and together they set up shop. For many years they dealt almost exclusively with the trade, but gradually they began to also deal with the public.
Naturally the business continued to evolve and in 1998 a major change occurred, when Sue & Steve’s Son Robbie left school and joined the family business as an apprentice, becoming the fourth generation of his family in a row to be involved in the antiques trade.
In May 2007 Sue, Steve and Robbie made, what at the time, felt like a difficult decision to close down their retail showrooms, thus hopefully allowing them all more time to concentrate on dealing from fairs, antique centres and their new extensive website.
Tragically in early 2009, the heartbeat of the business, Sue lost her long and courageous battle with cancer and passed away peacefully. It was shortly after this time that Robbie, alongside his father and wife Julie, (who had joined in 2008) resolved to continue the good work and make sure S &S Timms remained a business that Sue would always be proud of many years to come.
Current
As you can imagine having been established in the antiques trade for well over 30 years S & S Timms have a vast wealth of knowledge and experience and we are always happy to share and pass this on to others.
Our stock is available to view by appointment only, in full on our website or at one of the shops we have in two well known antiques centres. The centres we have small shops in are The Swan at Tetsworth, which has been voted best UK antiques centre numerous times and The Edenbridge Galleries in Edenbridge, Kent which is a very high quality collective of well known dealers, owned and managed by the Antiques Roadshow furniture expert Lennox Cato.
We also show at a large selection of high quality antiques fairs around the United Kingdom, so please be sure to check out our Fairs/Events page to obtain more information on where you can see us next.
Finally we thought it may be useful to be able to either put a face to the name if you have spoken by email or phone with us, or even put a name to the face if you have met one of us in person somewhere, so here is a quick who’s who at S & S Timms Antiques.
| Name |
Steve Timms |
| Time at S & S Timms |
Over 35 years |
| Role |
Steve is the Chief Buyer and is out on the road every day of the week trying to source high quality and good value items from a large network of contacts which he has built over the years. |
| Name |
Robbie Timms |
| Time at S & S Timms |
Over 10 years |
| Role |
Robbie has progressed from 16 year old apprentice to the Director of Sales. If you see something somewhere for sale by S & S Timms then there’s a good chance that it’ll be Robbie who helps answer your queries, whether it’s at
a fair or on the website. |
| Name |
Julie Timms |
| Time at S & S Timms |
Over 3 years |
| Role |
Julie is a vital cog behind the scenes at S & S Timms as her main responsibility is the bookwork and anything office related. She can also be found, from time to time, working the antiques fair stands when circumstances permit. |
| Name |
Jennifer Souster |
| Time at S & S Timms |
Over 20 years |
| Role |
Jenny has been a loyal and dedicated employee at S & S Timms for many years now and can be found helping out in the office one day a week or on the stand assisting Robbie at antiques fairs when they are on. |
