About Gateshead Locksmith Service

Taylors Locksmiths of Gateshead are a third generation family run Gateshead Locksmith Service in Tyne and Wear that have over 70 years of locksmith experience passed from father to son. Founded in 1948 as a small one man business after the 2nd world war. 

Gateshead Locksmith Service is how we make a living so we will only give 100% so that you will recommend our service to family and friends. We believe in professionalism, quality work and outstanding customer service on each and every job that we take on.

We are honest, as our Grandpa, the late John Taylor taught us to be, he always said "son treat people as you will expect to be treated and remember only charge as much as you would expect to pay". This was so true and we have always stuck to this in our business model and let people know our prices before we arrive as and where we can and will not carry out any work until the right price is met. Our Grandpa was set against any call out fee, he seen this as robbery. He believed an hourly rate was enough and we stick by that.  

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Taylors Locksmiths or Gateshead Locksmith Service as we have now become known by, so that we can be found on Google, however once a long time ago we nearly lost everything. We started in 1948 when the late John Taylor (Grandpa) started his locksmith shop with our Gran Dorien. It was only a small shop on West Street back then. It was a mix of groceries and the locksmith business, some hardware and sweets. When our Grandpa created the locksmith business it was known as Taylor & Son's, Locks and Safes, it was my father Julan and Grandpa John and Uncle Andrew. They used to hand make and fit safes back then to shops, but as times moved on so did we and it was not always easy. 

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By the 1970s we had our first vans, small yellow vans with a orange and green logo on the side. This was our first introduction to mobile locksmiths. Before this people would come to the shop with broken locks, back then the majority of men would take the lock out of the doors themselves and bring it to the shop to be fixed by Grandpa or for new keys to be made or cut. Back then it was real locksmithing he would say. Not what locksmiths do today where locks are ten a penny. and most locksmiths are just trained in a 3 day course. Back then it was a 4 year education, working on the job. It was back when we had to be able to hand cut keys, repin locks and rekeys locks, we had to be able to rebuild them, repair them with quality British made items, Sheffield Steel was used to cut new levers, items forged by the blacksmith still existed, we were fully trained in welding and making and lock bodies from sheet steel.

Then we had the white plastic boom, in come the UPVC generation with its slick sales men and women. At first it was alloy doors but it would be this white plastic that would change the course of the Gateshead Locksmiths, Taylors and Sons locksmiths. Locks become easier to buy as they were being made abroad cheap and the old skills of being able to repair a lock faded away, Men got jobs on computers and no longer understood how to change a lock themselves. Northeast Lock and Key was launched and hardware become easier to buy than make which was ideal for us.

The demand for a locksmith to attend the the home was created, mainly due to the complex nature of the new multi-point locking system that was now being fitted to the UPVC doors and windows This is when we moved from just locksmiths and safes to become multi-point locking experts dealing with all manours of UPVC doors and windows. By the 1980s we had moved into door and window fitting with a small factor in South Shields. 

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During the closing of the mines Margaret Thatcher visited us as we had launched a full locksmith apprentice training program to help locals who where now out of work miners back into employment. We taught welding, blacksmithing and locksmithing, window and door fitting. 

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However by the end of the 1980s we would be almost done for as Timpsons moved in our the key cutting and safes and took that business away from us. UPVC had become a national business and the market had changed with companies taking over who had armies of sales reps, TV and radio advertising and budgets we could not compete with. We sadly closed our shop, closed our factory and laid off our workers. We lost 17 staff that day which many went on to open up there own locksmith businesses, windor and door fitting. companies.

Over the years  Grandpa started to trade from his home now based in Sunderland, Julian and Andrew who are John's sons traded from their homes and vans, using the good old Yellow Pages to bring in work. We still had contracts to work with but the financial downfall was too deep and Taylor and Sons was drowning in debt from the closures. However eventually all would be right again. Starting with a small market stall in Sunderland, and Gateshead. Grandpa would travel to all the markets cutting keys, selling hardware and door furniture.

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By the late 1990s we had once again grown from nothing in to a small shop where I worked as a teenager, we had grown again under my Grandpas hard graft and my father Julian Taylor who created the first auto locksmith van which ended up mostly dealing with car alarms due to the rise in the 1990s car crime gangs in the Tyne and Wear area, often known back then as TWOC Squads which ment "TakeN Without Owner's Consent". This rise meant that we seen more money in the auto electrical and car locks, selling steering wheel locks and foot pedal locks, making them by hand and this is where our business would head and by 1997 we launched a garage at Shiney Row working with Auto Electrical, car locks and alarms and we moved away, gradually from the residential locksmith side, it was still there but it earned the least amount. We got rid of the shop and I started to work in the garage where I first got my real experience in business how it runs and operates. 

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It would be in 2006 when we first went online with aid of myself Steven J Taylor, we created a Myspace for our auto business and it actually started to get work for our locksmith trade on the side by now our main business was Auto alarms, we started to venture in to MOT's but Grandpa had kept the locksmith business in his back shed gowing, visiting markets and cutting keys on the cheap, now retired it was ideal, few jobs a week and it gave him some beer tokens for the pub on the weekend.

He always said "son, pick a profession that your customer has at least one of the item you work with or sell, if that be shoes, tires or locks, you will always have a job". The reason he said that is that I had just finished my education, I was a tad lost in what I wanted to do in my life and I had grown up seeing no money in the locksmith trade and during this time we would sell the garage off as the auto business had changed vastly and the skills needed were beyond most of our skill sets we had at the time, as car locks become more technical and the AA and RAC, Green Flag started to give auto locksmith services away free with breakdown packages sharply put an end to the auto locksmith industry for us with their multi million pound auto locksmith vans targeting our area. 

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However it would during a glass of whisky with Grandpa while he was sadly bedridden. We had chatted about the locksmith trade as I had asked him about me taking it on. I had thought about for some years. I was damn good at it, I had been doing it all my entire life and I knew I did not want to spend my life in an office behind a computer. It was my Grandpa who spurred me on, we chatted about what it meant to be a man, provide for the family and my Son who by now was 13 and in 3 more years he too would be looking at a job. At the time I was building websites for the likes of Finchale Abbey and many other people and found that I could get them to rank high in search results online. So the idea of carrying on Taylors Locksmiths was born. My dad was on board, my Uncle was and his son, my wife was and her family.

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So in 2013 I created our first main website www.taylorslocksmiths.co.uk and back then there was myself who had married in to the Berry's of Gateshead back in 2006 and Mr Harrison and his Sons were the only other locksmiths in the area. They had a shop but we had online acting as a rapid response emergency locksmith. Mr Harrison would close after 5pm which meant when you were locked out there was not many locksmiths around to get you in. With the growth of mobile phones more and more people went online to find a locksmith. With my background and education in marketing, sales business, web design and development and my wife's background in computer programming and project management we sat down with my Grandpa who was very ill with cancer by then. However before he passed he got a chance to see his business he started in 1948 that was almost done for and which would have died with him, fully resurrected and back in Gateshead where it first started. Only half a mile from the original shop which today is replaced with Argos. Grandpa seen Taylors clear the families debt, create jobs for his sons and grandsons there wives and granddaughters and the business to grow, by 2015 we had 3 vans 6 staff and the family, we re-launched the locksmith training programs and grew his small business into a local community based business before he passed. He finally seen his dream come true and we still run the business the way he wanted, fair and honest and its ran by the family, his sons and grandchildren and now great grandchild! 

Today we hold contracts with all local authorities, we train police to to locksmiths, we have a full mobile locksmith division and now my own son has trained as a locksmith and is to be a 4th generation of Taylors Locksmiths however hsi life has led him to Bristol where that story is still growing. 

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We went on to launch the UK's first online locksmith course during the covid pandemic, we created further employment for local people. 

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Taylor and Sons or Gateshead Locksmith Service have working history with B&Q, Gateshead council, National Careers Service, Sunderland council, Northumbria Police, Met Tech, Utility Co, The A.A. Port of Tyne, PUB Wise, Securecore LTD, Newcastle Glass and UPVC, Blackberry Estates, Janet Fraser, Gordon Brown Estate Agents, Fraser Lake Jewellers, Unity Letting, Gateshead Building Services, Alone in the Dark Entertainment, Newcastle Castle Keep Project, Metrocentre, Fighters Only Magazine, ITV  and the BBC plus many more. We have even appeared on a number of TV shows, in magazines and have been written about in a number books over the years.

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I would go on to write a few books on the locksmith subject as we continue to grow our brand and our future.

Gateshead Locksmith Service take pride in our work and make sure all of our locksmiths have a passed the UK’s only Guild of Master Locksmiths award, each locksmith is fully CRB / DBS checked to the highest standard and we carry a £10.000.000 liability insurance cover to make sure if something does go wrong we have you and your property fully covered.

Each of our locksmiths carry full ID and each locksmith has a ID number, you can call our manager direct on 07525639943 to confirm the ID of your locksmith, Steve our manager is also out and about fitting locks too, we all work, we don’t just sit in an office, each one of us are out about each day, that’s why we don’t have a landline, its needless expense and we don’t man an office as a 24 hour office would hike up our prices, we also don’t offer a shop service as we are a mobile locksmith company, working from our vans and vehicles and this helps keep our locksmith pricing down.

We also offer a “flying locksmith” service; this is a motorcycle rider who is a locksmith and can get through traffic fast and get to your emergency locksmith issues as soon as possible.

So give us a call today, let’s see if we can help in anyway. Call Steve Taylor, manager on 07525639943 or email Gateshead Locksmith Service at taylorslocksmithsuk@gmail.com