Cornwall & Devon Locksmith Training, Train To Become a Master Locksmith
Steven J Taylor
Steven J Taylor
Business Development Manager
Welcome to our history!
A 3rd Generation Master Locksmith Business
Welcome to Cornwall and Devon Locksmith Training, operated by Steven J Taylor of Taylors Locksmiths. Our family business was established by the late John Taylor in 1948, shortly after the end of World War 2, and has been passed down through 3 generations. With over 70 years of experience in the locksmith industry, we have the expertise to provide the highest quality training for individuals and businesses alike. Our commitment to excellence and passion for the craft ensure that you receive top-notch instruction every step of the way.
About Us...
You can use the quick links below to learn about either the campus and accommodation or the lock lab and onsite training areas to our history and our awards and training qualifications.
About Cornwall and Devon Locksmith Training
Cornwall and Devon Locksmith Training are based in Newquay Cornwall at the side of Trethiggey Holiday Park in Quintrell Downs. We have our locksmith training room on the holiday park grounds which is not a normal match but it works as we have an entire park with a mix of many door types from UPVC, composite, shop and fire rated doors with a series of used real-world locks. Not just that but we have the ability to offer quality holiday home accommodation for all of our locksmiths who visit for training as part of the package. Its the perfect locksmith holiday, you can learn to be a locksmith while in one of the UK's best holiday destinations. We are only a short walk from an amazing café and 2 traditional Cornish pubs that serve amazing local food and drinks. We also have a Table Table restaurant, post office and Spar and of course we have town with all the restaurants and beaches, shops and more!
Recent Mortice Lock Training in Newquay
Some photos from our mortice training session, where we delve into decoding locks, picking locks, making picking tools to fitting mortice locks using the mortice jig that comes in our students tool kits. All of our courses are hand on mixed with light theory delivered by a TV screen at each students work station. We only ever take 2 students for hands on courses with 90% of the courses being one to one training. Each of our courses come with a pre foundation online training program before you attend the main course to make sure your course ready on the day. The online training is a series of videos, manuals and eBooks on the subjects along with one to one live video call training. See our Full Courses section for Full Business Packages or see our Locksmith Courses for all other courses!
About our Locksmith Campus in Newquay Cornwall
With our locksmith training school or what some have called a locksmith campus as we have a host of holiday lets available for locksmiths during there courses and is the only locksmith training school like this in the UK.
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The Cornwall and Devon Locksmith Training Facility is a active working holiday park on 21 acres of land. This means we have on site every lock you will see on real jobs. We have 2 cottages which are holiday lets. 1 has full UPVC doors and windows, garage. The other has a wood windows and composite doors along with internal 3 lever lock doors. We have our main offices which have all the office which has things like safes, cash boxes, desk locks, filing cabinet locks, key safes and we also have a host of wooden doors around the site with 5 lever locks, master key locks to a host of high security systems, 3 star rated locks, digital locks, latch systems with locks and padlocks from KABA to Yale, Ultion to Banham. All of that is without even stepping foot into our custom lock lab which is part of the older club house and bar. Inside there we have doors to work on from UPVC with different issues. We designed the doors so we can put them into a series of failures to replicate what you will experience in real life. The bar has things like roller shutters, fire doors, fire rated hardware and much more. In the lock lab its setup for one to one training with your own private TV viewing area.
The locksmith training room has a large bar shutter for learning how shutters operate, about there locking systems to kitchen doors with latch locks, bar doors with mortice locks and much more. The Training area is like no other in the UK and we have created it so it is as real as you can get for a training facility. Which means that you get the best of hands on, real world and practice in one.
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Above you can see Ian a student works on a night latch system on the bar door by the shutters. We rigged the lock into a failed system and he had to overcome this and gain entry then replace all the parts and go through it like a real job including invoicing and taking payment., warranty and so on.
Our Story 1948
We start to trade as a locksmith 1948
Our first shop started as a family business selling groceries and goods in the late 1890s. By the mid 1930s pre-war my Grate Grandmother took over the business and my Gran Doreen worked in the family shop. Eventually Doreen married John Taylor my Grandpa who was a safe engineer in the military and a blacksmith.
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Once he left the army he took over a counter in the shop where he repaired broken locks, hardware and out the back he hand made hardware likes of bolts, keys etc. But with the war ending and crime rising, shops which once never needed any shutters now needed security, he started to make and fit safes along with locks and hardware. People now wanted locking doors instead of a bolt. Grandpa made his name and his business grew as my Grans business had slowed down due to rationing. The shop that was called D&J Taylors now grew in to Taylors Locksmiths but we would soon outgrow this small shop!
Photo: remastered photo of the old shop and Doreen and John Taylor when the war had ended.
It's becoming a family business
By the 1960s we had moved shops from Sunderland to Gateshead now where Argos is based. and we first took the name Gateshead Locksmiths but it was known as Johnny's lock shop or Taylors. Here my Gran still ran her groceries shop along with dress making and alterations and my grandpa John Taylor operated his locksmith business while my father who was only a young lad worked on the counter with his younger brother Andrew and learned the old skills of the locksmith as they grew up in the family shop.
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Locksmithing was becoming our family business. But Gran still made sure she ran her shop her way!
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Photos; Gateshead Locksmith Shop late 1960s and Julian Taylor, 2nd generation locksmith aged 13 in 1963 behind the key cutting counter..
1960s
1970s
We go mobile...
By the 1970s we had moved to our first vans, these were ex telecom Yellow vans as we had moved into the door and window fitting industry at the start of the metal door and glazing, UPVC window and door boom! This is what our vans looked like. Photo outside an old factories in South Shields.
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During the 1960s and 1970s we actually made window frames, doors from wood with a small team. Brothers Bobby, John and Tommy helped build the business. Taylors were known for our low pricing and quality work along with our little yellow vans!
The 1980s, the UPVC Generation!
By 1981 we had started to train tradesmen as locksmiths and we had new apprentices learning the skills of locksmithing but by the mid 1980s, political issues and unemployment rising we found grants to start to train ex-coal miners into door and window fitters at our factory and with that came the new generation of multi point locksmith training and the boom of UPVC! For the whole of the 1980s we found ourselves removing our old wooden doors and windows and fitting the new UPVC Unplasticized Polyvinyl Chloride. A new style of window and doors along with the stylish metal alloy doors and windows. However with stiff competition, national companies came in and the market became saturated. Taylors sold the business but by now we had let the old shop go and that had been demolished and was now a shopping complex. We went fully mobile, working from our vans and homes, we were offering boarding and glazing and still had our small market stall cutting keys! But Timpson's were soon to devastate our key cutting business as it moved in and took the key cutting away from the locksmith. It now became a separate business to locksmithing known as key-smithing!
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We now focused on the locksmith side of the business as many people could fit UPVC but no one could fix it when it failed! This was the new generation of locksmiths!
The UPVC Boom!
80s to 90s
In 1981 we started training!
We started training joiners in the skills of the locksmith in 1981 in Newcastle upon Tyne. We have trained locksmiths for over 40 years. In that timer may things have changed and we have changed. Long gone are the days of learning key cutting to lock re-pinning. Even safes are a thing of the past today.
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But back in the 1980s and 1990s we took on many contracts teaching and training tradesmen in the skills of the locksmith.
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The late John Taylor started the first locksmith training course for out of work miners who had been laid off from working in the pits. These retrained as joiners, some as locksmiths others as fitters.
The 3rd Generation
By the 1990’s I was a dab hand at lock picking, bypassing locks and dealing with hardware. From being born I was around locks and hardware, growing up in a locksmith business. So during the 90s I held down a paper round and I worked with the family business but I am the computer generation and this was to be the future of Taylors Locksmiths as by the late 90s I went to college to study graphic design, criminal law and marketing and eventually settled on computer science and graphic design which led to web design and saw myself off to University to study business and marketing along with computer aided design and my computer science degree. The future was once again about to change under the 3rd generation of locksmith and Grandpa had to hold down the fort until the next generation were ready to take over! I was no normal locksmith but a locksmith with a business and computer science degree and taught in marketing. By the 2000s I had worked part time jobs while at University and I would make and sell custom Myspace pages which led me to create Taylors first online page which we did ok from. We were amazed that we got jobs from people online. I was trained in sales from call centers, marketing from The Combined Insurance Company of America and working with AA in their home emergency division. All of this would shape the future of the business.
2000s
2007
Taylors is passed down!
By 2007 I had proved my business models could work, our sales were up, we were taking on new staff and the business was once again growing using online marketing. I then turned to the locksmith training to restructure that and create new courses. We set about booking every locksmith course we could at the time in the UK and we attended every course we could find. But we saw issues, we saw that what they offered was subpar at best or extortion and broke the courses down into many smaller courses which cost a small fortune to undertake each course. So I set about creating a locksmith training program and Gateshead Locksmith Training was born with myself managing the business and my father Julian along with my cousin and Uncle Andrew all pushing Taylors locksmiths forward. We created a new format with one to one training. I then went and studied further to gain teaching certificates in Adult Further Education with METTECH and we all completed our City and Guilds. We now had a hands on skilled course that delivered in our opinion the best locksmith skills in the UK.
The Online Boom!
By 2013 we were well established online with the highest ranking website on Google and expanding our business. We introduced a new way to locksmith and cut the overheads. We used smaller vehicles and had a motorcycle with tool bags that could get through traffic quick for emergency locksmithing. Our new concept of online mobile locksmith that shed the dead weight of old key cutting and hording stock in large vans was born as we went minimal. We created a new style of tool kit hand making our own tools. Along with the business development we now had trade secrets in success and we were now in a position to be bale to train people in these new business skills.
2013
2014
The expansion of business to business locksmith training
In 2014 we started our next chapter in our locksmith training business and started to deliver locksmith courses directly to businesses around the UK as we were the first locksmith training company to travel to the business and deliver training at there facilities. We do yearly training for the likes of the NHS facilities teams, many councils, housing groups and business that work with property services and maintenance..
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We have grown this arm of the business since 2016, teaching every aspect of locksmith work to trades people. Giving training, tools and we created the online training portal for the students to access training videos which led to the invention of the UK's first online locksmith training program!
The Locksmith Business Package Generation 2
By 2016 our new online business model was so successful that Steve Taylor generated the first generation of locksmith training and business setup as we acquired Blue Reef Designs a website building company. We now could train locksmith but also build them a business model just like our business and work together. with Russel Tate for Secure Fast Northeast, we then launched Ryan's business Hebburn Locksmiths then Kiran from Hexham Locksmiths who was our first ever locksmith to show that we no longer needed a website to operate a successful locksmith business. With Simon from Iron Gate Locksmith coming along next as melded social media marketing, web design and our new marketing strategies meant they were all doing amazing!
2016
2017
Newquay Locksmiths Established
In 2017 my wife and myself had decided to move to Newquay in Cornwall and start a new life and business and with Taylors Locksmiths Training now a successful power house of a business and now that we had over 20 locksmiths in all major areas we could operate our business from anywhere in the UK. So we established New-Key Locksmith in Newquay Cornwall. With the family now operating the business up north meant that we could now focus on growing the business in the South West of England.
The Pandemic....
The pandemic meant we could no longer train face to face so we scrambled and with a team of website engineers, £70k budget we generated the first online locksmith training course that was open to the public and not just to pretrained locksmiths. We could no longer train our locksmiths face to face but we could train online and this was the birth of the 2nd generation of our locksmith training online.. No longer were we training for 3 and 5 days but for 15 weeks and 36 weeks. This new form of learning, training and study created the most successful locksmith we have ever trained who now had more than just 3 or 5 days of training. They now had weeks, months of skills training and went of to be the most profitable locksmiths we have generated with Danny Hirst being the first locksmith in the UK to complete a full online 36 week locksmith training program from home and establish his business we created for him all online and our methods are proven when followed to the letter, with over 212, five star online genuine reviews. See here! Danny proved that its about time under training and completing a real business course with Michael Stewart next and Simon Cowan for Winlocks to name a few! Each of these locksmith proved, time and time again that a 3 day or 5 day course can't build a real locksmith business but we can with our online and face to face training!
2020
2023
Cornwall and Devon Locksmith Training
CDLT Cornwall & Devon Locksmith Training is created to fill a market gap for locksmith training in the Cornwall and Devon area. We established a partnership with Trethiggey Holiday Park to use there holiday homes for accommodation for our locksmith as part of the course. This is our 3rd generation of locksmith course that now offers more than ever! With a full online locksmith course, a full weeks on face to face one to one training, all your tools, your stock and a full business package with websites and more! We now offer more than any other locksmith training provider.
Business to Business Locksmith Training
Cornwall and Devon Locksmith Training now offer business to business locksmith training for your staff in the Southwest of the UK but we cover the whole of the UK. We will come to your business and deliver first rate locksmith training for your staff. We train them on your locks and hardware along with our own, we listen to the staff and find out what they are stuck on, issues encountered. We save your business money by stopping forced and destructive entry to doors and locks. You no longer need to send your staff away for training saving more money! Each of our courses include a tool kit for the staff member to keep after the course! No matter the level of security we can train your staff from as little as £499 per person! Enquire today!
2024 - Business to Business Locksmith Training established in the South West!
About our awards...
Cornwall and Devon Locksmith Training are part of the Guild of Master Locksmiths UK and we operate by the GMLUK guidelines and standards when it comes to training. The GMLUK have a set of standards that we must adhere to, this makes sure we only produce the best examples of locksmiths in the UK. We have carried out other awards such as City and Guilds, NCFE and our instructors have undertaken almost all locksmiths courses in the UK to monitor our competition and see what they teach. This has given us the advantage of pin pointing there weakness in training vs the real job! We closed that gap and have created the only locksmith courses of there kind in the UK.
