Chad Valley Jigsaw Puzzles

Let’s take a look at Chad Valley and see what their jigsaw puzzles are like. You can check out our other Puzzle Manufacturers pages to see how they are different.

Click the picture below to see the puzzle pieces blown up to “life size”

These are grid cut puzzles with ordinary piece shapes.

Chad Valley is an English company which takes its name from one of its early factories in Harborne, close to the Chad Brook. The original owners of the company (Joseph and Alfred Johnson) set up the business in 1860.

As long ago as 1938 the company was granted the Royal Warrant -“Toymakers to Her Majesty the Queen” but soon after the factory devoted its resources to the production of items required for the war effort.

The company continued to expand, mainly by acquisition of other companies until the early1970’s but by the 1980’s most of its factories were considered to be unsuitable for modern toy manufacture.

Woolworths bought the brand name in 1988 and subsequently it was sold to Argos for £5 million in January 2009. Chad Valley products are now only available at Argos and a few cardboard puzzles continue to be produced.

During its early history, Chad Valley were amongst the foremost producers of wooden jigsaw puzzles and some of its rarer wooden puzzles are much prized by collectors. Sadly, this is not the case with its cardboard puzzles which never really made an impression on the jigsaw world but you will still often find them in “job lots” of puzzles when car-booters have a clear-out!

The two images below are a representative selection of the jigsaw puzzles sold by Chad Valley