Who We Are

Cruddas Innovations is a small family company, headed by husband and wife team Lorna and Len Cruddas. We both found it difficult to put our feet up after retiring, so started the company to manufacture and market Len‘s many inventions. Now our daughter Elena, and son-in-law Mark have joined us in our endeavours. We have successfully marketed several products, but are at present concentrating on the Masquepen.

Len – The Inventor

Len’s always been innovative, he was making things even as a schoolboy. His first invention, a tool for removing large light bulbs from high ceilings in a power station earned him the princely sum of £5 in the early 50’s.

He ran his own successful business, Cruddas Ironcraft , for over 35 years, until his retirement in 1992. After retirement Len at last had time to "play". Very few inventions come to commercial success, and we have been fortunate that two of Len’s inventions, the Pondwand, and the Masquepen have both made it successfully to the market place.We have now sold the Pondwand to Aquascape, as we no longer had the time to market it.For every success there are many that didn’t make it for one reason or another. Some of these are:-

The Caretaker - a useful little tool for collecting brick and plaster debris when drilling

Drink Station - -one of my favourites – a practical, weighted, high-sided item for placing a drink in. No more spilled drinks at your computer!

Popparoll - a jack-in-the-box style toilet roll store. A great hit with the grandchildren!

Sperver - a stainless steel tool for collecting and dispensing cooked spaghetti

Bagsafe - a safe way to protect your handbags, etc in cars from opportunist thieves

Len has another 40 or so ideas on the computer, in various stages of development. At the moment he’s much too busy to spend any time on them. Our house is a showcase for his ingenuity, from the built-in coffee tables and magazine store in our sofa, the comfortable, adjustable headboards on our bed, to the acrylic rotary shelves in my fridge!

Len is also the founder of the Black Country Inventors, a self help group for like minded individuals in the West Midlands , which is based at the Merry Hill Centre. All the members are passionately interested in invention, and proud of our country‘s tradition of invention.

Above: Painted by Lorna using Masquepen