Occasionally the writer is asked, "I have a lathe with a Melhuish badge on it. What can you tell me about it?" Unfortunately, Melhiush were not manufacturers, but dealers. Established in 1828 by one Richard Melhuish, Melhuish & Sons was based in Fetter Lane, London (with a branch at 143 Holborn) and sold a wide variety of smaller machine tools and engineering and woodworking equipment. Melhuish was never a manufacturing company - even their hand tools were bought in - and they appear to have sourced the majority of their vast stock from the UK, continental Europe and the USA.
In some of the wood-cut illustrations in pre-1900 editions of their hard-mound catalogues, the origin of a machine is clear - with two favoured makers being the American Barnes, the English Britannia and the occasional examples by two London-based makers, C.H.Joyce (a small-scale manufacturer) and Pfeil a machine-tool maker and importer noted for their wide range of smaller lathes, shapers, planers and drills.
All the lathes listed by Melhuish were of the lighter, repair workshop, semi-professional and amateur type - really heavy industrial models being entirely absent. Some examples of the interesting and expensive  "bench precision" type were also available, with items Nos: 531, 532, 533 and 533A being by the American Van Norman Company In addition, others of a similar type were also offered though, judging by the prices asked, must have been of lower quality and looked not dissimilar to those sold by that other well-known London dealer, George Adams. In later years, by way of contrast, a variety of genuine G.Boley, Lorch and other German-made lathes for watchmakers was listed, most being offered as complete, boxed kits.
The images below, from a mint-condition Melhuish catalogue, have been scanned at high resolution and digitally restored. Downloaded, they are good enough to blow up and print out for your workshop wall..