Joe Fairburn
Founder, master barber
Fifteen years on the chair, first five in a Sheffield shop where the queue went round the block. Judges every cut by how it grows out in week three.
Home / The shop
Two barbers walked into a pub. This is what came out.
Joe cut hair in Sheffield, Sam cut it in Leeds, and both were sick of shops that treated a head like a stopwatch. One pint on Fossgate later they had put a deposit on the empty ironmonger at number 14. That was 2017. The kettle has barely been off since.
Number 14, FossgateThe room
An old ironmonger with better lighting.
We kept the bones: the panelling, the crooked floor, the window that steams up in November. Everything else was built for the job. Four chairs in oxblood leather, brass mirrors deep enough to check the back properly, and a bench by the window that has hosted more York gossip than any pub in the Shambles.
No screens, no queue app, no music you would not play at home. A shop you can sit in for twenty minutes and leave feeling better than when you came in, even before the cut.
The chair
Chair one. The original.
Joe found the first chair at a farm auction near Thirsk, seized solid under forty years of paint. Three months of weekends brought it back: stripped, re-chromed, re-trimmed in oxblood leather by a saddler in Malton. Every chair since has been restored the same way, because a cut feels different when the chair underneath you has history.
Restored, not replacedThe barbers
The four of us.
Same faces every week. You book a barber, not a slot number, and whoever cut you last time has your photos on file.
Sam Okonkwo
Co-founder, fade specialist
The reason half of York's football teams have sharper heads than touch. Keeps a photo ledger of every fade he has rated ten out of ten. There are four.
Priya Chauhan
Barber, shave specialist
Trained in traditional wet shaving and quietly evangelical about it. Strops her own razors and will not be rushed, which is exactly what you want.
Callum Wray
Apprentice
Makes the best brew in the shop and knows it. On sweeping, gowns and buzz cuts now; first full chair day pencilled for spring 2027.
Come and sit down.
Walk in any weekday morning, or book ahead for Saturdays. First visit? Come ten minutes early and have a brew.
Book a chair