In 1827, the Red Shop became the first mill occupied by the company and as business prospered was later purchased. The Red Shop stood on the corner of Rt. 57 and Old Mill Road. As the business grew improvements were made to the shop for efficiency: a three-story addition was built, A mill dam was built across the brook, and a small pond was formed about 100 feet long and 60 feet wide. This supply pond, or reservoir, located on what is now Sasqua Trial, off Covenant Lane. On the north side of the pond was the road to Weston, lined with rows of willow trees. On the north shore of the reservoir were vats for cleaning, washing and sorting the hog, horse and cattle hair used in the curled hair industry; there were also platforms for drying the hair. Later this work was done in the rear of the shop.

The first story of the shop was used for sieve making, and the second for the curled hair business. On the floor was a hairpicking machine and two hair rope twisters. The power was furnished by a wooden overshot water wheel (this was outside the shop on the north side.) The water was carried in a wooden flume from the pond onto the top of the wheel. The gate in the reservoir was opened every morning and shut down at night.

After the horse and cattle hair was cleaned it was twisted into ropes, then boiled to set the curl. After drying, it was wound into hanks or bundles, and sold in this form or picked out by hand ready for use in cushions, etc. The longer horse hair was picked and kept separate and woven into bottoms for the hair cloth flour and gravy sieves. This was woven on small frames called looms, into squares a little larger than the sieves they were to cover. This weaving was done by women of the village. First by the women in the families of the firm, and later by Mrs. Polly Canfield, Mrs. Ezra Brown, Mrs. Sherman Bennett, Mrs. Matthew Bennett and her daughters (one daughter, Mrs. Waterman Bates, was one of the last ones to weave haircloth in Georgetown).

In making the sieves, the thin wooden rims were cut from whitewood plank sawed from logs at Timothy Wakeman's saw mill that stood north of where the upper Gilbert & Bennett Mfg. Co.'s plant now stands, then smoothed by hand, steamed and bent into shape and nailed; the hair cloth bottom was then put on and held in place by a narrow hoop or rim, which was fastened on by nailing. The edges of the haircloth were then bound around the sieves with waxed thread. This work was done by women at their homes - it was called binding sieves. Mrs. Aaron Bennett, Mrs. Samuel Main, Mrs. Aaron Osborn, Mrs. Samuel Canfield, Mrs. Burr Bennett, Mrs. Orace Smith and others did this work.

The men who worked to the curled hair and sieve industry at different periods in the Red Shop were Benjamin Gilbert and his sons William J. and. Edwin; Edmund O. Hurlbutt, John F. Hurlbutt, William B. Hurlbutt, Aaron Bennett, Sturges Bennett, Isaac Weed (Mr. Weed married Angeline, daughter of Benjamin Gilbert, and built the house opposite the Sturges Bennett place,) Samuel Main, Aaron Osborn.

All this time, the weaving processes were being accomplished by hand, and the material used was horsehair. Horsehair was at the best, unsatisfactory-which caused the company to ask itself: "why could not some other material, more durable, more efficient, be substituted?" And not stopping at merely thinking it, they purchased some fine wire and began to experiment. The commercial weaving of wire by hand was impractical and machinery for such a purpose being unheard of, they improvised and borrowed a neighbor's carpet loom and so the first wire cloth came into being.

In 1834 the Gilbert & Bennet Co. found that the growing business needed more power than the little mill pond furnished and bought the mill site of Winslow and Booth on the Norwalk River. Winslow and Booth ran a comb factory there making combs from cattle horns and tortoise shells in the 1820's. Prior to Winslow and Booth, the mill site was owned by David Coley, an iron worker; he built a dam and shop, installed a wooden water shed, a furnace for smelting iron ore, a trip hammer, and commenced business. Some of the ore was brought from Roxbury and Brookfield and some was taken from the ledge east of where Jessie Burr Fillow lived, on the road from Branchville to Boston district. There is a tradition that there was an iron furnace near this ledge before the War of the Revolution. The limestone used in smelting the ore came from Umpawaug hill. Many kinds of iron goods were made, ploughshare points, shovels and irons, cranes, pots and kettles, and ovens.

G&B rebuilt the mill dam and built the shop long afterward known as the Red Mill. The mill had two stories and a basement. The first floor was used for the curled hair industry using power. In the basement the sieve rims were steamed, bent into shape, and later other work was done there as well. A wooden water wheel was built to furnish power for the mill.

With the weaving of wire cloth, the process of making of cheese and meat safes commenced. Aaron Osborn did this work, assisted by his brother, Eli Osborn. Aaron Osborn created these cheese safes for nearly fifty years. With the introduction of hard coal for fuel, the coal ash sifter or coal riddle was made. Samuel Bennett, Henry Williams and others worked at this branch. Later ox muzzles made from wire were introduced. Most of the men who worked in the Red Mill had worked in the Old Red Shop doing the same kind of work.

On Oct. 15, 1835, Benjamin Gilbert deeded to Sturges Bennett and William J. Gilbert each a one-third interest in the Red Shop, the land (1/4 of an acre) with the mill pond, also rights in the reservoir on the hill. Near the Red Shop on this land was a small two-story building used by Uncle David Nichols as a wagon shop (part of this building was used by Benjamin Gilbert be-fore the Red Shop was built.) The price paid was $133 for each third. The land was bounded on the north, east and west by the highways, on the south by Sturges Bennett's home lot.

In 1836, it was found the light cloth and carpet looms in the village were not heavy enough for wire weaving. A few looms were built and set up on the third floor of the Red Shop. Among those who wove wire cloth at this time were Isaac C. Perry, George Perry, Moses Hubbell and his wife Betsy, William Perry, and probably others. William Perry wove a fine wire cloth, called strainer cloth, used for straining milk and other liquids. George Perry built a shop south of his home which was later owned by John Hohman, and wove for the Gilbert & Bennett Co. Isaac Perry's son-in-law also built a shop for weaving.

James Byington, Aaron Jelliff, Henry Olmstead and his brother William, Lorenzo Jones, Thomas Pryor, George Gould, Anton Stommell, George Hubbell, and Granville Perry wove wire cloth in the old Red Shop. As the business grew, Anson B. Hull was hired as Bookkeeper. The office was on the first floor of the shop; in connection with book-keeping, he ran a small store. He was with the company for many years. Later he moved to Danbury, where he was freight agent for the D. & N. R.R., until his death.

In 1842 Edwin Gilbert became a member of the Gilbert & Bennett Co. (40 years later he became president of the Gilbert & Bennett Mfg. Co. ) He, with his brother William J. Gilbert and E.O. Hurlbutt, comprised the selling force. Their selling methods being to load Conestoga wagons and deliver through the country as sales were made. Even under these difficult conditions, the sale of Gilbert & Bennett goods spread throughout the South and as far West as the Western reserve of Ohio.

In 1847, Benjamin Gilbert, the founder of the business, died after an illness of several years that incapacitated him from active business. A saw mill was established for making sieve frames in 1848 and in that same year, steam power was first introduced as a source of power. Because of Gilbert and Bennett's rather isolated location, it derived its power not from coal but from water turbines. Water pressure became a constant with the purchase and control of Great Pond, a reservoir located 5.27 miles northwest of the mill on the Norwalk River at the Ridgefield-Redding town line in that same year.

The business at the time was still based on sieves and curled hair. Additional space could not go to waste, so in the year 1850, the manufacture of glue was added to further expand the company. The existing glue manufacturing process was studied by the company and found to have several disadvantages. They found that because glue was being dried on cotton netting some of it adhered to the fabric, this was a waste and led to higher costs. Another disadvantage was that the glue itself would contain bits of cotton which interfered with its adhesive quality. They resolved these problems by manufacturing wire netting upon which the glue would be dried. When the glue dried, it could be separated from the wire netting with little difficulty, and as a result revolutionized the glue-drying process across America.

In 1853 David H. Miller of New York City entered the employ of the Gilbert & Bennett Co. as bookkeeper. He brought in fresh ideas and new ways of working which greatly increased the efficiency of the company. (Fifty-three years later he became president of the Gilbert & Bennet Mfg. Co., and held that position until the time of his death in 1915). The Rapid growth of the Gilbert & Bennett Co. continued with Edwin Gilbert as salesman and Charles Olmstead running one of the freight wagons. With the building of the D. & N. R. R., the freight wagons were taken off one after another and the railroad did all the carrying of goods. One of these old freight wagons was used as late as 1864 carting materials between the factory and the depot. Edmund O. Hurlbutt withdrew from the firm in 1860.

With the building of other factories, one by one, the various branches of the industry were moved from the old Red Shop, until only the wire weaving was left. In 1861, Eli G. Bennett opened a dry-goods and grocery store on the first floor of the Red Shop. The business grew until the whole floor was occupied, and a large amount of business was done. Here many young men received their first business training. In 1869 Sturges Bennett who now owning the property had the Old Red Shop torn down and built in its place the store known for many years as Connery's store. The timbers of the Old Red Shop were bought by Anton Stommell, who used them in building his house on the street running east from the Weston road, which is now Highland Avenue. Later he sold it to Elijah Gregory.