Samuel Elliott & Sons

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Samuel Elliot & Sons
legal form Limited Company
founding 1902
resolution 1960
Reason for dissolution fusion
Seat Reading , UK
Number of employees 1000
Branch Body shop , joinery, ship chandler

Samuel Elliot & Sons Ltd. (short: Elliott or Elliott’s ) was a British joinery that manufactured high-quality furniture and shop fittings in the first half of the 20th century, but at times also built automobile bodies . In the automotive sector, Elliott became known for his superstructures for sports cars from the Donald Healey Motor Company .

Company history

Samuel Elliott (* 1838, † December 12, 1915) took over in 1860 founded by his grandfather carpenters in Newbury ( county Berkshire ). After their bankruptcy, Elliott's Molding and Joinery Company Ltd. was founded with new investors in Newbury in 1895, where Samuel Elliott initially worked as an employed manager. This company existed until 1974. In 1902, Samuel Elliott went into business again and founded Samuel Elliott & Sons Ltd., with financial support from JC Fidler, which was based in Caversham , a district of Reading . Samuel Elliott ran the company until his death in 1915; afterwards his sons Albert and Cecil took over the business. They remained in management until 1946 and 1954 respectively. Most recently, Samuel Elliott's grandson Lionel ran the company. After Lionel Elliott was killed on a business trip in Baghdad , the company ran into economic difficulties. In 1960 it lost its independence. Elliott was bought by the holding company Development Securities Ltd. taken over and with another large joinery belonging to the group to Samuel Elliott and John P White Ltd. merged.

In the 1920s and 1930s Samuel Elliott & Sons had up to 1,000 employees; thus Elliott was the largest employer in Caversham in the interwar period . the premises extended over 8 acres (33,000 m²).

Woodwork

Doors by Elliott: Bush House , Aldwych, London

Elliott's main business was wood processing. The company manufactured individually designed furniture and interiors for shops, banks and churches, but also for private country houses. Elliott's work was considered stylish and of extremely high quality. Some of them were and are still to be found in well-known buildings in London and in the British provinces, but also on ships:

  • Elliott supplied some components for the old Wembley Stadium in London, opened in 1923 and demolished in 2003 . This included two 5 x 5 meter wooden gates for one of the entrances known as the Royal Tunnel Gates . The Royal Tunnel Gates were located at the entrance through which, among other things, the teams from the 1948 Summer Olympics entered the stadium. They were auctioned for £ 5,875 in 2011 - eight years after the stadium was demolished. Elliott also made the round windows in the side towers of the stadium (so-called twin towers ), which became a landmark of the sports facility.
  • At the beginning of the 1920s, Elliott was involved in furnishing the Bush House office and commercial building in the City of Westminster , which at the time was considered "the most expensive building in the world" due to its construction costs totaling US $ 10 million. Elliott provided the outer doors, inner revolving doors and paneling in the interiors.
  • Elliott built parts of the wooden interior of the passenger ship RMS Queen Mary , which was launched in 1936 .

Elliott in the automotive sector

War years

Like numerous other companies, Elliott came to the body shop in 1914 as a result of the war-related changes in the economy. Due to the high demand for vehicles, non-specialist companies also became suppliers to the automobile manufacturers during this period. In the course of the First World War , Elliott produced bodies for military vehicles, including troop transports. The development was repeated in World War II : after Elliott had turned away from automobile construction in the late 1920s, the company began building commercial vehicle bodies for ambulances, supply vehicles and transport trailers for carrier pigeons from 1939. The vehicles went to the British and, after the United States entered the war, also to the US armed forces.

Elliott and Van den Plas

In the early 1920s, Elliott continued the body shop, initially on a small scale for private customers. In 1924, Elliott took over the British general agency for the Belgian bodywork manufacturer Van den Plas . In this role, Elliott showed vehicles with Van den Plas bodies at several exhibitions. In contrast, there was no reference to the British bodywork manufacturer Vanden Plas . Elliott's relationship with Van den Plas ended after a year. In 1925 and 1926, Elliott produced individual sedans and landaulets on chassis from Fiat and Voisin . A publication on the history of the Caversham borough from 2012 also connects Elliott with the automobile manufacturer HE, also based in Caversham .

Elliott and Healey

Healey Elliott

After the government orders for military vehicles had collapsed with the end of World War II, Elliott tried to replace orders from the private sector in order to keep a second pillar in addition to the carpentry. In November 1945 there was a connection with Donald Healey , who was planning to start automobile production on the basis of a chassis designed by Achille "Sammy" Sampietro. Healey's concept envisaged different bodies, which he had made by different body manufacturers. While the body of the roadster was being built at Westland , the order for the series production of the closed bodies went to Samuel Elliott & Sons. In return, Elliott invested £ 1,000 in Donald Healey Motor Company. Elliott built standardized structures based on a design by Benjamin Bowden . The body panels were attached to a frame made of ash wood designed by Elliott. The car, known as Healey Elliott , sold for £ 1,598 from 1946. It was one of the fastest British four-seaters of its time.

The relationship between Elliott and Healey was strained from the start; The main reason for this was Healey's repeated arrears. In 1948 Elliott stopped producing body shells for Healey and sold his shares in the company. By then, depending on the source, 101 or 104 Elliott bodies had been produced, the sale of which dragged on until 1950. Then Tickford took over the production of saloons that were very similar in appearance.

The last few years

After the relationship with Healey ended, Elliott continued to manufacture automobile bodies for a decade. Until the late 1950s into it, especially commercial vehicle bodies emerged, including mobile X-ray stations for the National Health Service National Health . 1951 - according to another source 1955 - Elliott built some Padwin variants of the Invacar disabled vehicle , but this did not become a permanent business area. In the late 1950s, a number of exclusively equipped caravans for wealthy customers were finally created, which one source assigns to the Roma community .

literature

  • Alan Beardmore: Samuel Elliott and Sons , 2006
  • Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 , Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 .

Web links

Commons : Samuel Elliott & Sons  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ This publication is likely to be wrong at least insofar as it depicts a HE sales advertisement from the late 1920s with the signature "Healey Elliott". There is no evidence that HE purchased bodies from Elliott during this period.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Jackie Markham: Samuel Elliott - centenary of his death. newburytoday.co.uk, January 4, 2016, accessed September 27, 2019 .
  2. ↑ The company on the website nationalarchives.gov.uk (accessed on September 27, 2019).
  3. ↑ a b Molly Casey, Mary Kift: Caversham over 50 years , in: Cadra News, Volume 17, Issue 2, September 2017, p. 4 ( online as a PDF file , accessed on September 27, 2019)
  4. ↑ a b Peter Trout: Caversham - 100 years on: A BIAG Contribution , in: Berkshire Industrial Archeology Group (BIAG), BIAG Newsletter No. 26 (Spring 2012) ( online as a PDF file , accessed September 29, 2019).
  5. ^ A b c Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 , Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 110.
  6. ↑ Dennis Johnson: Elliotts of Reading - A Short Resume in: Berkshire Industrial Archeology Group (BIAG), BIAG Newsletter No. 28 (Fall 2012) ( online as a PDF file , accessed September 27, 2019).
  7. ↑ Message about the upcoming auction of the doors and windows on the website artdaily.com (accessed on September 27, 2019).
  8. ^ Message in the Guardian of November 8, 2011 (accessed September 27, 2019).
  9. ^ BBC World Service: Bush House
  10. ↑ a b c d e David Cliffe: Reading Industries (Part 2) , in: Berkshire Industrial Archeology Group (BIAG), BIAG Newsletter No. 34 (Spring 2015) ( online as a PDF file , accessed September 29, 2019).
  11. ^ Rainer W. Schlegelmilch, Hartmut Lehbrink: English sports car . Könemann, Cologne 2001. ISBN 3-8290-7449-2 , p. 110.
  12. ↑ Jonathan Wood: Sports Cars. Fascination and Adventure , Parragon 2005, ISBN 1-40544-604-8 , S: 34.
  13. ^ Roger Gloor: All cars of the 50s, 1945-1960 , Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart. 1st edition 2007. ISBN 978-3-613-02808-1 , p. 178 f.
  14. ↑ Illustration of the Padwin on the website www.allcarindex.com (accessed on September 30, 2019)
  15. ↑ Illustration of the Padwin on the website www.virtualgaz.com (accessed on September 30, 2019)