History: How Basingstoke recovered after the decline of coaching trade

It was not until the establishment of Wallis and Haslem’s North Hants Ironworks and the arrival of Thomas Burberry, both in 1856, that Basingstoke started to reinvent itself as a manufacturing centre and began producing and selling goods across the United Kingdom and, later, all round the world.

Arthur Wallis and C R Haslem started the North Hants Ironworks on Station Hill in 1856 making threshing machines and other, mainly agricultural, machinery.

After Charles James Steevens joined the firm as a partner it changed its name to Wallis and Steevens.

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In 1866 it started making portable steam engines, many of which were exported to South Africa.

By 1873 it was exporting threshing sets to Austria/Hungary and Denmark, and later to Sweden and Germany.

Wallis and Steevens built its first traction engine in 1877 and delivered its first road roller in 1891.

Wallis and Steevens' top shed on Station Hill, c1892 (Image: Contributed)

By 1899 it had built between 80 and 90 road rollers. It opened a new store on the Station Hill site in 1897 to meet demand and accommodate additional employees, and it extended the foundry in 1899.

The few years preceding the outbreak of the First World War represented a high point in achievement and prosperity of the firm, when it had around 400 employees making road rollers, steam wagons, tractors and threshing machines.

Wallis and Steevens' factory (right) and Gerrrish, Ames and Simpkins' factory (left) seen on Station Hill on Coronation Day 1902. (Image: Contributed)

Other engineering concerns in the second half of the 19th century were John Burgess Soper’s Basingstoke Iron Works employing ten men and four apprentices in 1861, and Henry Smith, agricultural engineer.

Thomas Burberry set up shop in Basingstoke in 1856 as a “wholesale and retail draper and clothing manufacturer” by taking over John Loader’s drapery business on the North side of Winchester Street.

In 1868 he started a clothing factory behind the Winchester Street shop, facing New Street. By 1871 he had 70 employees.

Burberry transferred the general manufacturing side of his trade to two of his employees, George Ames and William Gerrish, who opened a new factory on Station Hill in 1878 under the name of Gerrish, Ames and Simpkins, employing nine men, 200 women and twelve boys in 1881.

Gerrish Ames and Simpkins were mass producers of off-the-peg tailoring.

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In 1891 Burberry opened his flagship store in London’s Haymarket.

He later opened branches in New York, Buenos Aires, Paris and Montevideo. 

In 1892 he opened a shop in London Street and built a factory behind the shop between Mark Lane and Hackwood Road. 

In 1894 he disposed of the made-to-measure side of his business and his New Street factory to John Mares.  

Burberry retained his Winchester Street shop as a departmental store, renaming it “The Emporium”.

In December 1913 Edgar Lanham, one of Burberry’s employees, leased the Winchester Street Emporium from Burberry.

This enabled Burberry to concentrate on producing garments for the war effort. During the First World War Burberrys produced an estimated half a million trench coats for combatant officers.

By the end of the 19th century the three clothing manufacturers, along with Wallis and Steevens and the LSWR and GWR railway companies, had become the largest employers in Basingstoke.

At the time of the 1901 census 589 females and 241 males were employed in the clothing industry, 283 males were employed in engineering and machine making and 313 males were railway workers.

Thornycroft's factory (Image: Contributed)

A further boost to the economy of the town came when the Thornycroft Steam Wagon Company moved to Basingstoke in 1898.

Its original workshops at Chiswick had proved inadequate to cope with the demand for its vehicles.

The company chose Basingstoke for its new factory as the town was served by good road links and by the LSWR and the GWR railways.

Tuck postcard from early 1900s (Image: Contributed)

The company purchased a large plot of land in Worting Road where a siding could be built to connect the works to the proposed Alton Light Railway.

Although lorries and to a lesser extent vans and buses were the main products of the Basingstoke factory, Thornycroft also built a number of motor cars. 

These appear to have been aimed at the upper end of the market. Princess Christian, the third daughter of Queen Victoria, took delivery of several Thornycroft cars. They stopped making cars in 1913 to concentrate on lorry production.

Princess Christian's car (Image: Contributed)

During the First World War Thornycroft supplied some 5,000 lorries for the War Office as well as making many thousands of shells and other munitions.

At the height of the war Thornycroft was employing 1,550 people in Basingstoke, of whom around 550 were women.

As well as Thornycroft, there was a steady growth in the number of businesses setting up in Basingstoke to take advantage of its road and rail links and its proximity to London.

In 1908 Hubbard Bros was founded in Basingstoke as general engineers and sheet metal workers. The firm specialised in the manufacture of fuel tanks, machine tool guards, agricultural machinery and spares for fighting vehicles. In 1913 the large-scale leather manufacturer, Percy E Fisher, came to Basingstoke and built a large factory on the west side of Kingsclere Road.