Can anyone advise me on discovering the history of the site on which Joseph Lucas built his factory in Great King Street? I know he took it over in 1872 but I am interested on the people who owned it earlier than that. Hoping someone can help, Chris _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Messenger: Thanks for 10 great years—enjoy free winks and emoticons. http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/157562755/direct/01/

Chris try this forum http://forum.birminghamhistory.co.uk/showthread.php? t=1242&highlight=lucas+great+king Dave Carr Paignton Devon On 3 Aug 2009, at 15:36, chris cole wrote: Can anyone advise me on discovering the history of the site on which Joseph Lucas built his factory in Great King Street? I know he took it over in 1872 but I am interested on the people who owned it earlier than that. Hoping someone can help, Chris _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Messenger: Thanks for 10 great years—enjoy free winks and emoticons. http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/157562755/direct/01/ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ Research in Birmingham: http://www.bham.de/ Any problems, please contact the List Admin: ENG-WARKS-BIRMINGHAM- admin@rootsweb.com ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ENG-WARKS- BIRMINGHAM-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi, I have looked up the history of Joseph Lucas on the internet in the past and there was quite a bit written about it! I found it very interesting... Also, if you type in , Memories of Joseph Lucas" you should get a site with pictures of some of he workers and also a write up of the history! Enjoy!! Sandra. -----Original Message----- From: eng-warks-birmingham-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:eng-warks-birmingham-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of chris cole Sent: 03 August 2009 15:36 To: eng-warks-birmingham@rootsweb.com Subject: [B'ham] Joseph Lucas factory site Can anyone advise me on discovering the history of the site on which Joseph Lucas built his factory in Great King Street? I know he took it over in 1872 but I am interested on the people who owned it earlier than that. Hoping someone can help, Chris _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Messenger: Thanks for 10 great years-enjoy free winks and emoticons. http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/157562755/direct/01/ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ Research in Birmingham: http://www.bham.de/ Any problems, please contact the List Admin: ENG-WARKS-BIRMINGHAM-admin@rootsweb.com ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ENG-WARKS-BIRMINGHAM-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.392 / Virus Database: 270.13.42/2278 - Release Date: 08/02/09 17:56:00

chris cole wrote: > Can anyone advise me on discovering the history of the site on which > Joseph Lucas built his factory in Great King Street? I know he took it > over in 1872 but I am interested on the people who owned it earlier than > that. That's not quite the whole story. 1872 was the year in which Joseph Lucas moved house from Carver Street to 209 Great King St. No. 209 was near the corner of GKS and New John St. - it wasn't the site of the big GKS factories. In 1875 the first Lucas factory - the Tom Bowling Lamp Works - was established in Little King St. The (recently demolished) big GKS site was started around 1889. My source of information here is a very detailed history of the first 100 years of Lucas, written by Harold Nockolds and published in two volumes by David and Charles in the 1970s [1,2]. This is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the company's history. (My interest stems from the fact that my father worked at the Shaftmoor Lane factory (BW3) from 1949 until he retired around 1979.) Here are two short excerpts from the first volume (OCR'd), that you might find interesting: Excerpt 1 - about the 1872 move to 209 GKS: "[...] Joseph Lucas was taking the momentous road to becoming a manufacturer. "He began to look round for another house where he could carry on his growing business - and expand it. He eventually settled on Number 209, Great King Street, a three-storey terrace house with some buildings behind previously occupied by Thomas Youster, corn chandler. According to the Rate Book, Number 209 consisted of a retail shop, house, wash-house and 'premises'. The estimated rental value was £24 and the rateable value £20, so, with rates at 2s in the pound, Joseph Lucas's rates were £2 a year. The house was near the corner of Great King Street and New John Street, and disappeared in the 1960s when the area was turned into an open space. [NB the book has a photo of no. 209 in 1960, where it was appropriately occupied by 'The King of the Road Cafe'.] "The trades carried on by the people in Great King Street in the 1870s were typical of the Hockley district at that time and included gem-setter, pearl-button maker, cooper, cow-keeper, lapidary, black ornament maker, pawnbroker and aquavit maker. In 1872 they were joined by Joseph Lucas, described in the Post Office Directory that year as an 'Oil and Colorman.' [...] Excerpt 2 - about the 1889- expansion and the formation of Joseph Lucas Ltd.: "The grand design hinted at in the previous chapter began to shape one morning towards the end of i889 when Joseph walked down Great King Street, which was then a miserable slum, to meet John Archer, a builder and fellow temperance worker who had already constructed Joseph's first new factory in Little King Street and had his office opposite. With them was Archer's small son, on whom the incident left such a vivid memory that he was able to describe it in these words some 66 years later: "Mr. Lucas and my father met outside a Mr. Gilbert's shop which was full of sawdust - a sort of rag-and-bone shop. We went in and there was a scurry of rats everywhere and the smell was awful, and it meant when we got home a bath and a flea hunt! "Mr. Lucas said, 'Well Archer, this is going to be the site of our new factories and we shall build the interior factories first'. You see, he was already planning to buy the property on Great King Street, Burbury Street and Farm Street. What a vision for those days! So he got Ewen Harper and Brother Architects to plan the whole triangle out. Evidently at this time some large orders must have come to Lucases for the old gentleman said, 'Archer, you have got to get a move on, the first factory is wanted at once, so tell your men to get going and I will pay them 2d an hour more'. This was a complete failure; men got drunk, the police were called in to stop fights, and so we had to let the brickwork out piece-work to a 20-stone foreman bricklayer named Kirby who would wring the neck of any man who was awkward, and things went swimmingly! "And so A Block came into being as the nucleus of the present-day group of Great King Street factories. It was not to be expected that its significance would be appreciated at the time - indeed so little was thought of its future that it was locally called 'Joe's Folly'. "Joseph had his own ideas on how buildings should be designed. Mr Archer again: 'I remember his coming into our office one day and he said "Boy, what is the cheapest thing on earth?" I felt like saying "Dirt" but was too frightened. "You don't know" he said, "Well, I'll tell you, and remember if you ever become a builder get plenty of it in your houses and factories, LIGHT!" '(The firm of John Archer, later changed to W. B. and F. T. Archer and still in existence as joiners, made a new addition to Lucas Cyclealities in the form of a beechwood cycle stand, producing thousands by hand in the period 1894-8.) "Joseph's long-term plans for the whole site were evidently much in the minds of the Birmingham authorities. At the Reference Library I have found a street-by-street rating map of 1870-1 which has pencil marks made on it at a later date showing the block of buildings earmarked 'for Joseph Lucas' on one side of Great King Street and along the frontages of Farm Street and Burbury Street, forming the triangle he planned to develop. Inside the triangle, within a broken line, appear the words 'Cycle accessories factory and shopping over scullery'. This was what was to become A Block, the first factory to be built on the site and still standing in 1975. "On the corner of Burbury Street and Farm Street stood the Burberry Arms, which Joseph either could not, or would not, buy (on account of his temperance views), while in Great King Street, between the court leading to the site of the cycle accessories factory and the corner of Farm Street, was a small public house called the Brewers Arms. "Joseph Lucas's grandiose plans for the development of the Great King Street-Farm Street-Burbury Street triangle were not based on daydreams of future prosperity on his part - still less on Harry's. In spite of strong competition from many bicycle-lamp makers in Birmingham and other parts of the country, as well as abroad, in the early 1890s their business was expanding so rapidly that nothing less than a massive building programme would have enabled them to take full advantage of it. The factory in Little King Street was working flat out and could not be enlarged any more. "But this meant finding more capital than could be provided from the Company's earnings, good as these evidently were, and at some point in the mid-1890s they decided the time was ripe to capitalise on the success of Joseph Lucas & Son since its registration in 1882, and to form a company limited by shares in accordance with the Companies Acts 1862-1893. "No correspondence of this period has survived, so it is not known what advice they received in making this decision, but the details were doubtless worked out in conjunction with their bankers, Lloyds (who had provided funds by way of overdrafts for many years) ; the solicitors, Messrs Johnson, Barclay & Rogers; and the auditors, Messrs Mayo, Powell & Thompson. Nor is it known why or how Joseph Lucas approached Walter Chamberlain of Harborne Hall and Walter W. Wiggin of Forehill House, Kings Norton, to sit on the board of directors of the new company alongside Harry and himself." [End of book excerpts] ---------------------- [1] Lucas, The First Hundred Years, Volume 1 - The King of the Road; Author: Harold Nockolds; Publ. David & Charles, 1976; ISBN: 0715373064 [Vol. 1 covers the period from Lucas's birth in 1834 up to the outbreak of WW2. [2] Lucas, The First Hundred Years, Volume 2 - The Successors; Author: Harold Nockolds; Publ. David & Charles, 1978; ISBN: 0715373161 [Vol. 2 covers the period 1939 to 1975.] -- Andrew