Peter Hooker

Peter Hooker Limited owned an engineering business originally established in 1827 and carried on under the name Messrs Peter Hooker as printers' engineers at 12 Pump Row, Old Street Road, St Luke's, later at Pear Tree Court, Farringdon Road, London EC. The limited liability company was formed to own it in 1900. Operations were moved to Black Horse Lane Walthamstow, Essex (now in London), in 1901.

There being insufficient business the Walthamstow site (for sale since 1921) was sold in early 1928 and the company was voluntarily wound up by its then shareholders at the end of the same year.

The Walthamstow site was very big. Twenty years earlier the business had employed around 20 people. Peter Hooker's youngest son, Benjamin (1857-1932), sat on the board of some public listed companies. George Holt Thomas made a fortune from two popular magazines then began to manufacture aircraft. Perhaps there had been a prior link between Thomas and Benjamin Hooker through printing machinery and they decided the skills needed to make printing machinery might be turned to the new petrol engines then to aero engines.

A summary of a recorded interview of Hugh Burroughes (22 December 1883 - 3 October 1985) archived by The Imperial War Museum (catalogue number 7255, production date 1983) during the period he was Holt Thomas's general manager of Aircraft Manufacturing Company at Hendon (1914-1919) refers to the establishment of a factory to manufacture Gnome engines in Walthamstow, London, 1914. Burroughes remained a significant force active in the aviation industry until he retired from the board of Hawker-Siddeley in 1966 aged 82.

The original business of Newall Engineering Company of Atherton's Quay, Warrington, was founded about 1890. It was a pioneer in introducing gauges to the engineering trade which enabled the manufacture of interchangeable component parts by a standard limit system. In 1909 Peter Hooker Limited purchased the complete business: plant, stock, patents and goodwill of Newall. Newall's were by then makers of limit gauges, measuring machines, micrometers, surface plates etc.

During the later part of the War this part of the business was taken over and operated as a National Gauge Factory by the Ministry of Munitions. In February 1919 it was reported in Flight Magazine that it had now reverted to Peter Hooker Limited. A new general manager had been appointed R J Bray previously Director of the Machine Tool Section, Aircraft Production Department.

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