Plain sailing for works outing (From Oxford Mail)
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Plain sailing for works outing
3:20pm Tuesday 24th January 2012 in Memory Lane By John Chipperfield
Staff from John Allen & Sons line the deck of a steamer on the River Thames in 1929
ALL aboard for a day out on the river!
Many Oxford firms organised an annual outing for their staff – and John Allen & Sons at Cowley was no exception.
The smartly dressed workers posed for the camera before setting off in 1929.
The picture was one of a collection saved from a rubbish skip by Dave Gardner, of Kidlington, who worked for the company.
Its roots can be traced back to 1868 when a company was formed to build steam ploughs for the prosperous farming industry. Two young men, Walter Eddison and Richard Nodding, arrived at Cowley as partners in an enterprise to hire out steam traction engines, produced by Fowler’s of Leeds, the famous engineering firm where a certain John Allen had begun his career as an apprentice.
Eddison bought out his partner and in 1888 sold his share to his brother Edwin who apparently had “no great mechanical aptitude.” He appointed a young John Allen, who had moved south, to manage the business.
In 1897, Allen bought out his employer and the company became the Oxfordshire Steam Ploughing Company.
It branched out into other fields, notably repairing farm equipment and building steam rollers and traction engines. Its vehicles were exported all over the world.
John Allen retired to Northern Ireland soon after the First World War, leaving the business to his two sons, Major GWG Allen and Captain JC Allen, known to all as Major and Captain.
After the Major’s death in a road accident in 1940, the Captain continued as head of what had become John Allen and Sons (Oxford) Ltd until 1957 when his son John II succeeded him.
The company had begun to make cranes in 1936 and this became its speciality.
A link was forged with the American Grove Cranes in 1966 and four years after the company’s centenary, Grove gained control.
The newly named Grove Cranes opened a factory at Bicester. But in 1985, all the work done in Oxfordshire was switched to Sunderland.
The John Allen name was revived when the site in Between Towns Road, Cowley, was developed as a retail park.
Do you recognise anyone in the picture, or have any memories of John Allen’s? Write and let me know.
