Streets and Roads
Great Bookham - Church Road

Thomas Gillett completes an engineering apprenticeship and set up an engineering works, known as the Atlas Works, next door to his home at Vine Cottage (now known as Grapevine Cottage) in Little Bookham Street.
1912 Gillett becomes MD of Gillett Stephen & Co Ltd
1913 Gillett AMIEE 1916 FMIEE
WW1 Manufacture aircraft parts and engine components; 1919 Gillett awarded MBE
1916 Workforce increased to 120; 1917 via Waring (of Waring & Gillow) Merrylands Hotel (founded by Temperance campaigner Mrs Mary Chrystie) bought to meet need for more space and is converted to offices.

A new factory, the New Atlas Works is built in the grounds for Gillett Stephen & Co. Enlarges factory space from 2,000 square feet (Old Atlas Works) in Little Bookham Street 56,000 square feet including New Atlas Works.
1926: New Atlas Works extended to 84,000 square feet

1934: Gillett Stephen begin manufacturing aircraft undercarriages and hydraulic equipment
1936: Rearmament commences. Large contract for making incendiary bombs as well as the production of undercarriages and all forms of ancillary equipment for aircraft.

The increase in work in preparation for WW2 causes the cessation of the manufacture of Blackbume engines which had been successfully used in so many motor cycles, cars and aircraft (see below*).

Some of the aircraft for which Gillett Stephen make components:
Airspeed Oxford;
Avro Anson, Manchester and Lancaster;
Bristol Beaufighter;
de Havilland Flamingo and Mosquito;
Handley Page Hampden, Hereford and Halifax;
Hawker Hurricane, Tornado, Typhoon and Tempest;
Short Stirling; Vickers Armstrong Supermarine Spitfire
Westland Whirlwind.

Factory now 120,000 square feet. The works has own power house containing two 300 kVA alternators driven by Beilis and Morcom reciprocating steam engines. Very advanced factory for its time with modem machining facilities as well as a laboratory.

They create a special building for the repair of undercarriages damaged in service operations described in 1948 as being ‘illuminated entirely by fluorescent tubes’. By now the factory contains several hundred modem machine tools ranging from small capstans to large turret lathes, hand millers to heavy milling machines, bench drills to radial drills. They have complete facilities for heat treatment, anodising, zinc, cadmium and hard chromium plating.

1884 Wildts established as H. Wildt & Co making knitting machines and knitwear in Leicester.

Mellor & Sons of Nottingham, machine makers, by 1909 machinists in Leicester.

Mellors join with Bromley to form Mellor Bromley & Co, hosiery machine builders, in Leicester.

Bentley Engineering Co Ltd also made hosiery making machinery. Together with others, these companies form the Bentley Group, operating mostly in the Leicester area.

Wildt & Co take over the New Atlas Works by 1950 where they design and manufacture hosiery making machines. Also do precision machine grinding, heat treatment, enamelling, electroplating and copper depositing.

Also produce mechanical parts for radar and avionic equipment as well as Prestoflex drive shafts.

Continue producing aircraft hydraulic equipment at Bookham, making undercarriages for Dowty Rotol Ltd until 1982. During the Falklands War they repair equipment for Harrier fighters and Victor tankers, still carried out under the Gillett Stephen name.

From around 1950 until 1968 Wildts have a factory at Farncombe making hydraulic equipment for aircraft in a large hangar-like building adjacent to the railway in Silo Road, known as Silo Works. Site has since been developed for housing.

Wildt, Mellor Bromley go out of business after being bought by Sear’s Holdings.

Mellor Bromley Mechanical Services still operate in Leicester as a separate company producing air conditioning and humidifying equipment for a wide range of applications which developed from the air conditioning department of the original company which used to provide the air conditioning and humidifiers for factories using their knitting machines.

Photo-Me International
By 1982 Wildt, Mellor Bromley are contracting and parts of the factory are demolished to build Bookham Industrial Park.

1983: Works close.

1989: Eight bays of the original 1917 factory remain in use and are occupied by Photo-Me International.

Before moving, the old office building (the original Merrylands Hotel) is demolished and a new office for Photo-Me built on the site.

Photo-Me International plc originated in Los Angeles when Gupp Allen invented an automatic photo studio. He came to England in 1952 and with Charles Clark founded Photo-Me Ltd to manufacture and operate photo booths in the United Kingdom and abroad (except the USA).

1966: Passport approval given for their black and white photographs

1976: and for their colour photographs giving the company a massive boost, converting from an amusement machine operator to a supplier of a public service. The introduction of photographs on driving licences and other ID cards led to more expansion. Before moving to Bookham the company were at Walton-on-Thames.

The company also manufacture children’s rides and weighing machines as often seen in supermarkets and shopping centres. All manufacture took place in Grenoble in Southern France whilst Bookham is the worldwide repair and maintenance base. Over 22,000 photo booths in over 100 countries with about 5,000 in the United Kingdom.

Surrey Live 7 Jul 2006
A factory at Bookham that was gutted by fire 18 months ago is due to rise again from the ashes with a new development. Photo-Me International has submitted a planning application to rebuild its site at Church Road, opposite Bookham railway station, that was ravaged by fire in the week before Christmas 2004. The office building that escaped the fire is to be retained. The rest of the site will be rebuilt to include a three-storey office block and a single-storey building combining warehouse and manufacturing uses as well as a tyre depot. The application also includes access details, car parking and landscaping. It will come before the development control committee of Mole Valley Council shortly.

Photo-Me International is part of a nationwide group that manufactures and assembles coin operated photo booths and other equipment. The Bookham company employed around 35 people at the time of the blaze that was accidental.

Fifty firefighters drawn from all over Surrey and South London battled the flames and dense smoke that broke out in the empty factory building in the early hours. Residents were roused from their beds and evacuated as firemen fought to prevent the blaze from spreading to their homes. Their efforts were successful and the homes were saved.

There were also initial concerns about fumes from the chemicals and plastic used in the building and the state of what was left of the roof that was in danger of collapsing. Neighbours spoke of hearing noises like shotgun blasts as canisters exploded. Mole Valley’s MP, Sir Paul Beresford, who lives close by, said it sounded like firework night.

The office block was unaffected. After the clear up production moved to other sites.

Insider Media July 2017
Listed Photo Booth operator Photo-Me International has completed the sale of its head office buildings in Bookham, Surrey. The freehold was sold to Shanly Homes Ltd (SHL) for a consideration of £2.5m. The book value of the land sold is £100,000 and therefore the profit on the sale before ancillary costs amounts to approximately £2.4m. The disposal is part of the group's review of its property portfolio and will enable the company to consolidate the activities of its head office and UK operations into one location. This strategy will rationalise Photo-Me's property footprint and will "enable it to achieve further efficiencies in its UK operations".

Burney & Blackburne
[edited from a paper by Peter Tarplee in the L&DLHS Proceedings Vol6 no 6, 2002]
The brothers Cecil and Alick Burney were pupils at the steam engine manufacturer Willans & Robinson Ltd of Rugby (previously of Ferry Works, Thames Ditton) when they met Geoffrey de Havilland and his motor cycle. He had designed and built this in 1905 having constructed a machine 3 years earlier with a kit of parts and drawings from The English Mechanic magazine. They were impressed with his machine and in 1948 C. S. Burney recalled his first ride on it 45 years earlier and he said that they were keen to build similar motor cycles for themselves. They were elated when de Havilland agreed to sell them the castings, patterns and manufacturing rights for the motor cycle for £5.

By 1906 the Burney brothers had completed their apprenticeship and moved to Daimlers at Coventry but they continued to modify their engines and Cecil became active in competition riding. In 1910 Cecil became head of the experimental department at Rudge-Whitworths when he began to ride their machines in competitions.

In 1912 the Burnets decided to manufacture their machines for sale and, together with the famous pioneer aviator Harold Blackburn, who put up £200 to launch the business, they started a company in a small workshop in Berkhamsted. Interestingly the engines for these machines were made at the AC works at Thames Ditton (previously occupied by Willans & Robinson). Burney and Blackburn Ltd was formed and the brothers were joined by two other brothers, Cecil and Arthur Roberts, who were also competition riders.

Harold Blackburn was really mainly interested in flying and the Burneys bought him out. Blackburn continued with flying, including piloting a number of planes for the Blackburn Aeroplane & Motor Company, although   no relation to the founder Robert Blackburn, who developed a works at Brough. To add to the general confusion about Blackburns, they produced a plane in Leeds in 1924, Bluebird I, using a Blackburne engine from Bookham.

The Burneys moved to Tongham around 1913 where they soon started to manufacture motor cycles under the name Burney & Blackburne. Notice the final ‘e’. This was possibly to indicate that Harold Blackburn now had no connection with the company.

In 1918 they were described as ‘motor cycle manufacturers, general and consulting engineers and coppersmiths’. Both Cecil and Alick Burney enlisted at the start of World War I and each spent four years as dispatch riders. Their two colleagues, Cecil and Arthur Roberts, also enlisted (one being killed) leaving their father, G. Q. Roberts, to keep the firm going during the war.

After the war both brothers continued to be active in motor cycle racing, particularly at Brooklands but took no further part in the company.

Cecil Burney became a pupil at the recently opened Brooklands School of Flying and he also
ran the International Horseless Carriage Company which operated their business in the Atlas Works. Burney and Blackburne were a major designer and manufacturer of proprietary engines which continued until 1937.

The Blackburne motor cycle manufacture had been resumed in 1919 after their wartime activities but with the increasing demand for their engines the making of complete motor cycles was transferred in 1923 to OEC (Osborn Engineering Company) of Gosport who marketed them first under the Blackburne name, and later as OEC.

Examples of Blackbume aero engines are on static display at the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden Aerodrome in Bedfordshire.

Although Blackburne engines were used in a lot of cycle cars following on from their work with motor cycles, they also produced 6-cylinder engines for Invicta and Frazer Nash and 4-cylinder engines for ABC.

A major operation after World War I was the overhauling and testing of V-12 Liberty aero engines and their modification for use in racing cars and, later, naval motor torpedo boats. Dennis and Merryweather used Blackburne engines for fire appliances and trailer pumps whilst the Bookham company also produced engines for agricultural machines by Redshaw, Lister and Walter Kidde and seven makes of lawn mower: Barford & Perkins, Dennis, Godiva, Lloyd, Maclaren, Ransomes and Shanks.

So it is seen that the proprietary Blackburne engines made in Bookham since 1921 were an important part of the motor cycle, motor car and aircraft industries as they were chosen by an extremely large number of manufacturers.

The motor cycle engines were widely used in competitions and Blackburnes advertised that machines with their engines had won thousands of awards throughout the world and that ‘the Blackburne engine may justly be called the TT engine’. The motto on the company logo was ‘Ever Lively’. The engines had ‘Blackburne’ cast on the crankcase with the letters ‘G S’ on the front face for the parent company.