History of C.W.Walker (Coventry) limited and the family that ran it for 80 years.
Later Known as Chapelfields Engineering Limited .
Charles William Walker came to Coventry on the back of a cart as a young boy. He was born around 1895 and by 1914 was employed at Alfred Herbert as a toolmaker. After the Great War all manufacturing companies had more employees than they could cope with and many were let go. Charlie and a number of his friends started their own manufacturing companies and many prospered. They formed Modern Machine Tools, Keelavite, Matrix and a host of smaller companies which between them made Coventry the heart of the British motor and machine tools industry.
Charlie made his own first lathe in his kitchen and rented an old stables behind houses in the Allesley Old Road as his first factory. He prospered and by 1928 he owned around five houses and had just bought the old Sunday School in Lord Street. This he gutted and rebuilt with a massive steel frame and heavy concrete floors capable of withstanding the loads and wear and tear of light industry.
His son Jack had been born in 1912 and by 1926 had joined him in the business. Jack became one of the finest machinists in the city. They had a partner in the early days but he lent Charlie money and played no other part in the operation of the business. Charlie and Jack ran the business and when they had rebuilt the Lord Street property they moved all the machines on two wooden trolleys the half mile to the new factory.
They moved in by 1930 when Charlie’s name disappeared from the Coventry Almanack entry for the Allesley Old Road and appeared in Lord Street. It is still very hard to see how they ran a business employing around twelve men and rebuilt that factory with almost no professional building labour in only two years, but they did. However, they did not get it easily. There were no stairs to the second floor until around 1946 and access was by ladder for the first 15 years.
After his gargantuan efforts, Charlie no doubt wanted to relax a little and enjoy the fruits of his labours. But by 1932 his wife was dying of a very aggressive cancer. The family stories say he took to women, wine and horse racing. He also had a smart car, quite a status symbol at that time. Whatever the truth of the stories, Jack spent his 21st birthday in London and alone in bed with the flu. This was 1933 and he had left home after rowing with his father over his treatment of his dying mother. There was too quickly another woman on the scene and Jack was not pleased.
Although Jack returned to the business within twelve months, and stayed there for another 40 years, he did not speak to his father for at least ten years other than about business. The Second World War brought lots of work and good profits but also corporation taxes close to 100%.
Charlie and Jack never developed the business further because Charlie would not trust Jack. Their relationship never mended properly. The business languished and Jack’s sons Peter and Colin joined the company for a while when they left school but soon left for pastures greener.
Charlie was around 70 when he had a stroke while digging a sewer in the garden of his new house. He never worked again and his faculties were seriously compromised. Jack obtained a Power of Attorney but it just added to his burden. He knew that Charlie had not made a will but never tried to persuade him to do so. Jack carried on running the business almost single-handedly. Around 1960 Charlie was obviously incompetent and his house was an almost unliveable mess. He had ripped out almost every fitting and wall in the house and replaced almost nothing. Age had beaten his grand plans. His wife May complained that she could no longer live there and the house was virtually unsaleable so Jack bought Charlie a brand new flat and took the derelict house off him in exchange.
Charlie died in 1965 but he died intestate. He had never got over his row with his son and his assets then went completely to his second wife. She died within twelve months and the estate passed in its entirety to her family. Jack bought the estate back for £7000 cash which would have bought four good houses at that time. Jack struggled by himself for ten years to pay that debt off. In 2006 values he paid off around £600,000. Jack then gave half of the estate he had bought to his sister Connie.
Jack also had to spend much time and effort repairing the bungalo that Charlie had ripped to pieces. This was so bad that Jack’s son Colin bought the house off him in 1974 and spend another 20 years refitting it before it was truly a comfortable house to live in. Charlie had certainly left an extremely difficult legacy.
Jack had to sell the house in Spencer Avenue to pay the Death Duties and Connie was given one of the two houses in Lord Street, a half of the shares in the Company and half of the Lord Street building.
During the 1960’s Jack had to spend considerable time, effort and money making the Lord Street building suitable for sub-letting as the burden was simply impossible for him by himself. He never uttered a single complaint to anyone. He just did it.
In 1969 Jack’s son Peter discharged himself from 14 years service in the Royal Navy and joined Jack. He started to rebuild the business. In 1971 he invited Colin to join him and they began a development process that lasted until Millennium Day. The doctor told Jack he would not survive another winter in 1971 so in December he emigrated to Cape Town and lived there quite happily for another ten years.
Jack had run the business for 44 years and had had no help from anyone but Charlie, and not even from him for the last 20 years. Everyone in the family had lived fairly well off Jack’s efforts but never ceased to burden him. If an Atlas was ever to shrug, it should have been Jack. He even read Atlas Shrugged after he went to Cape Town. I don’t know what he made of it but I believe he found his valley in Strand.
Peter and Colin firstly made it clear to the family that they were not going to run the business under the onerous conditions that Jack had suffered. They brought in all the shares in the company and split them down the middle. There is only one meaning to partnership. Connie sold her house in Lord Street but the brothers were never able to persuade her to sell them the factory building. They had to buy their half of the building from their father.
In the next 30 years they earned several million pounds and spent most of it on new machinery, tools and materials and employment costs. What was left they spent on maintaining the building and over that period defrayed an amount in excess of £500,000 at 2006 costs. This was for various improvements, most of them over and above the maintenance provisions that they had in the lease for the building.
By 1990 the business was amongst the top 5% of uk sub-contract manufacturing firms and they supplied many customers in the machine tool, machinery and motor industries. They manufactured highly specialised tooling for making bolts and later designed and manufactured large rolling mills to produce tubes. They latterly concentrated on making transmission equipment for high performance sports and rally cars.
In 2000 the business failed. They had developed it until it employed their four children and 20 other people. They had a good contract through an intermediary making parts for Rolls Royce Cars. They stated they wished to double production. C.W.Walker invested £300,000 in new equipment to be able to increase production to this level. They needed three years to pay off the investment. Production doubled and things looked good for a year. Then BMW bought Rolls Royce and the contract was terminated almost immediately. Production was taken to Eastern Europe. C.W.Walker was effectively bankrupt. The company was sold as a going concern but it took six years to remove the remnants from Lord Street.
Thus ended eighty years of family industrial history. Clogs to (nearly) clogs in three generations. The company was an early victim of the sad reality that some people can stuff much more money in their pockets by manipulating funds than by creating wealth in the only way possible – manufacturing or farming.
The building has been completely re-roofed since 1980 and a car park built at the rear of the site on the bomb rubble that Charlie and Jack left after the 14th November 1940. The bombed site next door has been converted to a driveway and fitted with gates. A wall has been rebuilt at the front of the premises and a side passage paved and fitted with a security gate.
The building has been stripped of most internal fittings that were unique to the 1910 style workshop that Charlie constructed and is now an almost empty shell. The building is in excellent structural condition, supported by a massive steel framework and should easily last another 150 years as the walls bear relatively little load and the framework stabilises them. Most of the brick-work is in good condition and there are no outer coatings to try to hide problems. The structure is almost completely made with lime mortar and is mostly in good condition. The rearmost wall has been recently re-pointed with a sympathetic lime mortar.
The building is an iconic Victorian structure, having started life as the Lord Street Sunday School, and is now awaiting a new owner who understands the value of a stable base, a good neighbourhood and a commitment.
Colin Walker 2006