COACH CLASS
Uncovering the myths and unknowns of one of the many long-lost coachbuilders from the industrious heartland of the East Midlands, Charlesworth Bodies
The story of Charlesworth Bodies Ltd
A once prolific Coventry concern, Charlesworth Bodies Ltd produced coachwork for all manner and marques of vintage and pre-war vehicles, and for all of life’s chapters – be they open tourers, limousines, ambulances or hearses. Far from being founded by any walking, talking Charlesworth, the company was started by Charles Gray Hill and Charles Steane. Damien Kimberley deduces in Coventry Motorcar Heritage that the ‘-worth’ suffix was added to the shared forename to convey quality and value. This is highly likely, unless either had connections with the village close to Glossop, Derbyshire.
Steane had the Coventry roots, having been born there in 1873, and by the time he was 17 he was working as a carpenter and joiner – most likely as a contractor for his future business partner. Gray Hill, a builder born in London in 1864, constructed performance spaces from the Shakespeare Theatre in Clapham to Granville Theatre of Varieties in Walham Green.
Yet building George Singer’s home, Coundon Court in Coventry, in 1891 would be the most personally significant for Gray Hill. It resulted in him marrying one of Singer’s daughters, Louise, on 14 May 1896, prior to Singer’s diversification into cars in 1901 – and ultimately encouraged a change of his own trade, too.
Charlesworth Bodies Ltd was founded in 1907 and based at 128 Much Park Street, a side road in Coventry’s olde-worlde cluttered heart, owned by Gray Hill since he bought a building business in 1886. Occupying around 70,000sq ft, the higgledy-piggledy site was based around an old chapel in the shadow of St Michael’s cathedral, close to remains of the old Roman wall, with – since 1903 – the Standard motor works opposite. All that was really visible of the Charlesworth premises from the street was a lane and a gateway between two buildings.
In addition to its bespoke bodywork, Charlesworth concentrated on contract work for the likes of Singer and Hillman, with Robert ‘Bobby’ Jones (one of the men who would later co-found Carbodies) as works manager. One 1919 advertisement stated: ‘Manufacturers of high-class motor bodies of every description. Specialists in all requirements for the colonial and foreign markets. Strength with lightness. Excellence of workmanship.’
Such claims were backed up by an ability to produce rakish designs, such as two rebodied Rolls-royce Silver Ghost cabriolets from 1914 and 1919, echoes of which can be seen in some later 1920s Daimlers – the Open Tourer and Light 30 – and the Rolls-royce 20 Open Tourer.
During the First World War the company undertook aeronautical contracts for SiddeleyDeasy, and when peace returned the Much Park
Street works became involved with the new and ultimately ill-fated Dawson Car Company. Founded in 1919 by AJ Dawson, Hillman’s former works manager who had designed the Nine, the company only offered the 1795cc overhead-camshaft 11-12hp model with a choice of four Charlesworth body styles. Dawson produced most of its components in-house, so the 11-12hp’s price could not hope to compete with established rivals and it folded in 1921.
To begin with, the 1920s did not look too promising for Charlesworth as the company focused on bespoke commissions due to the lack of contracts. Some initial work for Alvis fizzled out after the unpopular four-seater 10/30 was axed, then the 1922 Buckingham cyclecar got the chop after just 30 had been built.
Charlesworth began exhibiting at Olympia in 1921, and by 1925 the firm’s bodies were adorning a wide range of chassis from Armstrong Siddeley, Bean, Bentley and Calcott to Minerva, Peugeot, Rolls-royce, Sunbeam and Talbot. That same year the company returned to contract work, producing some saloon bodies for Morris Motors, and by the decade’s end it was building Weymann saloons for Daimler (Charlesworth held a licence for these lightweight fabric bodies), sunshine saloons for Hillman and drophead coupés for Humber.
Come the end of the 1920s, change was heading down Much Park Street. On 29 April 1927, an advert was placed in The Times for the sale of Charlesworth Bodies Ltd as a going concern, citing the death of a director. The Much Park Street freehold premises was included and applications were to be sent to the managing director. The following year Gray Hill retired from that role, but it was not the last of the changes: in December 1929 Steane died, aged just 56.
It is likely that Gray Hill was bought out by James Butlin, who until 1931 was the principal shareholder, but by the time of Steane’s death the stock market crash had already happened, paving the way for the Great Depression. By 1931 the dire economic situation drove Britain out of the gold standard and created a political crisis. Demand collapsed, unemployment soared and Charlesworth tumbled into receivership.
As the crowds at Olympia clamoured to take in the Campbell Napier-railton Blue Bird and the Schneider Trophy-winning Supermarine S.6B, few noticed that Charlesworth was missing. However by November, the following month, the company was saved and resurrected as Charlesworth Bodies (1931) Ltd thanks to a new major investor, Daimler alumnus James Reynolds, who replaced Butlin as managing director. Under Reynolds’ management and in the wake of the motor industry’s recovery, Charlesworth pulled itself out of the Great Slump and experienced a golden period.
The company won two contracts with Rover (the Pirate foursome coupé and two saloons on the Speed Pilot chassis) and would create the chic designs with which it is most associated.
After a bumpy start due to a lack of capacity, which initially irked Alvis, the new decade was when Charlesworth supplied production bodies to some of Britain’s most illustrious marques: from Alvis to Daimler and MG. Plus the odd prototype that didn’t make it to series production, such as the one-off Brough Superior 4½-litre V12 Sports Saloon.
Bodies would be supplied in batches of 10-20, with 1938 production totalling around 500. In the 1920s and ’30s it had been higher, when coachwork was simpler in style and specification, but the company – and its workforce of approximately 150 craftsmen – had an enviable reputation and could produce quality bodies in sufficient volume to satisfy prestige marques.
FA Stokes, a Charlesworth body maker, recalled that business slowed toward the end of the 1930s: “We were working a four-day week much of the time in 1937 and ’38, and I can remember output dropping as low as one body a day [from a high of 10 per week].” However, after the previous false start with Alvis, the Red Triangle turned to Charlesworth to clothe models such as the Crested Eagle, Speed 20 and 25, the 3½-litre and the 4.3-litre, totalling around 2000 bodies by 1939. In the wake of the collapse of coachbuilder Cross & Ellis, Charlesworth benefited further from an 11-body contract for Alvis Speed 25 tourers.
Lea-francis, which was reorganised in 1937, was supplied by Avon for most of its coachwork, but Charlesworth did furnish the company with a few bodies. Daimler, meanwhile, utilised Charlesworth’s workforce for its mid-range six-cylinder models including the Light 20, 20 and 24. In 1939 came the Light Straight Eight and the stylish, sporty twin-carburettor DB18 Dolphin (plus other offerings for Lanchester, its sister marque within BSA). And MG chose Charlesworth for its 1936 2.3-litre SA and 1939 2.6-litre WA, selecting a body type that was something of a speciality and that few rivals offered: the four-door open tourer.
Indeed, Charlesworth’s one-time plant manager and chief designer was AJ ‘John’
‘The company had an enviable reputation for producing quality bodies in sufficient volume to satisfy prestige marques’
Cannell, an Abingdon old boy. Cannell had been MG’S experimental body engineer, joining from Wolverhampton coachbuilder Holbrook & Taylor, and he worked at Much Park Street in the drawing office with Jim Bell. Cannell’s designs, typically featuring long, elegant bonnets, deep side windows and a whisper of conservatism, are reputed to have won numerous awards. Cannell is also credited with organising production techniques, workflow and costing.
In a 1978 Old Car Weekly article by Rolland Jerry, Cannell said: “With a new body style – say a batch of 30 for Alvis – we’d work out the design and styling, then issue the templates and the patterns to the mill. Then we’d get all the wooden framing members back, check them for accuracy, and give them to the body makers to assemble the first frame… We would check it all again. If everything was right, then the complete frame would be passed on to the metalworkers and the panel beaters so they could develop their hammer forms and shapes for whatever panels were required… using the body frame as a master jig.” In respect of Alvis, the front and rear wings were supplied by a specialist contractor that solely manufactured wings.
Said to have been one of the best places to work in Coventry, the Charlesworth factory layout was segregated by trade. Woodworkers had their own designated area, some framing bodies purely in ash, some also with beech. As did the metalworkers: body panels were 16-gauge aluminium, with the advanced use of steel for high-stress areas such as cowls, and chunky T-section cast-aluminium door pillars and narrow posts coming from an outside supplier. Body building was separate again.
What was perhaps more unusual for the era was that, in the main body framing and panel fabrication sections, the bodies for large contract customers were built on tracks. Furthermore, showing a clear handle on production flow and space allocation, bodies took shape without chassis. Where most coachbuilders would build bodies directly on to chassis, at Charlesworth around 20 body builders assembled bodies on bucks and in jigs from pre-cut and machined members. Reynolds told Jerry: “We do not necessarily need a chassis to build a body. We make up a dummy chassis mounting jig on the assumption that all bodies built to fit this jig will fit chassis when they arrive.”
Considerable space was therefore saved. Chassis were only required for the body mounting stage, as Reynolds explained: “Bodies in the completely panelled stage have the doors swung and the first coat of priming applied after installation… The body has to travel during the painting, trimming and finishing processes, and it is preferable that [a body] should travel on the chassis to which it is married.” He added: “The total time we need the chassis, between mounting and finishing stages, is 21 days.”
In 1937 the outlook from Charlesworth changed, for that was the year Lea-francis moved into the old Standard works opposite.
However, the outbreak of war transformed Charlesworth’s business, and the firm’s final body would be for King Farouk of Egypt’s Rolls-royce Phantom III (chassis no 3DL182) – a formal limousine with then-novel electric windows – completed in 1940.
Charlesworth turned its workforce to aviation components, including those for Hawker Siddeley aircraft, plus Armstrong Whitworth’s Albemarle and its Whitley bombers. Until 14 November 1940, that is, when more than 500 Luftwaffe bombers unleashed 10 hours of flame and hell on the city. Coventry had experienced raids before, but nothing on this scale and among the many victims, both human and edificial, were the cathedral and the nearby factories. All that survived of the Much Park Street site were its offices.
At some point during WW2, Charlesworth started managing a 1939built factory for Gloster Aircraft (also part of the Hawker Siddeley concern) in Gloucestershire. The details are thin, but after MG’S founding father, Cecil Kimber, was dismissed from Nuffield in November 1941 – apparently for obtaining a production contract for the Albemarle without approval – he was appointed to reorganise this Newent factory by his old friend Reynolds. The site produced some 50,000 components for a wide range of military aircraft, and in 1946 Charlesworth bought the 50,000sq ft base from Gloster to produce galley equipment for airliners. In 1946 Charlesworth Bodies – the ‘(1931)’ was lost in around 1943 or ’44 – tried to resurrect its coachbuilding. Advertisements were placed in The Times for ‘Superior car renovation by one of England’s leading coachbuilders’, doubtless to counter the shortage of new cars. The company also won the contract to build three prototypes for the mistimed, expensive and ultimately doomed Invicta Black Prince.
Then, in around 1947, Lea-francis acquired the Charlesworth works to produce its first body: a full-width, six-light saloon for the 1948 14/70. Other marques supplied by Charlesworth post-war, albeit in tiny numbers, included Daimler, Humber and Austin. Just before the company is believed to have ceased trading, in 1950, adverts appeared for Charlesworth Motor Hearses based on Austin Sheerline and Phase II Humber Pullman chassis. They were placed by JR Motors Ltd (of 20 High St, Rugby, and 3 Cambray Place, Cheltenham), and exact details of the ‘arrangements’ that were ‘concluded enabling the new “Charlesworth” hearse to be supplied’ remain a mystery. Nor is it known when the last of these vehicles was built, before the name finally passed away.
‘Coventry had experienced raids before, but nothing on this scale – all that really survived of the Much Park Street site were its offices’
Thanks to NJH Smith; Damien Kimberley; John Fox; Paul Campbell (www.svwregister.co.uk); Kevin Bennett (www.dloc.org.uk)