The Dowty Years
The Dowty Group was a leading British manufacturer of aircraft equipment. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE Index. The company had its origins as the Aircraft Components Company in 1931 and the work of British inventor and businessman George Dowty.
The Gloster Gauntlet
In 1934, Dowty achieved a breakthrough sale of its innovative aircraft undercarriage design, being contracted by the Gloster Aircraft Company to provide oleo struts for the Gloster Gauntlet biplane. In 1935, as the business expanded to meet demand, Dowty founded a new manufacturing venture to produce his aviation products, which was named Dowty Aviation.
It quickly secured numerous additional orders and acquired manufacturing facilities to cope with the demands of the Second World War, a significant majority of British aircraft production incorporated the firm’s various products. By the end of the conflict, Dowty Aviation possessed many production plants in Britain and also overseas, in Canada and the United States. By the end of hostilities in 1945, Dowty had reportedly manufactured 87,786 landing gears and 984,388 hydraulic units.
Dowty Nucleonics products
Dowty Nucleonics product
In 1957, a company called Dowty Nucleonics was formed from the Electrical Division of Dowty Equipment Ltd, to handle products for the burgeoning nuclear industry and Brockhampton Park was acquired to house the company along with Dowty Technical Developments Ltd., the Group’s Research and Development arm, which moved from Cheltenham. The staffing included the sales and estimating functions, as well as the model shop. Production facilities were at Ashchurch, near Tewkesbury. The site plan that accompanied the purchase shows not only the house and its original outbuildings, but also a lengthy structure, oriented east-west, where the residences in the Mews now stand. Its original purpose was most likely agricultural, but it undoubtedly became workshops and offices.
Dowty Nucleonics site plan
The whole Dowty Group was acquired in 1992 by the TI Group and in 1993 underwent heavy restructuring with the redundancy of around 1,500 personnel. Nucleonics and its accompanying activities may have been merged with another TI company or perhaps closed. That would have been the time Barratt stepped in as developers.
Playing a small part in the panoply of international business, it is nevertheless fascinating that products developed at Brockhampton Park found their way into nuclear power plants and many aircraft, military and civil, including the droop-nose controls of Concorde.
Concorde
Thanks are due to the Dowty Heritage organization website for some of the images and information in this article.