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Clear Hooters Ltd

E

emevans

knowlegable brummie
According to Graces Guide, Clear Hooters Ltd were based in Hampton Street, and employed upwards of 250 persons. With that number of staff, the factory must have been fairly large but I cannot place exactly where it was positioned. Does anyone have any knowledge of the company?

Many thanks in anticipation of a reply.

Emlyn
 
Clear Hooters were at 33 Hampton Steeet. Maybe Mike could locate on a map please? Thanks. Viv.

I'm moving this thread to the Factories & Offices section.
 

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Below is a map c 1950 showing 33 Hampton St. The building in red is marked as 33 & 33a. There is no 33a listed in the 1950 Kellys, so I assume that the firm occupied both.
 

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somewhere in the back of my mind i think i have a photo of hampton st which with luck may show the clear hooters factory..will have a look

lyn
 
here you go emlyn..and how lucky is this...the clear hooters factory on the right...after clicking on pic to enlarge click again on arrow top right for full screen size..looking at mikes map the little passageway on the left is brassfounders place..

lyn

Hampton%20Street,%201&.jpg
 
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Well that's fantastic Lyn! And thanks Mike. All very neatly solved. Personally never heard of Clear Hooters. A name I would definitely have remembered. Viv.
 
Thank you to everyone who has responded to me request for information. I must have passed the Clear Hooters factory in the 50's and 60's but I could not recall it. Only a stones throw from their principle competitor 'Joseph Lucas'. The photograph and map are proving to be really useful. Many thanks once again.
Emlyn
 
My father, Henry [Harry] Goodman worked for Clear Hooters as a tool maker. I remember him taking me to the factory when I was about five or six, on a Saturday I think it was. There was only one work colleague there and when my father introduced me there was a lot of ribald comments about father 'riding a bike!' But then he was a man who had married two women bigamously and not bothered to marry my mother at all.

Come to think of it mother was married to another man when she had me with my father. Well, there was a war on you know!
 
Great story Good enough. We found our bit of family scandal when I had a bit of a win on the pools in the 50's and shouted my parents a European Tour. Turned out that his mother was a widow and didn't marry for a couple of years until after Dad's birth. Apparently it was an open secret in the village but there was a bit of a problem to get a passport so he could take the holiday. As I write this I remember my sister " had to get married".
Sorry to say I can't claim anything to add.
Cheers Tim
 
I used to holiday from Devon to my father's cousin and her husband living in Marston Green Birmingham. He was Lee Austin and was managing director at Clear Hooters. I would go to work with him and spend my day walking around the factory which fascinated me and fed my love of engineering.

They made all the Ford car horns and for Wipac until Ford placed their work elsewhere. There were departments doing all sorts of operations including plating and the manufacture of all the component parts of the product.

It was at the factory I saw the first Lotus Elan. The vacuum mechanism to lift the headlamps was manufactured there.

There was a second factory which was called Townsend and Coxen (or something like that) under the same management brass turners who were early into metal spraying of knobs and plastic parts. This was in the hat district and may have been in an old hat factory.

This would all have been in the period 1950 to 1959. The company finished when the asset strippers Slater Walker bought the shares and sold the assets. This happened to many prudently run companies at the time when the management had built reserves and capability to have a business which was worth more than the share price.

Lee Austin was very distressed having started as the company accountant who drew a very small amount of money from the bank to pay everybody working there in his first week building the firm to the big (to my eyes at the time) operation it was to become.

I was 16 at the time of my last visit in 1959
 
emevans said:
According to Graces Guide, Clear Hooters Ltd were based in Hampton Street, and employed upwards of 250 persons. With that number of staff, the factory must have been fairly large but I cannot place exactly where it was positioned. Does anyone have any knowledge of the company?

Many thanks in anticipation of a reply.

Emlyn
Click to expand...
Hi there my dad worked for clear Hooters and played football for them I still have his medals that he won playing for them.sorry I know it was in the 50s but exactly what year ime not sure.i will check to see if there are dates on his medals when I get them out.his name was Amos sandford best regards to you
 
thanks for the post mally 58...how lovely that you still have your dads footie medals...something to treasure

lyn
 
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