More than a passing interest

My family was heavily involved with Hathorn Davey in the years from 1900

The feature on Kew Bridge Steam Museum with its illustration of a Hathorn Davey engine was of more than passing interest to me.

My family was heavily involved with Hathorn Davey in the years from 1900 (or earlier) to the Sulzer takeover in 1937. My father, Geoffrey Lupton, having started an apprenticeship with HD was involved in erecting pumping engines in the Lea Valley around 1903-4, but he left before completing his time to become an Arts and Crafts builder/architect/cabinet maker. His brother, Reginald Lupton, however spent all his working life at HD, was Works Manager in 1914 and a Director in 1919 and travelled the world representing HD. He took early retirement (aged 55) a few years after the Sulzer takeover. 

What I have inherited is Uncle Reg's set of photograph albums of his travels as a technical salesman of pumping engines, the photos in which are about equally split between on-duty and off. Photos of the water works (and personnel) at (e.g.) Brisbane Water Works at Mt. Crosby are balanced by golf club houses and views from (and on) the ship en route from England. He worked mainly in Australia and India and was in Karachi when they were building the airship shed (which he photographed) that the R101 might have used.

Reg had no children so there is now nobody in the family to inherit these albums, therefore my reason for writing this letter is to ask if anyone knows if a Hathorn Davey archive exists - or if there is some private individual who can make use of them.

My own time as a travelling technical salesman of airliners resulted in a very similar collection of photos (slides in my case) again a mixture of on- and off-duty. Not as many of mine will be of interest to the historian but I can report that in the early 1980s there was still an "Airship Shed Sub-Station" next to the road near Karachi Airport.

Allan Lupton