Charles Brooking

 

Henry Hope, Window Manufacturer

and other Window Manufacturers

charles brooking

Charles Brooking is a fascinating and knowledgeable collector of architectural detail, The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail, and as Surveyors we find his lifelong quest to collect British building details unique, informative and valuable and a collection that must be kept intact for years to come. If you need help and advice with regard to building surveys, structural surveys, structural reports, engineers reports, specific defects report, dilapidations or any other property matters please free phone 0800 298 5424.

The following is one of a series of interviews with Charles Brooking, Historic and Listed Buildings Detail Expert, The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail and a Surveyor where we have recorded his comments and various aspects that have affected windows and doors and other collectibles. The interviews outline how his collection started and built over the years and gives an insight into the amazing architectural features housed in his fine collection.
Surveyor: Who is Henry Hope?

Charles Brooking: Henry Hope and Sons Limited was one of the largest window manufacturers, one of the best quality ones, along with Crittalls. Henry Hope made the windows for Bourne and Hollingsworth, the large Oxford Street store, in the 1920's. I recovered some really good examples of Henry Hope windows from there which illustrated the use of copper light in that context as well as from a little building the Mount Royal Hotel, which is the other end of Oxford Street . They were very modern with horizontal bands of windows made by Bradeby a window that is quite rare with wonderful brass sort of cup pivots where you could actually oil the pivot mechanism to make it operate; incredibly sophisticated.

charles brooking

I have got examples of those because I have covered the history of the steel window now in depth with all major manufacturers such as:-

Williams and Williams of The Reliance Works and Rustproof Metal Window Limited of Saltney near Chester.

Crittall Manufacturing Company Limited of Braintree

Henry Hope and Sons Limited of Birmingham

Beacon Windows

charles brooking

Rescue defined

Charles Brooking defines a rescue as saving a window or door or staircase that would be doomed.

Charles Brooking was a pioneer in the rescue of architectural detailing as many years ago it was very much considered a strange and an unusual past time to want to rescue old parts of buildings with everything new and shiny being so important.

Surveyor: Who were Williams and Williams?

Charles Brooking: They were in Chester. They made mass produced windows.

Surveyor: You mentioned the Pevsner book as well?

Charles Brooking: The London Pevsner Book will give you the name of the architect who designed the Mount Royal Hotel I think it was built in 1936/37. I went there when they were removing the windows recently.

Pevsner Architectural Guides Defined

The Pevsner Architectural Guides are published by Yale University Press and are a series of books which started in the 1940s by art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner outlining British architecture.

charles brooking

I also recovered some very interesting bits from a 1760's house in Portland Street 1763 with hand carved architraves, balustrades and hand carved shutters.

If you found this article on The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail interesting you may also be interested in the following articles on our website:

Major rescue at Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London

Donations and rescues far and wide, including Buckingham Palace

Dry Verges

Property Valuations

Negotiating with a Landlord

London Mansion Houses

My new house is too hot

References:

TheBrookingCollection.com

DartfordArchive.org.uk

IHBC.org.uk

ProjectBook.co.uk

HopesWindows.com

Independent Surveyors

If you truly do want an independent expert opinion from a surveyor with regard to building surveys, structural surveys, structural reports, engineers reports, specific defects report, dilapidations or any other property matters please contact 0800 298 5424 for a surveyor to give you a call back.

Commercial Property Surveyors

If you have a commercial property, be it leasehold or freehold, then you may wish to look at our Dilapidations Website at www.DilapsHelp.com and for Disputes go to our Disputes Help site www.DisputesHelp.com.

We hope you found the article of use and if you have any experiences that you feel should be added to this article that would benefit others, or you feel that some of the information that we have included is wrong then please do not hesitate to contact us (we are only human).

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