Former Cooper Cars Company workshop and showroom

Summary

Sports car workshop and showroom. Built c1958 for Charles Cooper to the designs of Richard Maddock on the site of his earlier garage. Second-storey draughtsman’s office added c1960. From 1965 used as a police car depot/forensics laboratory.

Reasons for Designation

The former Cooper Car Company workshop and showroom, Hollyfield Road, Surbiton, built c1958 for Charles Cooper for the construction of Formula 1 racing cars, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Historical interest: for the role played by the Cooper Car Company in the development of the modern Formula 1 racing car, and the important role that it played in the history of British motor sport;
* Architectural interest: for the early use of double-height, aluminium-framed glazing utilised in a dramatic curved frontage;
* Rarity: very few purpose-built motor car workshops or showrooms survive from this period.

History

The site on Hollyfield Road was purchased by Charles Cooper in the 1920s. The plot was populated with a series of sheds which he used for his garage business; these are shown on the 1934 Ordnance Survey (OS) map. In the late-1930s a parade of shops was built along Ewell Road where the end shop (No 243) was leased by Charles Cooper as a showroom, with his family living in the flat above. By the time of the 1955 OS map the sheds had been cleared and a new garage built on the site. It is shown in a 1946 Pathé newsreel as a series of single-storey, pitched roofed workshops, stretching to the road in the north-west corner, with a yard to the south-west with three petrol pumps. The current building was designed by the architect Richard Maddock, father of Owen Maddock (1925-2000) who was the Cooper Car Company’s chief designer from the late 1950s until 1963. Richard Maddock had been employed by the practice of Sir Herbert Baker and worked on the rebuilding of the Bank of England (1925-39). The current building is shown in a photograph of 1958/9 around the time that it was built. Another photograph, dated 1963, shows the addition of a draughtsman’s office on the flat roof of the main two-storey range. In 1965 Cooper Cars relocated to Byfleet in Surrey and the garage was leased to the Metropolitan Police as a police car depot and subsequently as a forensics site. Some internal re-ordering was carried out, particularly on the ground floor of the office block. The police vacated the site in 2014.

Charles Cooper (1893-1964) was a racing mechanic whose interest in motor sports had begun prior to his service in the First World War. In the inter-war period he serviced racing cars competing at Brooklands racetrack, including those of the racing drivers Kaye Don and Ginger Hamilton, before opening his garage and Vauxhall dealership at Ewell Road. In 1946 Charles, together with his son John (1923-2000), designed a small racing car with a rear engine to compete in the new 500cc racing class. The Cooper 500 proved a success and father and son formed the Cooper Car Company to produce a number of production models which, from 1948, dominated the Formula 3 racing scene. The company progressed to Formula 2 and Formula 1 and in 1958 a Cooper car driven by Stirling Moss won the Argentinian Grand Prix and another Cooper car, driven by the French driver Maurice Trintignant, won the Monaco Grand Prix. Having introduced the rear engine concept to Formula 1, subsequently the standard configuration, the Cooper team won the 1959 and 1960 World Championships with cars driven by Jack Brabham. This proved the peak for the team, with only one subsequent Grand Prix win, at Monaco, in 1962. In 1965 the team was sold to the Chipstead Garages Group, going on to win two more Grand Prix races (Mexico in 1966 and South Africa in 1967) under the new owners. In all Cooper Cars took part in 129 Formula 1 events, winning 16 races over a nine year period. It would appear that all the cars from the Cooper 500 onward were built at the Hollyfield Road workshop, although a secondary site at Langley Road, Surbiton was purchased in the late 1950s. From 1961 John Cooper, in association with Alec Issigonis, designer of the British Motor Corporation (BMC) Mini, designed a series of sports versions of the car, the Mini Cooper. These were large scale production models and were built by BMC at Longbridge, Birmingham but their design is popularly associated with Hollyfield Road.

Details

Sports car workshop and showroom. Built c1958 for Charles Cooper to the designs of Richard Maddock on the site of his earlier garage. Second-storey draughtsman’s office added c1960. From 1965 used as a police car depot/forensics laboratory.

MATERIALS: red brick, rendered on the side elevations, with concrete dressings. Steel and aluminium windows. The later aluminium covering of the rear workshop area roof* is not of special interest.

PLAN: a flat-roofed, two-storey office block to the north-west of the site, square in plan but with a concave frontage. A later timber-framed draughtsman’s office is set back on the roof and is accessed via a mesh-enclosed external steel stair. To the rear is a single-storey workshop area with a pitched roof giving way to a flat roof to the rear. It is accessed via a flat-roofed, single-storey entrance block on the south-west side of the site.

EXTERIOR: the concave brick street frontage has two-storeys of 12 aluminium-framed windows with transoms, set in a concrete surround and divided above the ground floor by matchboard panelling. Directly above and below the concrete surround is a brick soldier course. The brick parapet has concrete coping and later tubular steel safety railings. The main entrance, projecting at the forward point of the curved frontage, has a quadrant-shaped concrete hood supported on a brick pier rising from a low side wall, but is otherwise plain. Above it is a four-pane steel framed window. On the other side of the frontage is a single-storey garage entrance with replacement steel roller doors under a concrete lintel. The rendered side (north-east) elevation has multi-framed steel-framed Crittall windows to both storeys while the south-west elevation is blind. The additional top-floor draughtsman’s office has large square timber-framed windows with plywood panels below. It opens onto a sun terrace paved with concrete tiles.

INTERIOR: the interior is divided into office (and originally showroom) space in the main block and workshop space to the rear. The ground floor office partitions* date from the period of occupation by the police, as this was originally mainly showroom space, and are not of special interest. Fittings, including plastic trunking, and doors* are from this period and are not of special interest. The upper floor of the office block is accessed via a concrete stair from the entrance lobby at the north-west corner of the building. The lobby has a police reception counter* which is not of special interest. The stairs have iron balusters and a wooden handrail and are original. A suite of four original offices occupies the front of the upper floor and include Charles Cooper’s office which has the original wood panelling to dado height. The rear of the upper floor is occupied by a large office with an internal Crittall window looking out over the workshop. The internal walls of all the offices have glazed panels in metal frames above dado height. Later plastic trunking* is not of special interest. A central corridor ends at a door giving access to a gantry over the workshop. Another door from the corridor gives access to the external metal stair to the draughtsmen’s office on the flat roof. This has later partitions* and fittings* which are not of special interest.

The interior of the workshop essentially consists of a single large space with a concrete floor reached via the large flat-roofed vehicle entrance at the south-west of the building. This area has an entrance to the office block with a later door and glazed panel. On the opposite wall is a large glass-fronted tool or display cabinet. At the north end of the workshop is an area with two inspection pits, shielded by an original partition wall to the south. This area backs onto the enclosed boiler room and has an entrance to the rear of the office block with a later door. The pitched roof of the workshop is supported on five steel roof trusses.

At the south end of the boiler room is a small concrete block store*. Further concrete block rooms* occupy the north-east and south-east corners. The large south-east room was built during the period of use as a police forensics lab and is surrounded by tubular steel railings* at the north end. None of these later insertions are of special interest.

* Pursuant to s.1 (5A) of the Planning (listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 ('the Act') it is declared that these aforementioned features are not of special architectural or historic interest.

Sources

Websites
ODNB Entry for John Newton Cooper (1923-2000), accessed 29 July 2015 from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/74958?docPos=7
YouTube - British Pathé: Racing Car (1946), accessed 29 July 2015 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNBekmexzyA
Telegraph Obituaries - Owen Maddock - 3 August 2000, accessed 8 September 2015 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1351296/Owen-Maddock.html

End of official list entry

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