The Cooper Works later The Traffic Police Garage In Surbiton

[mab01uk]

The Surbiton workshop roof looks quite different inside on the youtube video and pics below:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Ue4h6mzgY

[coop12g295]

Not any windows either!

[Cooper997]

The Canada Rd, Byfleet premises has a curved (half moon) style roof. Look closely at the roofline shown in the row of 6 CCC Minis photo and the curve is there.

[Cooper997]

You've made me go for a quick look. Those of you with 'Mini' by Rob Golding should find the 6 CCC Minis parked outside of the Canada Rd premises photo on page 68 (1st edition at least).

Also, in 'Motor' (UK magazine) dated 2 Jan 1982 there's a feature on John Cooper with one of the photos used probably taken at the same time as the inside and outside Byfleet photos with JNC sitting in one of the CCC Minis. So, sometime in late 1967/early 1968 there's possibly an issue of Motor with these photos, when they were originally taken/published.

[mk1coopers]

The Surbiton garage is now open again, occupied by a Porsche specialist, however as they are an MOT station you can book an appointment to have your Mini MOT'd at the old works.

[mab01uk]

You've made me go for a quick look. Those of you with 'Mini' by Rob Golding should find the 6 CCC Minis parked outside of the Canada Rd premises photo on page 68 (1st edition at least).

Well spotted!.......the curved roof line in the scanned photo below confirms the inside photo was also at Canada Rd, Byfleet and not Surbiton.

"Six of the best outside the Cooper establishment" from Mini by Rob Golding

[Pete]

Good work chaps, they must have just moved at this point? Both buildings are impressive to look at compared to today's corrugated boxes.

(bahh.. it used to be all green fields round 'ere! )

[mab01uk]

The Listed Building Entry below says.....
Quote:
"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."

However going back to my first post in this thread the ex-Met Police officer said.....
Quote:
Clive Abrahams adds, "I joined TDV Traffic Unit at its location at Hampton in November 1967. We moved into our new garage at Hollyfield Road, Surbiton on 1st April 1968. The new garage premises were owned by and leased to the Metropolitan Police by one John Cooper."

Former Cooper Cars Company workshop and showroom - List Entry Summary
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Name: Former Cooper Cars Company workshop and showroom
List entry Number: 1429242
Location
Hollyfield Road, Surbiton, Surrey, KT5 9AL
Grade: II
Date first listed: 24-Sep-2015

Summary of Building
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 recommended for listing 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;
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.
* 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.

Lots more detail on the site and building in the Historic England listing here:-
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/ ... ry/1429242

[Pete]

Byfleet again...

[mab01uk]

More below on date of the move from Surbiton to Byfleet from an old thread (Oct 2002) on the Autosport Forum:-
http://forums.autosport.com/topic/49894 ... addresses/

"DCN's Cooper Cars book, Cooper moved from Hollyfield Road and "the old team workshop in Langley Road" to the former Thomson & Taylor premises in Canada Road, Byfleet between Dec. 1965 and Feb. 1966, about a year after Cooper was purchased by Chipstead Motor Group."

"Cooper Cars settled in Canada Road off Oyster Lane, Byfleet, the place in which the company eventually died, after its acquisition by the Chipstead Motor Group. If you drive around the south side of Brooklands on the public road, heading west you come to the narrow bridge in the railway embankment with the Brooklands site and the remains of its Byfleet Banking to your right, and there's a small trading estate to your left. That's the Canada Road location, turn in there, bear right and the last industrial building on the right, hard up against the railway embankment is - as I recall it - the final resting place of the Cooper Car Co. It's in the back carpark there that Ron Dennis began work with Chipstead, cleaning imported Moskvitch and Lada cars as part of their pre-delivery inspection. Later Bob Jankel and Panther Cars took over the premises, I think, and it was there that they built their six-wheeler roadster road car."
Doug Nye
DCN