Imber Court Engineering Works

of Thames Ditton, Surrey

The business was set up and owned by a Major Smith. 'It got involved in the relatively new technologies associated with Portland Cement following WW1, by buying redundant submarine netting and employing teams of workers to unravel it to make concrete reinforcing wire.
The firm, lead by Smith who was a bundle of creative ideas, went on to develop several patents and registered designs amongst which were machines for making concrete blocks, of which the "breeze" blocks (clinker blocks) are the best known. The inter war years were a time of much suburban construction, which saw the adoption of the "cavity wall"; a way of building house walls using big cheap concrete blocks as the inner leaf and allowing cheaper less skilled bricklayers to create a damp proof wall; the better insulation was almost a side effect. Smith tried to build the whole wall out of triangular blocks so the inside face and the outside face could have different finishes.
This was not a great success, as British people like brick houses, not concrete or rendered houses Continental style, but the company traded under the name of "Trianco" (as well as "Smiths Fireproof Floors".) ....The firm continued into the 1970's making mainly airworthy (AID) parts for the RAF, including a screw lift kit that could be assembled on site & powered by a Landrover battery, to lift a heavy object of 16 tons (actually tested to 20 tons) in or out of a cargo plane. (Reputed to have seen service during the Rhodesia UDI emergency of 1965).
Post WW2, the firm diversified into making boilers, with a gravity feed, to burn the anthracite beans , peas & grains previously regarded as virtually waste, at an efficiency of up to 80%, long before natural gas and the condensing boiler arrived in Britain...... '

During the First World War the firm constructed an unusual wooden jib for a derrick crane for the Admiralty. The crane, with a 50-ft post, had to be capable of raising a 3-ton load 100 ft. high. The jib was 135 ft. long and was one-third of the weight of a steel equivalent. The jib was built up of four corner-posts, each made of nine laminations of Oregon pine glued together with waterproof glue. The jib was divided into panels by struts, also of Oregon pine, and each panel had diagonal bracing of stranded piano-wire. The struts were fixed to the corner-posts by welded steel clamping boxes, to which the diagonal braces were also connected by means of bolts on which the wire was wound. The bolt-heads were formed with teeth, with which two spring pawls engaged, so that turning the bolt tightened the wires and slacking back was prevented by the pawls.

1922 'Part of the Imber Court Estate was purchased in 1920, on the recommendation of the then Commissioner of Police and of the Receiver, to provide new reserve stables, etc., for the mounted branch of the Metropolitan Police, ..... The land purchased covers about 37 acres, and was bought from Major Smith, of the Imber Court Engineering Works. It previously formed part of the estate of the late Lord Michelham, and was, I understand, used before the War as a trotting racecourse.'

Note: It is possible that the 'Imber Court Engineering Works' was not a commercial business, but a branch of the War Department.

1922 15,000 BRICKS A DAY. CLAIM FOR NEW BUILDING MACHINE. Since the inauguration of the housing exhibit in the Palace of Housing and Transport at Wembley considerable interest has been shown in the use of the triangular concrete blocks for building. A web with concrete facing impervious to weather outside, and with a porous facing inside, which absorbs moisture, and into which nails can be driven, has been constructed over and over again by hand labour to demonstrate the advantages of the triangular block as a building material. The Triangular Construction Company of Imber Court, Surrey, have given the first public trial to a simple piece of machinery, invented by Major W. H. Smith, its managing director, which, worked by one skilled bricklayer and a labourer, can erect the walling of houses at a rate equivalent to the laying of 15,000 bricks a day.'

1925 'SAFE IN SIX MONTHS." Plan for an Expenditure of £300,000. "St. Paul's can be made safe within six months." This statement was made yesterday by Major W. H. Smith, managing director of the Triangular Construction Company, who was engineer-in-charge of the Department of Inventions at the Ministry of Munitions during the war. Major Smith's plan is based on the alliance of two modern constructive materials—steel and concrete. .... Major Smith suggests temporary steel jackets around the existing piers. "The 5,000-ton load now carried by each pier would be transferred to these steel jackets by means of a number of lifting jacks at their upper end," he said. "Steel arches between the jackets would carry the weight of the existing stone arches." ....

1937 'CONCRETE MIXING MACHINES. SURSCRIPTIONS are being invited tomorrow to an issue of ... of Trianco Ltd. This company is acquiring the business of Trianco Concrete Products and Machines and the share capital of Smith's Fireproof Floors. It manufactures concrete mixing machines and other machinery for making concrete products. ...'

1939 Trianco were advertising concrete A.R.P. shelters for sale

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