Seventy years on, we celebrate together
31/5/22: Seventy years ago, as the Queen’s Coronation took place, TClarke produced a brochure to celebrate sixty five years of our own existence. Now, in celebrating Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee, we can look back and reflect on many continuities.
Our 1953 brochure features a copy of the Loyal Address, subscribed to by our engineer Mr Frederick Topham, to the Queens great grandfather, King Edward VII on the completion of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1907.
Indeed, as the 1953 brochure shows, some of TClarke’s first major contracts included the electrical engineering services to bring light to Royal Palaces including St James’s and Windsor. Our reputation as market leader was there, right from the start.
Among many ancient photographs, the brochure features a wonderful image of the whole TClarke company, out together on a trip to the seaside – at Hastings in 1907. It gives a strong sense of the kind of proud and professional people our founders and early staff members were.
Back in 1952, in the year of our Queen’s accession to the throne, Her Majesty returned to Britain from Kenya where she had been on tour. As well as working on landmark projects at home, TClarke in that year was playing its part too, in the vital export drive and overseas activities had ‘extended over the world from Borneo to Trinidad’. Over the decades, we have been agile and willing to follow the best opportunities.
In marking our Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, we pay tribute to her seventy years of service – just as Frederick Topham did to her great grandfather. It is a great time to reflect on the values that bind our company, our society, and our communities – and take a weekend to celebrate together.