The weighing machine business in Clarendon Road next to Palace Theatre

In 1900, Leonard Doyle, also a manufacturer of scales and weighing machines, settled in Watford and, in 1905, took over Walter Parry’s business. The central town location near the Clarendon Hall (also known as the Agricultural Hall and Drill Hall) was to prove ever more fruitful in terms of footfall when the Palace Theatre opened next door at the end of 1908.

Leonard Doyle was born in Southwark, London, in 1874, one of seven children of Sarah (neé Fortnum) and Joseph Morten Doyle. Both father and son were born into the trade. In fact, Leonard was the third generation of his family to be involved in the manufacture of scales and weighing machines. His grandfather, John Doyle (1797-1872), who had worked in the business since 1817, took over the old London company of Nicholl & Fowler, a weights manufacturer, between 1830 and 1832 and named it Doyle & Son. The son in the partnership was either John Joseph Doyle (1825-1866) or George Alfred Doyle (1829-1864), both of whom predeceased their father.

Doyle's shop in Clarendon Road on the right, Palace Theatre to its left, Beechen Grove Baptist Church in the distance, c1915 (Image: Lesley Dunlop)

Their youngest brother, Joseph Morten Doyle (1845-1898), Leonard’s father, ran the London business until the lease on their premises near London Bridge ended in 1887. In the same year he leased a plot of land from Guy’s Hospital for 90 years, before building new premises at 17-19 Newcomen Street, adjoining the hospital. The London business continued to be managed by family members.

In a 19th century catalogue, founder John Doyle described the business as ‘Manufacturers of Standard Scales, Weights, Measures, Balances, etc. to almost every County and Corporation in the United Kingdom.’

Doyle & Son expanded by taking over other firms in and around London, hence the purchase of Walter Parry’s business in Watford.

Joseph Morten Doyle and family c 1890. Picture collection: A. Browne (Image: A Browne / Lesley Dunlop)

The spacious premises that Leonard Doyle subsequently occupied at 2 Clarendon Road comprised a shop in which a variety of shopkeepers’ scales and weighing machines were displayed, with a factory at the rear. The vehicular entrance to the factory was through large double doors by the side of the shop. In the early 20th century postcard of the shop that accompanies this article, signs indicating ‘Collector of Taxes’ can be seen on two of the upper floor windows. The tax man was likely to have been Edwin Barber, ‘collector and assessor of the King’s taxes’.

Leonard Doyle manufactured every type of weighing machine, large and small, from weighbridges to scales for grain, and catered for all types of tradesmen in Hertfordshire and beyond. In one of his advertisements in 1915 he declared that there was no type of weighing appliance he did not make and no class of tradesman for whom he did not cater. As early as that year, he was personally attending to his customers’ immediate requirements in his own motor van, citing ‘distance no object’, such was his keenness to invest in his business and continue expanding his already thriving trade.

Doyle & Son beam scales with 'C' scroll legs, one with balance resetting pedal. (Image: Courtesy Sally Turner Antiques / Lesley Dunlop)

Between 1922 and 1926 Leonard Doyle’s business address changed from 2 to 18 Clarendon Road, despite the fact that his premises remained where they were. A number of properties in the immediate vicinity were simply renumbered. In 1932, at the mature age of 57, he married 50-year-old Edith Helena Fisher, a wholesale milliner’s assistant and daughter of a London lithographer. Three years later, Leonard sold his business to W. & T. Avery Ltd., a name synonymous with scales which was established in 1730. He and Edith subsequently moved away from Watford to spend their retirement in Worthing, Sussex. Leonard died in 1943 and Edith in 1949.

The Watford branch continued to trade for several further decades at 18 Clarendon Road as W. & T. Avery Ltd. The shop is now home to Hayris Kebab House. Doyle & Son’s London business was sold to Avery in 1970 and still trades today as GEC Avery.

Lesley Dunlop is the daughter of the late Ted Parrish, a well-known local historian and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 96 nostalgic articles for the ‘Evening Post-Echo’ in 1982-83 which have since been published in ‘Echoes of Old Watford, Bushey & Oxhey’, available at www.pastdayspublishing.com and Bushey Museum. Lesley is currently working on ‘Two Lives, Two World Wars’, a companion volume that explores her father’s and grandfather’s lives and war experiences, in which Watford, Bushey and Oxhey’s history will take to the stage once again.