The big impact G. Jones & Son motor business had on Rickmansworth

The arrival of the motor car in about 1900 has had very considerable effects on our towns. One of the first cars owned in Rickmansworth was probably Stephen Beeson’s American model, and Dr Henderson is reputed to have had one in about 1905.

The 1904 Motor Car Act recognised the effect on people living on roads used by cars and laid down various measures to control their use, while here the Urban District Council was asked in 1904 and 1905 to seek extra powers to slow the traffic in the town (from 20 to 10mph), and a few years later both the Uxbridge Road at Mill End and Church Street were widened expressly to make room for the motor car.

In Rickmansworth, George Jones, born in 1852, was well placed to serve this new requirement. From a long line of Hertfordshire wheelwrights, his father John (whose wife Martha was of the Peacock family, founders of the Watford Observer) had set up in the late 1830s a coachbuilding business in the High Street next door to the Weslyan chapel, and moved to Church Street when his premises (and the chapel) were burned down in 1865.

The High Street workshops, formerly the George Inn, with advertising in about 1930. Image: Three Rivers Museum

By 1861 John had been joined in the business by his sons, John, Robert and Thomas, although it was George, then only nine, who was eventually to take over and run the business after John’s death in 1888. It developed well, and George came to own several premises in and around the town, as well as hiring both coaches and horses and providing riding lessons. In 1892 the firm built Rickmansworth’s new fire engine, and an ironic fire in 1894 only slowed the development of the firm, which was ready to adopt the motor car before the First World War.

George Jones’s oldest son John Edward (‘Pep’) and Bert both served in World War One. ‘Pep’ returned to run the firm (George’s death in 1933 left the business to him), while Arthur, second son, ran the hire and taxi business and Bert was what would now be called the operations manager, as an employee. George had already bought the George Inn in the High Street (54-56) when it closed before World War One, and had established a large garage workshop there, complete with petrol pumps. The two rooms at the front became shops – later, a toy shop run by Kay Mendelssohn, and a bicycle shop.

The Church Street workshop, about 1930. Image: Three Rivers Museum

But they did much more: during this time Jones made wooden truck cabs for Scammell exports to the tropics; built taxis at the ‘West End works’ on part of the site now occupied by Marks and Spencer (they operated from the Metropolitan Railway station); had the workshop and showroom (above which ‘Pep’ and his family lived) at 23/25 Church Street; and had an electrical retail and repair business next to Boots in the High Street.

They had a petrol and service station on the Chorleywood road where the Shell station now is, and similar sites at Croxley Green and as far out as Aylesbury. In the 1930s the High Street premises at The Cloisters were designed and built as a large car ‘super showroom’, selling a range of makes including the occasional Rolls-Royce.

The super-showroom (c1935), seen in 1992.

Following the death of ‘Pep’ in 1954 the business was sold to the large London motor dealer H.A. Saunders, but was still managed by Bert. On his death in 1959 it was broken up in various ways, but the motor business of G. Jones & Son had become very extensive, and left a strong mark on the town.

I’m very grateful for the detail supplied by Mr Tom Jones, the son of Bert Jones, whose memory has enhanced the records we already have.