J. Brockhouse & Co.

John Brockhouse founded the company in 1886, moving in 1888 to Howard Street, West Bromwich, next to J. & J. Siddons, and in 1897 adding axles to his springs and building the Victoria Works there. J. Brockhouse and Company Limited was incorporated on 28 February 1898. Between the wars the firm took on railway equipment, drop forgings, the Lewin municipal vehicles and, from 1932, the AGA cooker subsidiary, and through the 1930s and 1940s acquired R. Berry & Son, R. Disturnal, James Leach, Lones Vernon & Holden, the District Iron & Steel Co., the Vulcan Motor & Engineering Co., Ernest Lake and Meldrums (1943) and the British Motor Boat Manufacturing Co. (1947). By 1944 the Brockhouse Group comprised 24 engineering companies and works; it sold the Sunbeam trolleybus business to Guy Motors in 1948 and the Indian motorcycle company to Associated Motor Cycles in 1959.

In October 1948 the Provost of Clydebank opened the group's new Clydebank works, a 12-acre site with about 165,000 sq ft of buildings for some 600 workers, planned for bus bodybuilding with advice from Park Royal Vehicles. The products shown at the opening included Brockhouse-Clydebank trailers and semi-trailers, axle assemblies, caravan chassis, springs, the Lewin sweepers and collectors and the Corgi motorcycle; A. T. Muir, in charge of Brockhouse production in Scotland since 1935, was general manager. It was Brockhouse of Clydebank, alongside Sankey, that built the Mk 1 and Mk 2 of the British Army's ½-ton two-wheeled cargo trailer, FV2301/A, the tub-bodied trailer normally found behind the Austin Champ, a few of which soldiered on into the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Land Rover connection is the BT8 trailer. J. Brockhouse & Co. of West Bromwich built the 15 cwt trailer for the Series I, a steel body matched to the width of the Land Rover on Land Rover wheels, finished in Land Rover colours and offered by Rover as a genuine accessory; the Land Rover Series One Club's copy of the Brockhouse despatch book dates the earliest examples to about January or February 1949, and Rover advertised the Brockhouse 15 cwt trailer in British Farm Mechanization in February 1950. Most were made through the mid-1950s, and examples dated 1964 survive; a trailer cost about £90 against £550 for the vehicle. Because the body was steel, and prone to rust, few have survived.

The company's name was changed to Brockhouse Limited on 31 December 1976. Caparo Industries invested in 1984, and the group was later acquired by Evered Holdings. Brockhouse Limited was dissolved on 30 July 2019, but the forging business continues on the original 5.5-acre Howard Street site as Brockhouse Group Ltd and Brockhouse Forgings Ltd, both incorporated in 1999, supplying closed-die hammer and upset forgings from 0.5 kg to 400 kg to the automotive, rail, defence, agricultural and off-highway trades; the company's own site dates its founding to 1885.