Broom & Wade

Broom & Wade was established at High Wycombe in 1898 by Harry Skeet Broom and Jethro Thomas Wade as a general engineering and repair shop, making machines and castings for the town's furniture trade and castings for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company; by 1907 it was also building paraffin-engined wagons. The first compressor was built in 1910, air compressors and pneumatic tools were shown at Olympia in 1912, and compressed air became the whole business through the 1920s and 1930s. In 1928 H. S. Broom bought the disused Bellfield Works on Hughenden Avenue, put up in 1917-18 for Wycombe Aircraft Constructors Ltd beside the Disraelis' Hughenden estate, and moved compressor production there. The company was floated in 1935, and the 'Broomwade' trade name dates from 1937. In the Second World War the works built about 1,100 Churchill tanks alongside compressors, bearings and pneumatic tools. By 1961 Broom & Wade employed 1,750 people making portable and stationary air compressors, pneumatic tools and paint-spraying equipment.

The Land Rover conversion was the 'Broomwade whirlwind uniflo rotary compressor', described on publication LR363 of July 1962, 'as approved by the Rover Co. Ltd for use with the Land-Rover' and only available for sale in the United Kingdom. The WR100, a single-stage oil-cooled and oil-sealed rotary compressor with no reciprocating parts, ran at 2,300 rpm to deliver 100 cubic feet a minute at 100 psi, enough for two medium-duty concrete breakers. It was mounted entirely below the floor of the rear body of a 109-inch long-wheelbase Land Rover whose box-section chassis was specially modified, with alloy bodywork, a full-view truck cab and heavy-duty suspension; the vehicle engine drove it in top gear through the gearbox and power take-off, and an automatic governor sensitive to air pressure dropped the engine to 1,600 rpm when the receiver reached pressure. Complete with ten gallons of fuel it weighed 4,032 lb and could carry two operators and 1,600 lb on the road. The leaflet gave the maker as Broom & Wade Ltd, High Wycombe, telephone High Wycombe 1630.

In 1968 Broom & Wade merged with Holman Brothers of Camborne, Cornwall, to form the International Compressed Air Corporation, trading as Broomwade, Holman and Maxam; it was renamed CompAir in 1972, though the BroomWade brand lived on. Siebe Gorman bought CompAir in 1985, Siebe merged with BTR as Invensys in 1999, Alchemy Partners bought the business in 2002, and Gardner Denver paid £200.6 million for it in October 2008; CompAir is today a division of Ingersoll Rand. The CompAir works at High Wycombe closed in 2006, and after years of dereliction the six-hectare Hughenden Avenue site was cleared from February 2016 for the Hughenden Quarter housing and care development.