W.H.K. Lowe Ltd was a British engineering and manufacturing company based on Albert Road, Bollington. Operating from the 1960s, they were best known for manufacturing machinery for the textile industry, particularly creels – devices used to hold and feed yarns for weaving and warping processes. The owner and founder was William Henry Kimpton.
The picture (left) shows the factory in May 2026 with a ‘For Sale’ sign mounted on the front wall. There is an application in planning to knock this building down and replace it with a care home for the elderly.
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It seems that there were a number of subsidiary companies working out of the same premises. These included W.H.K. Products Ltd who were a well-known maker of promotional and souvenir items. They manufactured thousands of branded, metal and plastic advertising pieces, such as bottle openers and letter openers, which were often printed with company logos and given away as promotional gifts. Also there was W.H.K. Plant Hire Ltd. |
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The pictures show a promotional penknife with the company name on one side and their address and telephone number on the other. It is two bladed – a short sharp knife and a bottle opener with a screwdriver tip. In early 1975 W.H.K. Products Ltd were taken over and renamed Britton’s Precision Products (BPP) Ltd, but by December 1975 the company closed, making all the staff redundant. It wasn’t until after this, that W.K. Lowe bought the premises and set up there, moving some of their textile business, I believe, from Macclesfield. |
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The premises in Albert Road later became the home of SMC Euroclamp Ltd, manufacturers of a range of materials handling attachments for fork lift trucks. This company started out in Stockport in 1950 and came out of SMC Avro manufacturing components for WWII aircraft including the Avro Lancaster. They later had a factory in Cheadle and moved to Bollington in 2005. The company has a very interesting history
. It remains in the ownership of the original family.
Acknowledgements
Our thanks go to those who researched and discovered the history that is presented in these pages. Please read the full acknowledgement of their remarkable achievement. Unless otherwise noted, the historical pictures are from the Civic Society picture collection at the Discovery Centre .
We particularly thank Roy Dixon and Ray Coyne as well as other contributors to the Old Bollington Facebook page for providing much of the above information.