W. E. Jones

Anyone remember an old Coventry firm called W E Jones of East Street? Ran by Jack Allen. When I was at Wickman, they used to do all of the flame hardening of our slides.

Mick, W E Jones was the father in law of Peter Deeley , head of a number of different firms within the Deeley group. In the early 70,s I was working for Clements Plant hire, one of these firms and 3 of us with 2 machines were tasked with clearing a wood on land upon which Mr Jones house stood, it was a long job. At an early age I was partial to a good cigar and he was quite free with his Villiger cigars , he was a nice man. His daughter was Pat Deeley who was a solicitor or barrister,I think . The factory as I recall was at the top of east street on the left.

Served my Toolmaker Apprenticeship (later transferring to the Drawing Office) at W E Jones. The company specialized in Jigs and Fixtures, Press Tools and the design and manufacture of one-off machine tools for companies such as Ford and Raleigh Bicycles. The company also worked on the Concorde project. The heat treatment arm was only a small sub-contract/in-house operation - Jack was a real character. At the start of my employment the Managing Director was Jack Perkins, succeeded by Alan Wheeler. Head of Production was Ron Patrick. Head of Inspection was Malcolm Jackson. Head of Planning/Estimating and all Apprentice training was Alan Needham.

Does anyone know if this company made parts for the Apollo (NASA) program?

Hi Seigfried! I couldn't find any direct mentions of WE Jones (tools) Ltd, Coventry, being connected with NASA but it's quite possible they were. In this article from 1983 it mentioned them making jigs for specialist air crafts, making parts for prototype/ unreleased cars and even making a machine to rapidly assemble bank cheque books. Having these sort of connections may have made them come on NASA's radar???? (Especially in aerospace)... If you wanted to go further, if they see this post, you could ask the member 3Spires as they used to work there. All the best

Hello, Garlands Joke Shop, Thank you so much, very interesting. The reason I asked this question is a careers officer was showing me around the factory, this was around 1974, and we came to a machine and he said something like "they made the camera rails for Apollo 11 Lunar module on that machine". I've always wondered about this.

Hi GJS Thanks for the update on the company history. I was part of the '74 intake and resigned from the company in '80 (courtesy of crystal ball) and knew they ran into difficulties shortly after. Glad to see they managed a resurgence as "Engineering" - does anyone know what became of the company?

According to the newspaper archive it was closed down by its holding company on 20th August 1990. 40 people were put out of work, many of whom were on holiday and did not know.