Harris Brothers (Lambourn) Ltd

Company History

The company was founded in 1872 by John Hobbis Harris who started trading from premises in Back Street Wantage. He was registered as a Master Plumber with The Worshipful Company of Plumbers in 1887 and his invention of a flushing water closet, which had been installed at two schools in Wantage, received a Royal Patent in 1898. He also felt sufficiently confident about his work to guarantee that water pumps installed by him would not freeze up in the winter. Demonstrating further entrepreneurial spirit, he had his own fire fighting pump and he’d race the town pump to any burning house displaying an insurance company plaque - indicating a reward for the pump that saved it.

When John’s son Samuel Alfred Harris grew up he joined his father’s business which was still located in Wantage. Upon his return from the Boar War in 1902 aged 24, he set up a branch of his father's business in Lambourn. Initially he leased a property called Wormstalls in Oxford Street, Lambourn and in 1910 he purchased Bridge House in Oxford Street where he moved his family and the business. In 1905 Samuel became a registered Master Plumber with The Worshipful Company of Plumbers.

In Samuel's day, most water came from wells and it was the plumbers who dug the wells and installed and maintained the pumps in them. There was also plenty of work to be had installing the new domestic sanitary systems as outside earth privies were replaced by indoor flushing water closets with septic tanks in the garden.

As was becoming the family tradition, Samuel’s two sons joined him in the business when they reached the age of 14 William Samuel Theodore (Theo) Harris in 1917 and his brother Donald Harris in 1925. Both the boys were too young to serve in the First World War but tragedy struck the family in 1937 when Don, still only 26 years old, was killed in an accident whilst deepening a well in Leckhampstead. Theo swore that no member of the Harris family would go down a well again and he gave away their drilling rig to another company which he then hired to do any drilling work for him. The 1930s saw other significant changes for the family as arthritis forced Samuel to give up work, leaving Theo to take over the running of the business whilst still relatively young. Theo was Captain of the local Fire Brigade at the beginning of the Second World War and this, together with the essential war work laying agricultural water supplies, exempted him from service.

History again repeated itself when two of Theo’s sons joined the family business – Raymond Robert (Bob) Harris in 1944 when he was 15 years old and David Frederick Theodore Harris in 1952, aged 17. With business thriving and three members of the Harris family involved, Harris Brothers (Lambourn) became a limited company in 1954 and there were many changes in the nature of the work they carried out. Post-War Britain wanted more dairy produce and the newly formed Ministry of Agriculture offered grants to farmers to put water supplies into their fields for the benefit of the dairy herds. Having completed his National Service in 1955 as a trained vehicle mechanic, David was ideally qualified to lead the company into the growing agricultural water engineering business using a Unipower mole plough and other heavy vehicles. Meanwhile, on the domestic side of the business, mains sewage arrived in Lambourn in 1955 and it, together with the mains water supply put in just before the war, caused great demand for bathrooms with running water and mains drainage from indoors. Bob and David became Registered Plumbers in 1961 and, when Bob decided to move away from Lambourn in 1963, David continued with the water engineering while Theo looked after the domestic work. Theo continued to run the company until his death in 1974 aged 71 – the same year that David became a Registered Engineering Technician, which enabled the company to achieve Registered Plumbing Company status. David found himself running the whole of the business at another busy time for the industry as domestic oil-fired boilers became more available. Customers wanted to replace their solid fuel appliances with the new controllable fuel and many houses were becoming centrally heated for the first time.

David’s son Christopher Harris joined the company in 1980 and after completing a four year apprenticeship Chris, like his father, became a Registered Plumber and a Member of the Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering. Chris assisted his father in both the domestic and water engineering work, taking more responsibility in running the company as time passed. With David’s retirement in 2000, Chris reluctantly decided to refer the water engineering work to other specialist companies and the much-loved Unipower was sold to a vintage machinery collector. The company now concentrates on domestic plumbing and heating. Chris is the fifth generation of a family of Registered Plumbers and is proud to continue serving the local community.