So, here it is. The very article itself. Thought so long to be utterly lost. And yet recovered at last. A veritable treasure-chest of graphics and data about the firm, going back to its foundation. (pba.25.7.16)
And when was it started? After Mr Cowley became a partner with James Archer (date not remembered by me just now, but at a guess it might have been about 1880s/1890s). Conceivably 1870s. According to the label inside the cover page, the album itself came from The Educational Supply Company of Queen Street (starting at Carfax and leading into New Road and as it progresses westward and onwards becomes Park End Street itself), whose (educational supply premises) were still in Queen Street, perhaps at that same location when I was a pupil at Christ Church Cathedral Choir School in Brewer Street in the late 1940s, as I have cause to well-remember from browsing there (and at a related stationery shop called ‘Savages’) on my way to catch the No.2 bus from High Street to Headington.
So, let’s say that the album dates from 1880, which was when the business was 23 years old and perhaps growing nicely and was clearly going to last and was worth recording for posterity. How the album came to get so battered, with the cover in a very bad way, I know not, though it is now 136 years old and I suppose any photo album so old cannot be expected to be very pristine. (28.7.16).
(Added 12.8.16): And what a lovely project to restore this wonderful historic document by re-binding and generally making it good at a good-quality bookbinding establishment. I shall have much joy in seeing to this in due course.
(Added 26.9.16 at Kenmore, Scotland): The broad outline of the history of the firm was approximately as follows:
Founded 1857 by James Archer;
1857 onwards for 3 or more decades: run by James Archer successfully developing from a parcels etc business into a haulage contractors and household removals business, based on integration with the railways for long-distance heavy-haulage;
Latter quarter of the 19th century: partnership of James Archer with Mark (Mack) Cowley and Rippington. Cowley’s name added to the firm’s trading-style;
1901: Acquisition of steam traction engine for pulling up to 3 road-going wagons;
1901: Building of Park End Street reinforced concrete warehouses;
1919: WGRA joins the firm in place of James Archer who retires after 62 years; and WGRA retires 50 years later in 1969, the year of his death;
1923: End of horse-drawn transport in the business;
1926: FGBA joins his father WGRA in the business; he retires in 1969, 43 years later;
1933: Rippington and Cowley retire from the business on being ‘bought-out’ by WGRA;
1934: Archer Cowley carry out the Bodleian Library move in Oxford;
1957: Centenary celebrations at the Cadena Café, Cornmarket Street, Oxford;
1969: Death of WGRA, retirement of FGBA, and acquisition of the firm by Cantays removals;
2005: Centenary of birth of FGBA celebrated in ‘Memory Lane’ article in Oxford Mail;
2006: Visit to Park End Street premises by PBA who is informed of the previous loss ‘in an office move’ of the History Scrapbook;
2016: July 23: PBA recovers from Sid McFarlane via John Chipperfield of the Oxford Mail, the firm’s long-lost scrapbook which is published here;