Bert Thickpenny, a forgotten designer.

Bert Thickpenny and Drop-Head Coupe MG.

Newport Pagnell is an ancient coaching and market town situated between the confluence of the rivers Lovat and Ouse in Buckinghamshire. On the south side of this river junction is the even older hamlet of Tickford End surrounding Tickford Abbey. In 1810 Newport and Tickford End were joined by one of the first cast-iron bridges that spanned the Lovat (also called the Ousel today). In 1830 Joseph Salmons set up his coach building business and was one of the first UK firms to build bespoke bodies for the 'new' motorcar in 1898. By 1914 the company was one of the biggest in the country building bodies on many makes of car chassis. The following year of 1915 saw the birth of a son Bertram, to Thomas and Clare Thickpenny. He was the fifth of six children, the oldest was Fredrick, born in 1902. Like many towns of that era, families all worked for the same employer being introduced by an older employee upon leaving school, so the two brothers followed earlier relatives into the main employer in the town, Salmons & Son, Coachmakers. Fred did an engineering apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, and worked in the metalwork shops. Bert, who was a lot younger, became better qualified and entered the firm in their drawing office. By 1932 Bert was designing the firms brochures at just 17 years of age. Sadly, Fred died aged 32, at his bench, leaving a wife and two young daughters. (At this point I had better declare my interest in all this; Fred is my maternal grandfather and Bert my great-uncle.)

Salmons were world famous for their hand-built and designed car bodies and had even had an abortive spell of building their own car, the 'NP' the initials of the town, in the 1920s. In 1925 the 'Sunshine Roof' took off and sold very well, this is where the whole hood assembly could be easily wound up or down by one person using a small winding handle that fitted into a hole at the rear of the body. As the cars they bodied were usually massive vehicles the weight of the in-house designed winding mechanism and the gears was not too taxing of the car's performance. Cars such as big eight-cylinder Daimlers would not notice the mechanism's weight. The mechanism had been designed by the foreman, Arthur Dalby-Balls, and patented in his and George Salmons' names. So successful was the firm they began to attract contracts from motor firms to build these 'Sunshine Roof' systems, Rover, Vauxhall and Hillman being companies who had the Salmons built cars in their brochures. But as the firm began to carry out conversions onto mass-produced cars of the 10hp and 12hp ranges, the winding mechanism's weight did indeed affect their performance.

Bert had by now become a Salmons designer/draughtsman and he and Arthur came up with a lighter, 'Spring-Assisted' hood arrangement, ideal for the smaller car. The Wolseley Hornet, Hillman Minx and smaller Vauxhalls were fitted with the lighter, spring assisted hood. In 1935 Bert had designed a Four-Light Cabriolet styled, drop-head body and he was now responsible for most of the bodies produced by Salmons and their post-war successors, Tickfords.

In 1936 the manager of the MG Car Company in Abingdon, Cecil Kimber, having heard that the four-light, drop-head coupe had become a best-seller for Salmons, arranged a contract with Salmons so customers buying a new MG VA, SA or WA could have a Salmons drop-head coupe body designed by Bert, built onto their chassis. The firm was at that time busy building a very similar body on Vauxhall cars and a smaller number of Rovers models. So big was the contracts with Vauxhall and MG that they ended up with their own individual body assembly shops within the factory in Tickford Street, called logically the 'MG Shop' and the 'Vauxhall Shop'. Between 1936 to 1940 Salmons were fully employed with MGs. They built 696 SA, 564 VA and 86 on the WA (one WA had a fixed-head fitted). By now the smaller 10hp MG cars, the TA and TB could also be purchased with the drop-head Coupe body fitted, and Salmons built 252 TA and 57 on the TB. All were from the drawing board of Bert Thickpenny who oddly enough does not appear in any official MG history. An earlier article written by me for Safert Fast ( The MG Car Clubs magazine) in 2010 tells the story of the firm and how MG cars carrying Salmons bodies won awards at British new car, concours shows. By 1938 the main products of Salmons were being built onto MG and Rover chassis only.

1940 and WW2 caused the end of bespoken body production and the changing over to Government war contracts. Several part-built MG bodies were removed from the factory into storage behind the 'Wrestlers' public house down the road. After the war in 1946, apart from one, they were sold to a coach builder in Warwickshire, who fitted them to Alvis TA14 chassis. The very last Salmons MG drop-head Coupe body was sold to Abingdon in 1948 after a customer with a VA enquired if he could have one fitted. MG fitted, trimmed painted and finished the car at Abingdon themselves, the only Tickford MG to not have been built in Newport Pagnell.

In 1944 Bert was promoted to Senior Designer and Draughtsman and went on to join Aston Martin when David Brown moved that company to the old Salmons Works in Tickford End. He gave his niece, Jean Thickpenny, away at her wedding, the younger daughter of his brother Fred. A photo from that wedding is one of the few known of him. Jean Baldwin, Nee Thickpenny, also worked for Tickfords in the buyer's office as a secretary and from her much of this story emulates. Today she is 86 and is my mother's sister. Bert passed away in 1965, whilst mowing his lawn one summer's evening at home, just 50 years of age, leaving his wife Ivy as a widow. They had no children.

So the next time you see a Tickford MG remember who designed that body, Bert may not have been in the employ of MG so not amongst the notables of that great firm, but he certainly left his mark on 1,655 MG cars. Michael Pratt, the local Salmons archivist in Newport, supplied the pictures, and Dennis Mynard a local historian, filled in the facts from his book, “ Salmons & Sons, The Tickford Coachbuilders”, now out of print.

Neil Cairns.