History: In 1909 Walter Lawson Adams, proprietor of a business designing and manufacturing boat and hydroplane engines in Redbridge, Hampshire, joined with Ronald Charteris, grandson of the 7th Earl of Wemyss and March and an early aviator, to form Aeroplane Engine Co. In 1910 Granville Bradshaw became the firm’s chief designer. The firm’s name subsequently changed to All-British Engine Co due to the incentives being made available to construct aircraft of all-British manufacture. The first aircraft fitted with an ABC engine was T O M Sopwith’s Burgess-Wright biplane used at his Brooklands flying school from 1911. By 1912 Adams had left the company which then moved from Redbridge to Brooklands, Weybridge. By late 1912 the company was generally known as ABC, the ‘Engine’ in its title subsequently appearing in brackets as The All-British (Engine) Co. At Brookland Bradshaw began to design motorcycle engines and motorcycles and a separate division, ABC Road Motors (1914), was set up to distinguish it from the aero-engine business in 1914. That year Brooklands was taken over as a military flying ground and the firm quickly moved to a former foundry site at Hersham, Surrey. There the firm initially focussed on the production of aero engines for government wartime contracts, including the Firefly, Gnat and Dragonfly, but with a small manufacturing capacity relied heavily on sub-contractors to supply castings. After the First World War, as demand for aircraft reduced, Sopwith Aviation Co used its production capacity in Kingston-upon-Thames to manufacture ABC motorcycles and ABC itself began to produce motor cars. The Hersham works were expanded. In 1920 the original company was wound up and replaced by ABC Motors (1920) Ltd and agreements were signed with Harper Bean Ltd and British Motor Trading Corporation for the production of motor cars and motorcycles. Charteris remained a director of the new company and Bradshaw its engineer and designer. In 1923 motor cycle production ceased and a new company, ABC Motors Ltd, was registered to acquire the business. The company continued to make some engines that were used in aircraft but the firm made only one excursion into aircraft design and manufacture with the production of the single-seat ABC Robin G-AAID, designed by A A Fletcher, which first flew at Brooklands in 1929. By the end of the Second World War, ABC were building generators, auxiliary power plants and pumping sets. The company was acquired by Vickers Ltd in 1951, but retained its identity until 1964 when it became part of the company’s engineering division.
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