Pyrene and their fire engines
A Scottish Engineer whose idea for a fire extinguisher failed to get financial support in Britain moved to America and in 1907 founded a new company. In 1909 this company became known as the “Pyrene Company of Delaware”.
In 1914 a British branch of the business was set up by the American Wallace B. Phillips and named The “Pyrene Company Limited”. Initially with offices in Queen Street London then Grosvenor Gardens in 1918 (this address later becoming the Head Office) and then to a factory in Stoke Newington in 1920. Following expansion the company moved to a new Art Deco style factory in Brentford (now a listed building).
For the first few decades the company manufactured hand-held and trolley based fire extinguishers and fire extinguisher systems for ships (the most famous being the one for the Queen Mary in 1933).
In America the company heavily advertised their hand held extinguishers in magazines such as National Geographic and their advertisements often featured blazing cars. Similar advertisements appeared in the British press again featuring alarming scenes of one’s beloved car going up in smoke.
An interesting sideline business for Pyrene was that they also manufactured car bumpers. They became so successful at this that by the 1960’s they were making up to a third of the car bumpers used in the UK.
World War II and the great need for fire fighting appliances saw the company develop its own machines to the point where they won a major contract with the Air Ministry for airfield crash tenders.
Post World War II saw a range of vehicle chassis being developed into tenders amongst which was the Bedford Q.L.4; Thornycroft “Nubian” and an adapted Land-Rover Rescue Truck with radio and hand-held fire extinguishers.
The range of vehicles produced included water, foam and CO2 systems and became a good export for the company being delivered to such faraway places as Pakistan, Burma, Chile, India, Kenya and Venezuela.
In 1959 the Pyrene Company purchased Panorama Equipment Ltd. (makers of safety goggles) and Roberts McLean (makers of breathing apparatus) and rebranded as Pyrene Panorama.
1967 saw this them being taken over by Chubb and Sons but continued to operate under the Pyrene name.
Another change occurred in 1976 when Pyrene merged with Firewall limited (makers of plastic-bodied extinguishers) and Submarine and Safety Engineering Ltd. (underwater breathing-apparatus) to form Chubb Panorama.
All adverts and images are from the Richard Roberts Archive
