History

Ash Instruments the end of an era stretching from 1880 to 2007

by E. O. Muller

In the late 1880s Edward Power, having outgrown the shed behind his fathers chemist shop at No 9 High Street, Walton on Thames, moved to a workshop in Church Walk and by 1896 had built the instrument factory shown in the photograph. In 1902 he set up a limited company, The Power Manufacturing Company Ltd, which was taken over by Claudius Ash, Sons & Company (1905) Ltd in 1907 with Edward Power as Managing Director. This in turn merged with De-Trey of Kentish Town in 1924 to form the Amalgamated Dental Co Ltd. They built a large factory complex on the north side of Churchfield Road at Walton and the old premises were demolished.

So at the beginning of World War 2 there were two large factory units on both sides of the road.

An office block, tool room, machine shop, plating, enamelling, stores, assembly, on the south side.

On the North side there were two large three story manufacturing blocks.

The War saw a large part of the factory engaged in making parts for the Wellington and Mosquito bombers, fleld chairs, treadle engines for military field use together with extraction forceps, hand instruments and rotary instruments. The factory floor space amounted to some 200,000 sq ft.

I joined the company as an apprentice in 1942 making handpieces, syringes etc. The department was mainly staffed by women and elderly men who had returned for war work. One girl ran a high kicking dance troop which visited many local factories for social events.

There was one air raid on the factory during one night in Spring 1944 when we were hit by incendary bombs which were quickly put out. Other explosive bombs dropped at the same time hit the Castle pub and two houses in Church Walk. Other incendary bombs set light to St Marys

Church and this fire was dealt with by the works Fire brigade.

The end of the war saw a massive demand for dental products as much of the production in Europe had been destroyed.

Before the War Ash's had branches throughout Europe, even in Russia, so the company was well known. Massive orders came in but production was restricted because of labour shortages and long delivery times was the result. This enabled our mainly German competitors to get back on their feet.

The company’s venture into Equipment manufacture i.e. units, chairs etc. was not on the whole successful. The conception and designs were not good enough and the cost of exports and servicing prohibitive.

During this time nothing was done to improve the production methods and volume of our popular forceps range, hand instruments and rotary instruments.

Eventually, too late in the seventies a grand plan was made to move out of Walton.

Equipment to Blackpool, Rotary Instruments to Gloucester, Medical to Exeter, a new cabinet factory at Newton Abbot and Hand Instruments to Plymouth. In 2007, when the lease of the Plymouth Instrument factory expired, Ash Instruments (owned by Dentsply) moved the production to Mexico.

Now only the medical factory at Exeter and the rotary instrument factory in Gloucester remain.

The factory in Gloucester is the only true survivor of the old Ash manufacturing company, and is run by Richard Muller and is called the Prima Instrument Group. I also ran this company for a while, but left due to frustration at not being allowed to develop the company as I wished.

On leaving I set up the Prima Instrument Company employing skilled staff from the plant at Walton, when it closed.

Our work in ISO resulted in the original Ash forceps patterns being accepted as ISO patterns, against the German plans to use the same Ash pattern numbers for a range of much heavier forceps. Many other Ash instrument patterns also became ISO patterns.

So this is a sad end to a historic company which could have remained a World leader.

E.O.Muller

Jan 2008