Heath & Pond Ltd Birmingham uk

[nigelrudtbandit]

Hello fellow tool sleuths,

I’ve been digging into the history of Heath & Pond Ltd (Steelhouse Lane, Birmingham) and picked up a couple of lovely “Super Chrome” spanners. One of them (pattern 2058) has a small circled mark above the number — looks like “JA” or maybe “5A”.



Does anyone recognise this foundry or inspector’s mark? I suspect it might be from a subcontract Birmingham foundry or cavity ID, but I’ve not found it in my references yet.



Any help identifying this mark (or other Heath & Pond trade details, catalogues, adverts, etc.) would be massively appreciated.



Cheers,

Nigel Merrifield

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Cool spanners!

I don't know what the JA-in-a-circle marking signifies, but I do have a nice trade magazine advertisement to share with you, featuring Double Open End engineers' spanners, accumulated when I was researching one of my all-time favorite midget drive socket sets, made by Heath & Pond for the military, branded "Athol", each piece bearing the MOD broadsword marking as well as the "Super Chrome" moniker! Link to the set on a GJ thread here.

Your spanners look older (less sleek) than the spanners illustrated in the ad and they seem to be marked differently - unless that hand is covering the branding.

I think your spanners and my socket set might be the only Heath & Pond tools on the site.

 

[Farmer J.]

Somewhere I found and posted a picture of works in Steelhouse Lane, Birmingham with WW2 bomb damage but can't find it now. It was shortly after Lugz posted that nice Athol set.
The drive handle in that Athol set does look very similar to a 9/32" drive Britool one i have.

 

[nigelrudtbandit]

Cool spanners!

I don't know what the JA-in-a-circle marking signifies, but I do have a nice trade magazine advertisement to share with you, featuring Double Open End engineers' spanners, accumulated when I was researching one of my all-time favorite midget drive socket sets, made by Heath & Pond for the military, branded "Athol", each piece bearing the MOD broadsword marking as well as the "Super Chrome" moniker! Link to the set on a GJ thread here.

Your spanners look older (less sleek) than the spanners illustrated in the ad and they seem to be marked differently - unless that hand is covering the branding.

I think your spanners and my socket set might be the only Heath & Pond tools on the site.

Thanks for the poster picture I see on like this on eBay just last night ever little piece of information helps much appreciated

 

[nigelrudtbandit]

Somewhere I found and posted a picture of works in Steelhouse Lane, Birmingham with WW2 bomb damage but can't find it now. It was shortly after Lugz posted that nice Athol set.
The drive handle in that Athol set does look very similar to a 9/32" drive Britool one i have.

Thanks for the reply the Althol brand I’ve found out are linked to Heath & Pond and slowly digging out information but I’ve not found much to date! The information about the bomb damaged works in Steel lane is awesome information that’s why I enjoy digging in to the past history and it will give me a different direction to go thanks again

 

[Stubby1743]

I have some Athol branded spanners and I think that I posted pictures of them somewhere on this forum in the past.

 

[nigelrudtbandit]

Thanks I’ll have a dig around I’m just find my feet on here but I will say you guys have already been helpful

 

[Farmer J.]

It was post 647 on the same thread as Lugz's socket set.

 

[nigelrudtbandit]

Thank you it seems as though quite amount of damage was done! Thanks for the picture

 

[Stubby1743]

These are the markings on my Athol tappet spanner that I posted to the Tappet Wrenches thread in August 2023.





As can be seen, it has the UK Govt. broad arrow property mark and the 1954 date.

I think that I have more Athol spanners and I'll look for them tomorrow.

 

[four.cycle]

https://htpaa.org.au/images/SWC/Spanner_and_Wrench_Collector_Issue-49.pdf

 

[Stubby1743]

I've dug out my other two Athol spanners.







The DOE has the UK Govt. property broad arrow mark and is dated 1951.

It is interesting that my three spanners are marked differently:-

Chrome ATHOL Vanadium
High ATHOL Tensile
Super ATHOL Chrome

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Chrome Vanadium
High Tensile
Super Chrome

Gun to my head or wealthy man's bet, I'd say the order you chose to list them was the sequence of production from prewar (rich compositions) to wartime (alloy restrictions) to postwar (triple alloys). There's much precedence across the industry on both sides of the pond for that kind of chronology and those kinds of compositional branding schemes.

 

[Stubby1743]

The tappet spanner is dated 1954 and the DOE 1951. The dates on UK Govt. contract tools are a pretty good indication of when they were made.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

The dates on UK Govt. contract tools are a pretty good indication of when they were made.

Of course. And all my "SUPER CHROME" tools also have postwar dates. I was mainly just responding to your remark that they were marked differently. That's typically an indication of different production eras. I can see I was wrong about the CV, though. I could also be wrong about HIGH TENSILE. Armstrong used a very similar "HI-TENSILE" marking during WWII.

 

[nigelrudtbandit]

These are the markings on my Athol tappet spanner that I posted to the Tappet Wrenches thread in August 2023.





As can be seen, it has the UK Govt. broad arrow property mark and the 1954 date.

I think that I have more Athol spanners and I'll look for them tomorrow.

Thanks for your pictures Stubby1743