E. Purnell Hooley
Encyclopedia
Tarmac (company)
Tarmac is a company that is based in Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom and operates internationally. The company produces aggregates and road-surfacing materials, including tarmacadam, from which the company's name is derived...
, one of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's largest building materials businesses.
Career
Born in SwanseaSwansea
Swansea is a coastal city and county in Wales. Swansea is in the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan. Situated on the sandy South West Wales coast, the county area includes the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw uplands...
, Hooley was articled as a civil engineer
Civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering; the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructures while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructures that have been neglected.Originally, a...
to the firm of James Craik in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
.
Hooley entered a business partnership with Francis Lean, as Architects and Surveyors at Neath, then in the county of Glamorgan
Glamorgan
Glamorgan or Glamorganshire is one of the thirteen historic counties and a former administrative county of Wales. It was originally an early medieval kingdom of varying boundaries known as Glywysing until taken over by the Normans as a lordship. Glamorgan is latterly represented by the three...
, under the name of Lean and Hooley. The partnership was dissolved on 27 August 1881.
Also in 1881, he became surveyor
Surveying
See Also: Public Land Survey SystemSurveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points and the distances and angles between them...
with Stow-on-the-Wold
Stow-on-the-Wold
Stow-on-the-Wold is a market town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is situated on top of an 800 ft hill, at the convergence of a number of major roads through the Cotswolds, including the Fosse Way . The town was founded as a planned market place by Norman lords to take...
Highway Board and in 1884 he took up a similar position with the Maidstone
Maidstone
Maidstone is the county town of Kent, England, south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town linking Maidstone to Rochester and the Thames Estuary. Historically, the river was a source and route for much of the town's trade. Maidstone was the centre of the agricultural...
Highway Board. He was appointed County Surveror to Nottinghamshire County Council in 1889.
In his capacity as the County Surveyor, Hooley was passing a tar
Tar
Tar is modified pitch produced primarily from the wood and roots of pine by destructive distillation under pyrolysis. Production and trade in tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden vessels against rot. The largest...
works in 1901 when he noticed that a barrel of tar had been spilled on the roadway and that, in an attempt to reduce the mess, someone had dumped gravel
Gravel
Gravel is composed of unconsolidated rock fragments that have a general particle size range and include size classes from granule- to boulder-sized fragments. Gravel can be sub-categorized into granule and cobble...
on top of it. The area was remarkably dust-free compared to the surrounding road, and it inspired Hooley to develop and patent Tarmac
Tarmac
Tarmac is a type of road surface. Tarmac refers to a material patented by Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1901...
in Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, in 1902 (GB 7796).
He called his company, which he registered in 1903, Tar Macadam (Purnell Hooley's Patent) Syndicate Limited, but unfortunately he had trouble selling his product
Product (business)
In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...
as he was not an experienced businessman. On 26 July 1904, Hooley obtained a patent for an apparatus for the preparation of tar macadam, intended as an improvement to existing methods of preparing tar macadam.
Hooley's company was bought out by the Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, Sir Alfred Hickman
Sir Alfred Hickman, 1st Baronet
Sir Alfred Hickman was an industrialist and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1885 and 1906....
, who was also the owner of a steelworks which produced large quantities of waste slag. The Tarmac
Tarmac (company)
Tarmac is a company that is based in Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom and operates internationally. The company produces aggregates and road-surfacing materials, including tarmacadam, from which the company's name is derived...
company was relaunched by Hickman in 1905.
Hooley also undertook some military service, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant in the 1st Nottinghamshire (Robin Hood) battalion
The Robin Hood Battalion
The Robin Hood Battalion was a unit of the British Territorial Army.-History:It was formed as the 1st Nottinghamshire Volunteer Rifle Corps by Adjutant Jonathan White on 15 November 1859...
on 12 March 1892, then Lieutenant on 23 June 1894, and Captain on 23 December 1896. He resigned this Commission on 26 March 1902. On 7 October 1914, Hooley transferred from the Territorial Force Reserve to the 8th Battalion, of The Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment)
Sherwood Foresters
The Sherwood Foresters was formed during the Childers Reforms in 1881 from the amalgamation of the 45th Regiment of Foot and the 95th Regiment of Foot...
with the rank of Quartermaster and Honorary Captain. He subsequently transferred back to the Territorial Force Reserve. On 29 October 1920, Hooley attained the age limit for retirement, and retired, retaining the rank of Quartermaster and Captain.
Hooley died at his home in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
in 1942.
Family
In 1884 Hooley married Matilda Fanny Stallard and together they went on to have two sons and two daughters.Publications
The following is a list of known publications by Hooley.- .(1896), Steam rolling; with discussion. Association of Municipal and County Engineers and Surveyors, Proceedings. Vol. 22, pp. 284–308. Surveyor, July 17, 1896
- .(1899), Notes on the Locomotives Act, 1898: with discussion. Association of Municipal and Sanitary Engineers and Surveyors, Proceedings. Vol. 25, pp. 84–103. Surveyor, Jan. 27, 1899. Summary in Surveyor July 5, 1907.
- .(1908), Modern road management. International Roads Congress; Summarised in Municipal Journal, Oct 16; Engineering Record, Nov. 7, 1908.
See also
- MacadamMacadamMacadam is a type of road construction pioneered by the Scotsman John Loudon McAdam in around 1820. The method simplified what had been considered state-of-the-art at that point...