Billy Rootes, The Boy Who Started As An Apprentice And Eventually Bought The Company
In 1909, at just 15 a young man named Billy Rootes left Cranbrook School in Kent and moved to Coventry to begin an apprenticeship with the Singer Car Company.
At the time, car manufacturing was still new and thrilling. Henry Ford’s moving assembly line for the Model T was still four years away from being invented.
Billy started on a penny an hour working 12 hour days. He worked hard and when his apprenticeship ended, he returned to Maidstone and opened a small car dealership selling Singer vehicles.
It was the eve of the First World War. In Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was about to take a wrong turn in his open topped car and, by sheer coincidence, cross paths with a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist called Gavrilo Princip. In a moment that would change history, Gavrilo fired his pistol into the open-top car, killing both the Archduke and his wife. That single act pushed Europe – and eventually the world – into a war which would kill millions.
Back in Maidstone, Billy turned his attention to supporting the war effort. His car showroom was very new, so he converted space into aircraft engine repair facilities and secured contracts with the MOD to service British Army vehicles on the way to France.
Over the next five decades, Billy endured extraordinary business upheaval: 1918 the Spanish flu which killed over 50 million people worldwide, 1929 the wall street crash which saw bankers jumping out of windows because they had lost everything followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s and worldwide economic suffering. Then as things started to look up 1939, a second world war followed by the cold war and the constant threat of nuclear deserter.
Billy worked hard and through all this turmoil he still created a business which become one of the largest car manufacturing companies in the UK – Rootes Cars. You can still see the 1938 Art Deco Rootes building on Mill Street Maidstone. It’s currently being redeveloped into a shopping centre and luxury apartments.
The cherry on the cake; 47 years after earning a penny an hour, Billy Rootes bought the very company he had once apprenticed for – Singer Cars.
When Billy stood on the factory floor in 1909 getting a penny an hour, could he have ever imagined that one day he would own it all? Not bad for a Maidstone lad.
If you are running a small business and you think the price of petrol is a bit high today, just think what our grandparents went through. There will always be ups and downs – but you never truly know what lies around the corner.
Maidstone is an amazing place full of fantastic stories and history. If you would like to know more, please join me on one of my walking tours.