Few industrial histories illustrate the crossover between peacetime design and wartime aeronautical engineering more vividly than H. Morris & Co. Ltd, the Morris Furniture Company of Glasgow. In Shavings for Breakfast: The History of the Morris Furniture Company, Glasgow, a 200-page illustrated study covering 1914 to 1975, Charles E. MacKay documents how a firm famous for outfitting the Queen Mary, Gleneagles Hotel and the Royal Yacht Britannia also held the patent for de Havilland Mosquito balsa plywood, manufactured 77 Highball bouncing-bomb casings, and built rotor blades for Britain's early helicopters.
From Clyde ocean liners and grand hotels to naval warships
First established in Newcastle to furnish Vickers liners before moving to Glasgow in 1914, Morris Furniture became one of Britain's premier marine and hotel outfitters. The company furnished Gleneagles, Turnberry and the Strand Palace hotels, and fitted out a long line of celebrated ocean liners including the Empress of Britain, Empress of Japan, Empress of France, Aquitania, Pendennis Castle, Queen Mary (the largest shipbuilding furnishing contract awarded at the time in 1932), Queen Elizabeth, and later the Queen Elizabeth 2 at Clydebank.
In wartime and the post-war years, that marine work extended to warships and royal vessels: Morris furnished the battleship HMS Duke of York (whose furniture was transferred to the USS Missouri and used during the Allied surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay in 1945), HMS Vanguard, the cruiser HMS Fiji and the Polish destroyer Piorun, as well as the Royal Yacht Britannia, the substitute Royal Yacht SS Gothic and Clarence House for Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
Mosquito balsa plywood, Spitfires, Queen Bee drones and Lee-Enfield rifles
When precision woodworking and laminated timber became strategic wartime materials during the Second World War, Morris Furniture's Glasgow workshops turned directly to aircraft and weapons manufacture. The company held the patent for the balsa plywood used in the airframe of the de Havilland Mosquito, worked on components for the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane (including the assembly of Hurricane PZ865, The Last of the Many), built the wooden wings and tail assemblies for the Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle bomber-transport, and produced wooden aircraft propellers for the Rolls-Royce Merlin and Griffon engines.
Morris also built a batch of radio-controlled 'Queen Bee' target drones for Scottish Aviation, produced a final batch of 5V3 Aeroply for Scottish Aviation's Dakota conversions in 1951 (while never being owned by Scottish Aviation), crafted a wooden mock-up engine for Frank Whittle's Power Jets, and, working with Singer and Albion Motors, manufactured the wooden furniture for nearly a million Lee-Enfield rifles.
Highball, Upkeep, RAE wind-tunnel models and the Vickers Transonic Missile
Working with the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) and the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment (MAEE) at Helensburgh, Morris completed wind-tunnel and test models for the Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 jet flying boat, the Brabazon Committee, and the Allied Tallboy, Grand Slam and 44,000 lb heavy bombs. The company was closely involved in the Upkeep Dambusters programme, produced 77 casings for the spherical Highball bouncing bomb used by 618 Squadron, and contributed to the Vickers Transonic Missile, the rocket-powered research vehicle that preceded Blue Steel, a story continued in Sonic to Standoff: The Evolution of the British Nuclear Deterrent.
Early helicopter rotor blades and post-war Cumbrae design
Alongside G & J Weir and Cierva, Morris manufactured rotor blades for the Flying Jeep (Rotabuggy), the single-seat Rotachute, the Sikorsky Hoverfly, the Cierva Air Horse, the Bristol Sycamore and the Bristol 192, work examined alongside The Sycamore Seeds: Early British Helicopter Development. After the crash of the Cierva Air Horse, Morris concentrated on volume furniture, sweeping away wartime Utility designs with Neil B. Morris's 1948 'Cumbrae' range, the iconic 'Cloud Table', and Basil Spence's 1949 'Allegro' range for the Britain Can Make It and 1951 Festival of Britain exhibitions.
Read the full story
Read Shavings for Breakfast: The History of the Morris Furniture Company, Glasgow for the complete 200-page illustrated history of H. Morris & Co. from 1914 to 1975. Pair it with The Sycamore Seeds: Early British Helicopter Development for the Weir, Cierva and Bristol helicopter programmes, and Beardmore Aviation: The Story of a Scottish Industrial Giant's Aviation Activities for another landmark Glasgow industrial history.