If the plate on your safe or strongroom door says Hobbs, Hart & Co., it was made by the London firm that grew out of the American who picked Bramah’s and Chubb’s locks in 1851. Here’s who they were, how to read the plate, and what to do with the safe now.
1852
registered as Hobbs & Co., London
1860
J. M. Hart takes over; the name becomes Hobbs, Hart
35 tons
one bankers’ strong room shipped in 1875
1956
bought by Chubb
Key takeaways
- A. C. Hobbs started the firm in London in 1851–52 to make locks. He sold it to John Matthias Hart in 1860 and went home to America, but his name stayed first on the sign.
- Under Hart the firm became a maker of safes, strongrooms and bank doors, with works in Arlington Street, Islington, and a shop in Cheapside.
- The plate wording dates your safe: “Hobbs, Hart & Co.” without “Ltd” means about 1860 to 1887; “Limited” means 8 July 1887 or later.
- There’s no public serial number list, but the firm’s order books and records (1864–1985) survive at The London Archives under CLC/B/002/HH.
- Chubb bought Hobbs Hart in 1956 and kept making safes under it until 1983.
In This Article
Hobbs, Hart & Co. at a glance
| Country | England (London) |
| Founded | 1851 or 1852 by Alfred Charles Hobbs (sources differ); registered as Hobbs & Co. in 1852 |
| Trading names | Hobbs & Co. (1852); Hobbs, Ashley & Co. (1855); Hobbs, Ashley & Fortescue (to 1860); Hobbs, Hart & Co. (1860–1887); Hobbs, Hart & Co. Ltd (from 8 July 1887) |
| Key people | A. C. Hobbs (1812–1891); John Matthias Hart (owner from 1860, died 1887); Charles Lee (general manager, 1890s–1900s) |
| Shop and office | 97 Cheapside (by 1855); 76 Cheapside (by 1864, still in 1876); 76 & 77 Cheapside on some plates |
| Works | 33 Lawrence Lane (by 1855); Wharncliffe Works, Arlington Street, Islington; Staffa Road, Leyton (from 1936); Cambridge Heath Road (under Chubb) |
| Known for | Protector locks, changeable-key locks, bankers’ strongrooms, bullion safes, strongroom doors |
| Fate | Bought by Chubb in 1956; safe making continued under Chubb until 1983 |
| Records | The London Archives, ref. CLC/B/002/HH (1864–1985) |
History of Hobbs, Hart & Co.
Most British safe makers started as smiths or ironmongers. This one started with a showman. Alfred Charles Hobbs came to the Great Exhibition in 1851 to sell American locks, picked two famous English ones in public, and stayed. That story has its own page, Hobbs and the Great Lock Controversy of 1851, so here we’ll pick up where it leaves off: with the business that kept his name for more than a century.1
Timeline
- 1851–1852 Hobbs sets up in London; registered as Hobbs & Co. in 1852.
- 1855 Hobbs, Ashley & Co.: factory at 33 Lawrence Lane, shop at 97 Cheapside; locks shown at the Paris Exhibition.
- 1857 First strongroom built on the firm’s own system.
- 1860 Ashley dies; Hobbs sells to J. M. Hart and returns to America. The firm becomes Hobbs, Hart & Co.
- 1861 Royal warrant; Hart’s first lock patent.
- 1865–1872 Hart patents bolts, joints and a jointless safe body.
- 1875 A jewel room for Windsor Castle and a 35-ton strong room for a bank in South America.
- 1887 Incorporated on 8 July as Hobbs, Hart & Co. Ltd; Hart dies the same year.
- 1936 New works and offices in Staffa Road, Leyton.
- 1956–1983 Owned by Chubb; one of the group’s two safe-making centres until 1983.
Hobbs & Co.: an American lock factory in the City
Hobbs’s plan, by his own later account, was to run a lock factory in London for three years and then sell it. He took a building in Cheapside and brought in machinery to replace hand work, and when the City premises got too small a new factory was built outside the City, with Cheapside kept as the shop.2 That fits the addresses: AIM25 puts the factory at 33 Lawrence Lane, just off Cheapside, with showrooms at 97 Cheapside by 1855, and by 1859 Hobbs himself was listed at Arlington Street, Islington.34
The factory was the point. Tomlinson’s 1853 book on locks, compiled from Hobbs’s papers, describes steam-powered machines at “Messrs. Hobbs and Co.” cutting lock parts so alike that any piece fitted any lock of the same pattern, with the parts kept in labelled compartments for assembly.5 That was the American way of making things, and it was new to an English lock trade still built on the small workshops of Willenhall.
The name changed with the partners. It was Hobbs & Co. in 1852, Hobbs, Ashley & Co. from 1855, and then Hobbs, Ashley and Fortescue. When Ashley died in 1860, Hobbs sold the business to John Matthias Hart and went home to Connecticut, on condition that his own name stayed at the head of the firm.13 So a safe made decades after Hobbs left London still carries his name, which confuses a good many owners.
J. M. Hart turns a lock firm into a safe maker
Hart made the firm into the safe and strongroom maker most owners know. AIM25 says he opened the Wharncliffe Works in Arlington Street to make safe and strongroom doors, that the firm held a royal warrant from 1861, and that it supplied safes to the Bank of England.3 Hobbs, looking back in 1886, said the firm did much of the lock work of the Government and the Bank of England.2
When safe making really started is less clear. Grace’s Guide says the firm introduced its strongroom in 1857, and The Engineer agrees that its system of strongroom construction was “first employed by them in 1857”. Yet the same 1875 article says that it was only after “the great jewel robberies of 1866” that the firm added safe manufacturing to its lock business.67 The safest reading is strongrooms from 1857 and a full range of safes from the second half of the 1860s.
Hart’s patents tell the same story. I went through the lists of English lock and safe patents that George Hayter Chubb printed in 1875, and Hart’s name appears on a lock patent of 1861 (No. 1902), then on safe patents for holding bolts (1865, No. 559), actuating bolts (1865, No. 1045), joining plates with metal run into tubes (1865, No. 2294) and a jointless body with hooked bolts (1869, No. 1399). In 1872 Hobbs and Hart took out a joint patent for the use of steel (No. 1611).8 Chubb also described the firm’s best safes: hooked or claw-shaped bolts, and body joints covered by a casing filled with molten metal.8
Strongrooms for banks and for Windsor Castle
The best description of Hobbs Hart at its height is a visit report in The Engineer of 17 September 1875. Its reporter went to the works to see a bankers’ strong room built for an English bank in South America: 12 ft high, 14 ft wide, assembled from 62 sections with more than 32,000 holes drilled for the fixings. The door alone weighed nearly two tons, the whole room nearly 35 tons, and the price was £2,500 delivered on board ship.7
The same article says the firm had won the only medal for “Progress” in its class at the Vienna Exhibition, that this was the sixth series of its strong rooms put together abroad without British fitters, and that the decoration copied a jewel room the firm had built that February “for her Majesty’s special use at Windsor Castle”.7 Under the room sat a plated chamber to stop anyone tunnelling in from below; the article cited tunnelling robberies in Baltimore in 1872 and in Russia in 1874.
“A marvel of ingenuity and mechanical skill.”
The Engineer on a Hobbs Hart strong room, 1875
The adverts of the time show the range. An 1868 advert lists frictionless lock furniture, machine-made locks, “Double Protector” locks, changeable-key locks and “Bullion Protector” locks, safes and strong doors, with a 36-page illustrated catalogue for half a crown.9 By 1876 the firm was also advertising gunpowder magazines and prison locks, from 76 Cheapside with “manufactories” in Arlington Street, Islington.10
Limited company, Leyton and Chubb
Hobbs, Hart & Co. Ltd was registered on 8 July 1887 to take over the old firm, and Hart died the same year.113 Under Charles Lee, general manager in the 1890s and 1900s, the range and the export trade grew.3 In 1914 the company listed locks and lock furniture, combination bolts, strong rooms and bullion vaults, fire-resisting bullion and jewel safes, and wrought iron and steel doors.11
In 1936 the firm moved its works and offices to Staffa Road, Leyton.3 By the 1950s it was also selling to householders: a 1955 advert in Country Life offers window rack bolts as “Headquarters of Home Security”, from Staffa Road, Leyton, London E.10, and reminds readers of its work for the Bank of England and the Tower of London.12
Chubb & Son’s Lock and Safe Co. bought Hobbs Hart in 1956.31 Its departments later moved to 231–237 Cambridge Heath Road, and it carried on as one of the Chubb group’s two safe-making centres until 1983. AIM25 gives 1974 as the end of the Hobbs Hart & Co. Ltd name.3 The Science Museum Group’s record says “about 1954” for the Chubb takeover, but the archive catalogue and the Chubb Archive both say 1956.13
Hobbs Hart locks: the Protector and after
The lock is often the oldest Hobbs part of a safe, and sometimes the only one. Hobbs’s cheaper answer to the expensive American bank lock was the Protector, a six-lever lock with a movable stump. In an ordinary lever lock, pressing on the bolt pushes the stump against the levers and tells a picker which lever is binding. In the Protector the stump sits on a small pivoting piece, so the pressure goes somewhere else and the picker feels nothing useful.5 The Science Museum holds a six-lever Protector with two keys, made in the City of London.14
Other makers fitted Hobbs locks too. According to safeman.org.uk, Milner’s gunpowder-proof lock of 1854 was first made by Hobbs as the Protector, and Hobbs-pattern keyholes on Milner safes point to roughly 1852 to 1872, when Milner began making its own locks.15 So a Hobbs lock on its own doesn’t make a Hobbs Hart safe: check the plate as well.
Later Hobbs Hart locks were built against explosives. The Engineer describes strongroom locks filled with solid packing and a movable disc so that gunpowder couldn’t be poured in, and a changeable key the owner could reset “on every change of servants”.7 The 1868 advert claims “120 to 479,001,600 changes” for its changeable-key lock.9
How to identify and date a Hobbs Hart safe
Hobbs Hart is one of the easier British makers to date, because the firm changed its name and its address at known points. Put the plate wording, the address and the lock together and you’ll usually get a range of a few decades. Our general guide on how to date an old safe explains the method; here are the Hobbs Hart specifics.
Clue 1
The name on the plate
“Hobbs & Co.” or “Hobbs, Ashley” is 1850s. “Hobbs, Hart & Co.” alone is about 1860 to 1887. “Ltd” or “Limited” is July 1887 or later.
Clue 2
The address
Cheapside means the City shop, used from the 1850s. Arlington Street or Islington points to the Victorian works. Leyton means 1936 or later.
Clue 3
The lock and key
A “Protector” or “Hobbs” lock fits the firm, but Hobbs locks were also fitted to other makers’ safes. Read any number on the lock and keep the key.
Plate wording and dates
| Wording on the plate | Date range | Why |
|---|---|---|
| “Hobbs & Co.” | 1852 to 1855 | First registered name3 |
| “Hobbs, Ashley & Co.” or “Hobbs, Ashley and Fortescue” | 1855 to 1860 | Partnership names before Hart |
| “Hobbs, Hart & Co.” (no Ltd) | About 1860 to July 1887 | Hart’s firm before incorporation1 |
| “Hobbs, Hart & Co. Ltd” or “Limited” | 8 July 1887 or later | Registered as a limited company11 |
| “Hobbs Hart” with a circled “hh” monogram | 20th century; seen in 1955 | Used in the firm’s 1950s adverts12 |
Addresses by period
The years below are when each address is recorded, not exact start and end dates. A plate address only narrows things down, because firms kept old plates and patterns in use for years.
| Address | What it was | Recorded |
|---|---|---|
| 33 Lawrence Lane, City of London | Factory | By 18553 |
| 97 Cheapside, London | Showroom | By 18553 |
| Arlington Street, Islington (Wharncliffe Works) | Works | 1859 (Hobbs’s address); the firm’s works in 1876410 |
| 76 Cheapside, London E.C. | Shop and office | 1864, 1868, 18761910 |
| 76 & 77 Cheapside | Shop and office | On a surviving plate without “Ltd”, so before 188716 |
| Staffa Road, Leyton, London E.10 | Works and offices | From 1936; in a 1955 advert312 |
| 231–237 Cambridge Heath Road | Hobbs Hart departments under Chubb | After 19563 |
The two Cheapside numbers are a real conflict, not a typo. AIM25 puts the showroom at 97 Cheapside by 1855, and a lock makers’ gazetteer quoted on Wikipedia says the firm kept 97 Cheapside for 90 years. Grace’s Guide, the Chubb Archive and the firm’s own adverts of 1868 and 1876 give 76 Cheapside instead.317119 We haven’t found when or why the number changed. For dating, 97 on a plate suggests the 1850s and 76 the 1860s onwards.
Reading a real plate
This cast plate is on a strongroom door in a Farnham house, now a hotel, where the old strongroom opens off the master bedroom and serves as a walk-in wardrobe.16 It reads “Hobbs, Hart & Co., Manufacturers, 76 & 77 Cheapside, London”.
Two things date it. There’s no “Ltd”, so it’s from before July 1887, and the name Hobbs, Hart puts it after 1860. That leaves roughly 1860 to 1887 before you’ve looked at the lock. As a designer I like this one: chunky raised block capitals, four lines, a frame with little trefoil lobes at the corners and nothing else. No medals, no crests, no claims. Someone has since painted over it in white along with the door, which is common, so look closely before you decide a plate is blank.
Serial numbers and the Hobbs Hart records
No Hobbs Hart serial number list has ever been published, and we haven’t found collectors’ dated numbers of the kind that exist for Milner or Ratner. The good news is that the firm’s own books survived. They came into Chubb’s hands with the business and are now at The London Archives (formerly London Metropolitan Archives), reference CLC/B/002/HH, covering 1864 to 1985.18
The catalogue lists lock and safe order books, work books, cost price records, stores books, key and ring books and patent papers, alongside minutes, accounts and wage books. Access needs 48 hours’ notice, and some sales and marketing records were still being catalogued in 2011.18 From the data side, that’s a good sign: order books are where a number on a lock or door would be written down. Nothing is online, though, so you’d have to visit or ask the archive about a paid search. Our safe serial number lookup guide lists the registers that survive for other makers.
Did you know?
The Aubin lock trophy, a cabinet of locks shown at the 1851 Exhibition, stayed at the firm’s Cheapside office for about 96 years. Hobbs’s papers say it was his, probably bought from Charles Aubin after the Exhibition, and Chubb took over its care after 1956.1
Myths and conflicting sources
Hobbs, Hart & Co. was founded in 1851.
Hobbs started in 1851 (Grace’s Guide, Science Museum), but the firm was registered as Hobbs & Co. in 1852 (AIM25, Chubb Archive). The Hobbs, Hart name dates from 1860.
Hart took over in 1860 because Hobbs had died.
The archive catalogue says so, but Hobbs sold the firm in 1860, returned to America and lived until 1891. It was his partner Ashley who died in 1860.
A safe with a Hobbs lock is a Hobbs Hart safe.
Milner and others fitted Hobbs Protector locks in the 1850s and 1860s. The maker’s plate, not the lock, tells you who built the safe.
Hobbs Hart closed when Chubb bought it.
Chubb bought it in 1956 and kept it making safes until 1983, so a Hobbs Hart safe can be a Chubb-era product.
I have a Hobbs Hart safe: what now?
Most Hobbs Hart pieces that turn up today are strongroom doors still built into old houses, banks and offices, or heavy freestanding safes. Either way, the same practical questions come first.
Value
What is it worth?
We haven’t found enough recorded sales to give a Hobbs Hart price range. Age, condition, original paint and plate, a working lock with its keys, and the cost of moving it decide the price. Our guide to whether old safes are worth anything explains how.
Weight
How heavy is it?
Heavy. The firm’s strongroom doors could weigh close to two tons on their own.7 For a freestanding safe, measure it and try our safe weight calculator before anyone lifts it.
Keys
No key?
Don’t drill or force it: you’d damage the lock and most of the value. A qualified safe engineer can usually deal with an old lever lock. See locked out of an old safe.
Moving one is a job for a specialist safe remover; our guide on how to move or get rid of an old safe covers the options. If you’d like help dating yours, send us photos of the maker’s plate, the keyhole and any numbers and we’ll tell you what we can. Not sure it’s Hobbs Hart at all? Our list of old safe brands covers the other makers.
Frequently asked questions
Who made Hobbs Hart safes?
Hobbs, Hart & Co. of Cheapside, London, the firm A. C. Hobbs founded in 1851–52 and sold to John Matthias Hart in 1860. Hart turned it into a maker of safes, strongrooms and bank doors.
How old is my Hobbs Hart safe?
Check the plate. “Hobbs, Hart & Co.” without “Ltd” means about 1860 to 1887; “Ltd” means 1887 or later; a Leyton address means 1936 or later.
Can I look up a Hobbs Hart serial number?
Not online. The firm’s order books and records for 1864–1985 are at The London Archives, reference CLC/B/002/HH, where you can visit or ask about a search.
What is a Hobbs Hart safe worth?
It depends on age, size, condition, the original plate and paint, and a working lock with keys. We can’t give a reliable range yet; an informal look at the plate and photos is a start, not a valuation.
Is Hobbs Hart part of Chubb?
Yes, from 1956. Chubb kept Hobbs Hart as one of its two safe-making centres until 1983, and its records sit with Chubb’s at The London Archives.
Was the Hobbs of Hobbs Hart the man who picked the Bramah lock?
Yes. Alfred Charles Hobbs picked the Chubb and Bramah locks in 1851 and founded the firm, though he left it in 1860.
Sources:
- The Chubb Archive, “The Aubin Trophy” (history of Hobbs & Co. and Hobbs, Hart & Co.). ↩︎
- Samuel Orcutt, A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut (1886), part II, pp. 872–889: biography of A. C. Hobbs, via Internet Archive. ↩︎
- AIM25, “Hobbs Hart and Co Ltd, locksmiths” (authority record: administrative history). ↩︎
- Grace’s Guide, “Alfred Charles Hobbs” (1859 address from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers). ↩︎
- Charles Tomlinson (ed.), Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks, compiled from the papers of A. C. Hobbs (London: John Weale, 1853), “Hobbs’s protector lock” and “The lock and key manufacture”, via Project Gutenberg. ↩︎
- Grace’s Guide, “Hobbs and Co”. ↩︎
- “Messrs. Hobbs, Hart, and Co.’s works” and “Bankers’ strong room”, The Engineer, vol. 40, 17 September 1875, p. 198, via Internet Archive. ↩︎
- George Hayter Chubb, Protection from Fire and Thieves (London, 1875), chapter on safes and appendix lists of English patents for locks and for safes, via Project Gutenberg. ↩︎
- Hobbs, Hart & Co. advertisement, “Specialties of invention and manufacture”, 1868, reproduced by Grace’s Guide. ↩︎
- Hobbs, Hart & Co. advertisement, The Building News, 6 October 1876, reproduced by Grace’s Guide. ↩︎
- Grace’s Guide, “Hobbs, Hart and Co”, citing The Stock Exchange Year Book (1908) and Whitaker’s Red Book (1914). ↩︎
- Hobbs Hart & Company Limited advertisement, Country Life, 22 December 1955, reproduced by Grace’s Guide. ↩︎
- Science Museum Group Collection, “Hobbs, Hart and Company Limited”. ↩︎
- Science Museum Group Collection, “Hobb’s six lever protector lock with two keys”, object 1883-25. ↩︎
- safeman.org.uk, “Safe scrapbook”. ↩︎
- Gaius Cornelius, “Hobbs Hart and Co sign”, Wikimedia Commons, 4 July 2010, CC BY-SA 3.0 (photo and description of the strongroom door at Farnham House Hotel, Surrey). ↩︎
- Wikipedia, “Alfred Charles Hobbs”, citing Jim Evans, A Gazetteer of Lock and Key Makers (used here only for the “97 Cheapside for 90 years” claim). ↩︎
- AIM25 / The London Archives, “Hobbs Hart and Company Limited”, ref. CLC/B/002/HH, records 1864–1985, part of the Chubb and Son Limited collection (access with 48 hours’ notice). ↩︎
