THACKLEY TRUMPIT DECEMBER 2013 WHARFEDALE SPEAKERS

Remember Wharfedale

Loudspeakers?

Once upon a time, but not that long ago, Idle was known throughout the world as the home of ‘Wharfedale’ speakers, arguably the most famous audio brand ever. Started in central Bradford, the firm spent the War years in Brighouse but moved to Bradford Road (next to the Jowett factory) in 1946. Massive expansion in 1968 saw the move to a brand new site on Highfield Road. Wharfedale stayed in Idle until 1985 before consolidating to a smaller operation at Crossgates in Leeds. Equally famous in the 1950s and 60s was the firm’s founder Gilbert Briggs, a native of  Clayton but resident in Ilkley from 1929 – hence the name he gave to his speakers. Briggs was not just an audio pioneer, he also made the subject of sound             reproduction accessible to the amateur and DIY enthusiast through his 21 books, published through Wharfedale, which charted the development of ‘hi-fi’ from 1948 and sold over 260,000 copies worldwide. He also staged audacious, large-scale concert-demonstrations using only domestic equipment in which recordings were compared directly, in real time, with live performance. These became legendary, including two in St George’s Hall (Bradford), four in the Royal Festival Hall (London) and two in Carnegie Hall (New York). When he died in 1978       obituaries both here and in the USA (where Wharfedales were produced under licence for many years) gave him the well-deserved accolade ‘the father of hi-fi’.

All this is the more remarkable because Briggs’ father died when he was only nine. Following education in an orphan’s school he joined a firm of Bradford textile export merchants in 1905, becoming a director only to be virtually bankrupted in the Great Depression. He had set up Wharfedale Wireless Works, as a sideline in 1932, in his wife’s name, and in 1933 he had to turn this into his livelihood. He had almost no relevant training for this but he was passionate about    music, had a very good pianist’s ear, limitless energy and a charismatic personality. The rest, as they say, is history – but until now the story has never been told!

Gilbert Briggs was my grandfather’s cousin and last year I published the results of a four-year project to research both his life and the history of Wharfedale during his lifetime – of course they are inextricably intertwined. My book, A pair of Wharfedales: the story of Gilbert Briggs and his loudspeakers, has been distributed abroad in the USA, China, Canada, Australia and Germany but discovering the Trumpit has at last allowed me to reach the good folk in Wharfedale’s homeland directly for the first time. The book is packed with archive pictures of speaker production, employees, products/brochures, concerts etc which I hope will be of local interest (see www.apairofwharfedales.com). Signed copies of my book are available locally from Drake's newsagents, 498 Leeds Road, Thackley. David Briggs.