Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

J B Halley
London

The company claimed to have been established in London in 1880 by James Bryce Halley. Initially making balls, they started club production in 1889, first for wholesale then later for retail.

A doctor’s report at the inquest into the death of J B Halley on 1908 stated that ‘he seemed to worry about the state of his business a great deal’ and that he was suffering from ‘an extreme nervous breakdown’. Evidence at the inquest suggests he was in some kind of care as a ‘Nurse Jeffery’ reported that Mr Halley had placed himself on the road and she had been unable to drag him away. He had been struck by Sir Archibald Macdonald’s car travelling at around 15mph and killed. The verdict was suicide as a result of temporary insanity (as it always was in such cases at the time).

Operating from White Street in Moorfields, London, the company continued without him.

The advertisement is from the Holidays, Sports and Pastimes Exhibition at the Royal Agricultural Hall in London in 1925. The main innovation they were pushing at the show was the Captive ball (attached to a cord and a spring), allowing golfers to practice in their own gardens.

Ronald Sams bought the business in 1963 and moved it to Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire a few years later. In 1968 planning permission was granted for the company to build a factory on Largo Road in St Andrews. With Mr Sams' intended retirement at the age of 71, the Hoddesdon facility was closed in 1989 when the company was bought by Gathier International headquartered in Sandwich. This was short-lived. Gathier called in the receivers in October 1991 and Sams came out of retirement as part of a consortium which bought the St Andrews factory and the J B Halley name.

J B Halley (St Andrews) Ltd closed its doors in October 1997 with the loss of four jobs citing the strength of the pound killing its export business.

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