Godiva Engineering Company, Castle Street

This history of this company is perhaps typical of the history of many Coventry engineering companies. The firm was founded by Walter Samuel Payne around 1890 in Castle Street (previously known as High Street) in Hillfields. Walter was the youngest son of Mark Payne of Thrapston, Northamptonshire, a steam engineer who for eleven years had been the foreman of George Stephenson. Walter learned his engineering skills in the production of steam engines. In Hillfields, Walter started to manufacture small stationery gas engines "Godiva Gas Engines" for local tradespeople and townsfolk. Over 400 of these engines were sold between 1890 - 1896 and had a capacity of between half and 12 h.p.  They were cleaner, cheaper, more compact and more efficient than the steam ones that they replaced. 

Payne's Godiva Oil  engine, introduced in 1893 replaced the smaller gas engines and Payne's patented engine was described as "a new departure in mechanical science of the highest importance to the industrial sector". So successful was the company that agents were established in London, Aberdeen and Malmo in Sweden but the company was unable to build sufficient engines to meet the demand. 

By the mid 1890s Walter turned his attentions to internal combustion engines and built was was claimed to be the first internal combustion engine to be built in Coventry. Walter was keen to build an entire car but his ambitions were limited by lack of capital. This problem was solved when in 1897 Walter took as a business partner his wife's uncle, George Bates. George Bates, impressed by the company's previous successes invested a large amount of money into the business for himself and his son Henry. 

With this additional capital, in 1897 the company, now called Payne and Bates, moved out of Hillfields and built new premises on Foleshill Road at Great Heath. The company built a number of experimental vehicles, marketed by a variety of different agents under a variety of different names (including the Godiva, the Shamrock, the Royal and Stonebrow). It is not known how many production cars were built, but only two survived to the present, one being a 1901 Godiva which can be seen at the Museum of British Road Transport in Coventry. 

As well as the experiments with road vehicles, the company continued to build gas, oil, internal combustion and steam engines. It was claimed that the factory build the largest steam engine ever built in Coventry which was supplied to Aubrey Seaman's Saw Mills and Wood Works, situated on a two acre site just over the canal bridge on Foleshill Road. 

George Bates died in one of Warwickshire's first traffic accidents. Sometime during the winter of 1901 - 1902 Henry Bates took his father for a run in one of the newly finished cars. Henry took a corner too fast and his father was thrown out of the car and sustained injuries which he did not recover from. 

With George Bates' death the family wound up the company in 1902. Walter Payne moved back to the Castle Street workshop and started again in business under the name of Payne and Co. Within a few years the engine business was prosperous again and Walter was once again undertaking experimental work, including the manufacture of engines for Don Albone's famous Ivel motor tractor, the first such tractor to be built in Great Britain. This enterprise kept Payne and Co. occupied for several years, but came to an end following the death of Don Albone in 1906. Walter Payne and his business continued making car engines and stationary petrol and gas engines until his death in 1934. 

[This webpage is based on an article by C.O'Gallagher in Warwickshire History Magazine in the 1970s, courtesy of Mick Sanders, a descendant of Walter Payne]

This page was last updated 27/12/01