(Update: Building now occupied by a Porsche Garage)
Former Cooper Cars Company workshop and showroom - List Entry Summary
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Name: Former Cooper Cars Company workshop and showroom
List entry Number: 1429242
Location
Hollyfield Road, Surbiton, Surrey, KT5 9AL
Grade: II
Date first listed: 24-Sep-2015
Summary of Building
Sports car workshop and showroom. Built c1958 for Charles Cooper to the designs of Richard Maddock on the site of his earlier garage. Second-storey draughtsman’s office added c1960. From 1965 used as a police car depot/forensics laboratory.
Reasons for Designation
The former Cooper Car Company workshop and showroom, Hollyfield Road, Surbiton, built c1958 for Charles Cooper for the construction of Formula 1 racing cars, is recommended for listing at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Historical interest: for the role played by the Cooper Car Company in the development of the modern Formula 1 racing car, and the important role that it played in the history of British motor sport;
It would appear that all the cars from the Cooper 500 onward were built at the Hollyfield Road workshop, although a secondary site at Langley Road, Surbiton was purchased in the late 1950s. From 1961 John Cooper, in association with Alec Issigonis, designer of the British Motor Corporation (BMC) Mini, designed a series of sports versions of the car, the Mini Cooper. These were large scale production models and were built by BMC at Longbridge, Birmingham but their design is popularly associated with Hollyfield Road.
* Architectural interest: for the early use of double-height, aluminium-framed glazing utilised in a dramatic curved frontage; * Rarity: very few purpose-built motor car workshops or showrooms survive from this period.
History
The site on Hollyfield Road was purchased by Charles Cooper in the 1920s. The plot was populated with a series of sheds which he used for his garage business; these are shown on the 1934 Ordnance Survey (OS) map. In the late-1930s a parade of shops was built along Ewell Road where the end shop (No 243) was leased by Charles Cooper as a showroom, with his family living in the flat above. By the time of the 1955 OS map the sheds had been cleared and a new garage built on the site. It is shown in a 1946 Pathé newsreel as a series of single-storey, pitched roofed workshops, stretching to the road in the north-west corner, with a yard to the south-west with three petrol pumps. The current building was designed by the architect Richard Maddock, father of Owen Maddock (1925-2000) who was the Cooper Car Company’s chief designer from the late 1950s until 1963. Richard Maddock had been employed by the practice of Sir Herbert Baker and worked on the rebuilding of the Bank of England (1925-39). The current building is shown in a photograph of 1958/9 around the time that it was built. Another photograph, dated 1963, shows the addition of a draughtsman’s office on the flat roof of the main two-storey range. In 1965 Cooper Cars relocated to Byfleet in Surrey and the garage was leased to the Metropolitan Police as a police car depot and subsequently as a forensics site. Some internal re-ordering was carried out, particularly on the ground floor of the office block. The police vacated the site in 2014.
Lots more detail on the site and building in the Historic England listing here:-
https://historicengland.org.uk/listi...-entry/1429242