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Equipment maker, Manufacturer, Engineering · Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom (originally Great Portland Street, London) · from c.1900

Harvey Frost & Co.

London tyre-vulcanising and garage-equipment house of about 1900 that became one of Britain's pioneer vehicle-recovery equipment makers, later based at Bishop's Stortford. Its hinged-boom pickup cranes — the 30cwt catalogue number 21 above all — turned thousands of long-wheelbase Land Rovers and light trucks into the archetypal rural garage breakdown vehicle.

History

Harvey Frost & Co. was founded in London around 1900 by Henry Harvey Frost (1873-1969), who is recorded in census returns as a manufacturer of vulcanisers for motor tyre repair. From premises in Great Portland Street the firm supplied lifting and garage equipment from the earliest years of the motor trade, and it is among the oldest names in British vehicle recovery. In 1919 Harper Bean Ltd, the short-lived combine assembled around Bean cars, took 50 per cent of the shares in Harvey Frost Ltd; Harper Bean went into liquidation in 1924.

Much of what Harvey Frost sold was actually built by Ernest Lake Ltd, manufacturing engineers of Braintree and Bishop's Stortford, which came to own Harvey Frost Ltd outright — the reason the Harvey Frost name is thereafter associated with Hertfordshire rather than London. The firm branched into aerodrome equipment under the 'H.F.' brand by 1937. In December 1943 J. Brockhouse and Co acquired Ernest Lake Ltd, with Ernest Lake as proprietor, bringing garage equipment, jacks and vulcanising plant into the Brockhouse group.

The recovery cranes are what the name is remembered for. Harvey Frost built hinged-boom cranes in capacities running from about half a ton to eight tons, together with tow poles, winches, trailers and ambulances, and these were bolted to the back of light lorries and long-wheelbase Land Rovers by garages the length of the country in the decades before spectacle lifts and drop-bed lorries took over. The 30cwt pickup crane listed as catalogue number 21 was the classic: the registry's reference vehicle, VPB 28F, is a 1968 Series IIA 109 pickup supplied new with one, which served Clacy & Sons of Hampshire for 52 years and is now preserved unrestored in the Land Rover Heritage Collection.

The firm went on exhibiting garage equipment at the motor show into the 1960s and by about 1980 was trading as Brockhouse Harvey Frost from Dunmow Road, Bishop's Stortford, making trolley and transmission jacks, jacking beams, floor cranes, wheel trolleys, tyre changers and recovery gear under the HE EPCO name. What became of the business after the 1980s was not established in the sources consulted.

Vehicles in this registry (1)

Sources & citations

Maker record updated 2026-09-10T05:17:07.279Z · status: researched