DUCKHAM'S

Duckhams

Alexander Duckham and Company was an East London (Millwall) based blender of oils that started in 1899 to import oil from Central Trinidad for lubricants and which later moved out to Kent. Duckham's was the second largest of the independent UK blenders after Castrol, and relied on technical innovation to ensure that it was stocked by independent service stations, as well as an arrangement whereby its Morrisol grades were recommended for use with Morris and Wolseley cars. By the mid 1930s it was sold in over thirty countries, mainly in Europe and British overseas territories, although no promotional maps are known from outside Britain. The apostrophe was dropped soon after the war so that Duckham's became Duckhams. In 1969 is was acquired by BP after a prolonged takeover battle, with the Monopolies and Mergers Commission requiring that it was kept at some distance from BP's main operations. The name remains in use today by BP, although it has suffered from the latter's 2000 acquisition of Castrol.

In 1910 Duckham's published a set of 35 maps of England & Wales printed on light card in black and red, collected into a stiff card case. At 8 miles to the inch each card covered an area of 64 miles by 40 miles, with no overlap between sections.

This arrangement did lead to some rather odd areas, including section H2 (above) where the Bristol Channel completely divided the map on the card. Only very limited physical details were shown, although railways and stations were included by Bacon's who prepared them for Duckham's "from the most recent surveys...so that the roads marked in red may be relied upon as being good motoring roads". The reverse of each card included a quote from a Duckham's customer in the area of the sectional map, plus a list of 1909 police speed traps. It also had space for notes and a price list for popular Duckham's oil grades.

Duckham's later moved to a much cheaper format of booklet map, probably starting with a 1922 edition. Undated, each version consists of a 32 page guide to lubrication surrounding sectional Bartholomews maps at 16 miles to the inch. The earlier examples (above left) have 16 map pages and omit Northern Scotland and the Western Isles. The later ones have 20 pages, but still exclude Orkney and Shetland. All were bound in a brown paper cover (with the earliest being sewn and the later ones stapled) with an index map pasted on the front. The middle of the three shown here (datable to 1931/2) alone has an advertising panel featuring Duckham's "Morrisol" blends, specially designed for use in Morris and Wolseley cars. The latest examples (above right) are from 1934/5; the "motor manual" is common to both, and effectively is just about lubrication. There are 29 Town Plans provided by Ed. J. Burrow & Co., including Aberdeen on the front cover and York on the rear - these are not repeated inside. It is perhaps also surprising that one has fawn covers, but the other blue-grey.

The final Duckham's "map" before the war was a reprint of John Ogilby's atlas of Britannia, a series of 100 strip maps originally published in 1675. These maps were not, of course intended for use by motorists but, as Alexander Duckham notes in an introduction to the reprint, "on this, our 40th birthday, I ask you to accept as a token of goodwill this copy of something prized by myself".

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