Vokes Lunch Club
SERVING LUNCHES TO ALTON SINCE 1960
Our History
The Vokes Lunch Club is a long established Alton charity with roots going back to at least 1960. The trustees at the time included some of the great and good of Alton - accountant George Stickland, solicitor John Trimming Willis, Cecil Vokes, founder of the Vokes filtration company and his secretary Miss Collen. Miss Collen, who had a strong association with the Hampshire Red Cross, was the owner of the property, 100, Normandy Street, which she put into trust for the benefit of the Lunch Club and the Red Cross Society of Alton.
Cecil Vokes
Section Subtitle
Cecil Vokes was a very enterprising person. The youngest of eight children of a well to do property owning family on the south coast, he trained as an engineer and was a prolific inventor. In particular what made his name was the development of fuel and oil filters, initially for the relatively new and growing automotive market and later expanding into aircraft. Vokes Limited was founded in 1929 with the establishment of a factory in Putney. In 1939 the government, recognising the strategic importance of the these products with war looming, asked Vokes to set up a second manufacturing site, which they did at Alton. This was fortuitous as in December 1940 the Putney factory was bombed and partially destroyed. At government request to resume production urgently, Vokes relocated their Putney factory to Henley Park, Normandy, where they remained for many years, growing into a large international corporation in the after war years.
Vokes made a considerable contribution to the war effort. During the Desert War in North Africa the Allies were greatly hampered by sand getting into tank and aircraft engines, reducing their operational lives to as little as 12 hours. Mr Vokes was asked by the Ministry of War to fly to North Africa to see the problem first hand and come up with an urgent solution. Within a few days of his return he had developed new filters which resolved the
problem and for which he was credited with playing a major role in the success of that campaign. In 1949 the Alton factory diversified away from filtration products into the manufacture of
artificial limbs and orthopaedic appliances, operating under the name of Vessa. With the subsequent acquisition of another company in Roehampton, Vokes become one of the largest manufacturers of artificial legs in the world. Vessa was a well known name in Alton for many years after but has since closed. We still have members who worked for Vessa or who had relatives or friends who worked there.