Stourbridge Group – William Morris and Nuffield Empire

William Morris and the Nuffield Empire

Speaker: Max Hunt

William Richard Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield (10th October 1877 – 22nd August 1963)

William Richard Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield was an English motor manufacturer and philanthropist. He was the founder of Morris Motors Limited and is remembered for establishing the Nuffield Foundation, the Nuffield Trust and Nuffield College, Oxford, as well as being involved in his role as president of Bupa in creating what is now Nuffield Health. He took his title from the village of Nuffield, Oxfordshire, where he lived.

William Morris, Lord Nuffield, was born in fairly humble circumstances in the St Johns area of Worcester in October 1877.  His entry in the baptismal register of Hallows Church gives his father’s occupation as clothier, though he was in fact clerk to a local firm.  While William was still a child, the family moved to the Oxford area when his father took up the position of farm bailiff to his father-in-law at Brasenose Farm.

n 1913, William was able to rent, for a modest sum, the premises of the old Oxford Military College at Cowley; as part of the deal, he also rented, and began to live in, Temple Cowley Manor House.  His first car, the Morris Oxford, was produced in 1913 using an engine bought in from White and Poppe in Coventry.  A light 10 hp vehicle, it retailed at £175. He then looked to the example of Henry Ford in the USA to see how to build bigger, more powerful machines, in 1913-1914 ordering 5,000 engines from Continental Motors in Detroit.  In 1920 he built the Cowley works on the old parade ground of the military college.