Sir Alfred Herbert 1866 - 1957
Sir Alfred Herbert KBE Alfred Herbert was born in 1866, the son of a farmer, William Herbert . His father, in addition to farming at Whetstone Gorse, owned a town house in Leicester, to which the family retired in winter. Alfred Herbert was educated at Stoneygate , a local private school where he excelled at English, science and divinity, and was expected to go on to university or into the church until he met up with an old school friend William Hubbard, who worked on a lathe at Joseph Jessop's Engineering Co in Leicester. Herbert was fascinated by what the small lathe produced, so he persuaded his father to let him follow his friend's example. Subsequently he became an apprentice at Jessops and thereafter joined Coles and Mathews, a firm of engineers in The Butts, Coventry. When Matthews retired, Herbert and Hubbard bought the company in partnership with help from their fathers. The partnership was dissolved in two years and Alfred founded the company which bore his name,...