Cecil Gordon Vokes was born in 1891. He trained as an engineer at John Thornycroft and Co Ltd, Southampton. From 1916-1921 he was chief engineer at the Alliance Aeroplane Company. He started his own business in 1921. After various inventions applicable to the motor industry, Vokes became interested in filters. He invented a very efficient system of filtration, initially for air, and carried out many of the tests on his own Lagonda car. Vokes Ltd was formed as a public company with share capital in 1936. Property at Alton, Hampshire, was purchased in 1938 to cope with additional demand. The works at Lower Richmond Road, Putney, were demolished by enemy bombing in October 1940 and the company moved to Henley Park, Normandy, near Guildford, in the spring of 1941. Vokes filters were widely fitted to tanks and aircraft and were vital in helping to combat the appalling conditions of sand and dust faced in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East during World War II. Vokes also devised a flame trap for the exhausts of night fighters which protected them from being spotted. Cecil Gordon Vokes retired from the company in the early 1950s and died in 1961. His son Gordon Heatherton Vokes was born in 1919. From 1937 to 1947 he worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Co Ltd, initially as a student apprentice, and from 1948 to 1963 for Vokes Ltd in development and design. There was no Vokes family link with the company after 1963. By 1969 the holding company was known as Vokes Group Limited, with its registered office at Henley Park, and had two manufacturing divisions. The General Engineering Division manufactured filtration equipment (including air, oil, fuel and water filters) and effluent treatment equipment and other specialised engineering products, including pipe supports and expansion bellows, food and tobacco processing equipment and metal treatment plant. The Orthopaedic Appliances Division manufactured orthopaedic appliances, artificial limbs and related hospital equipment. The Group had 6 factories in England and Scotland, and its overseas operations included subsidiaries in France, Holland and Australia, and an associated company in India. In the early 1970s the company was acquired by Thomas Tilling Group which in turn became a subsidiary of BTR plc in 1983. The company is currently called Vokes Air and is based in Burnley, Lancashire.
