Edgar Purnell Hooley
Edgar Purnell Hooley (5 June 1860 – 26 January 1942) was the founder of Tarmac plc, one of the United Kingdom's largest building materials businesses.
Career
Born in Swansea, Hooley was articled as a civil engineer to the firm of James Craik in Bristol.
Hooley entered a business partnership with Francis Lean, as Architects and Surveyors at Neath, then in the county of Glamorgan, under the name of Lean and Hooley. The partnership was dissolved on 27 August 1881. Also in 1881, he became surveyor with Stow-on-the-Wold Highway Board and in 1884 he took up a similar position with the Maidstone Highway Board. He was appointed County Surveyor to Nottinghamshire County Council in 1889.
In his capacity as the County Surveyor, Hooley was passing a tarworks in 1901 when he noticed that a barrel of tar had been spilled on the roadway and that, in an attempt to reduce the mess, someone had dumped gravel on top of it. The area was remarkably dust-free compared to the surrounding road, and it inspired Hooley to develop and patent Tarmac in Britain, in 1902 (GB 7796).
Hooley
Coordinates: 51°17′35″N 0°09′50″W / 51.293°N 0.164°W / 51.293; -0.164
Hooley is a geographically small village in Surrey, England that has in its small grid of streets the 13th century church of Chipstead which has been, since time immemorial, its ecclesiastical parish. Officially it remains a hamlet but today is an equal distance via paths and road to larger Coulsdon's centre which is downhill to the north, in Greater London and has a main line railway station.
History
Hooley until the early 20th century was a sparsely inhabited hamlet of Chipstead, both a largely permeable chalk upland area with little housing or industry. Both the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the South Eastern Railway recognised the construction of short tunnels here as the best route out of London to Brighton for their rival railway lines. Before these the 1805 extension of the Surrey Iron Railway, a horse-drawn plateway came through this pass.
Geography and amenities
The land equates to part of a western slope and a narrow pass which is the lowest road crossing point of the North Downs east of Westhumble/Mickleham in Mid-Surrey and west of Otford in Kent and avoids the height of the escarpment and steep south sides at neighbouring Reigate and Caterham.
Hooley (surname)
Hooley is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
See also
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