Spark of an idea made Brodie rich
strong>Flore House is grade two listed and set in parkland in one of our prettiest villages.</strong
It isn't one of our important houses but the many additions made during the early years of the 19th and 20th centuries were sympathetic to the original.
Under the parapet above the porch is the key to its age, "Anno Domini 1612".
In the late 1940s it was bought by a wealthy industrialist, Francis Brodie Lodge. Now, to most people in Northamptonshire the name Brodie Lodge would probably not mean much at all. But in Flore it is a familiar name.
The Brodie Lodge Playing Field; the Brodie Lodge Pavilion; Flore Brodie Lodge Football Team.
So I hope the children in Flore School learn about the man who was a most generous benefactor to the village.
But who was he? Well, in order to understand more about Brodie, we have to know about his famous father.
Sir Oliver Lodge and his wife Mary had six boys and six girls, Brodie was the second son.
Sir Oliver was an eminent scientist and leading socialist.
As a physicist he did ground-breaking research into electricity and thermoelectricity and he also achieved world fame for his pioneering work in radio communications.
In 1888, he was the first person to transmit radio frequency waves along electric wires.
Sadly, a German beat him to perfecting this otherwise we would probably talk about Kilo-lodges rather than Kilo-hertz!
As a socialist, Sir Oliver was a noted member of the Fabian Society and, with Bernard Shaw the most famous Fabian of all, he wrote political tracts.
But he also had a deep and controversial spiritual dimension too.
As president of the Society for Psychical Research he carried out many psychic experiments in a strictly scientific manner as well as important studies into life after death.
But it was Sir Oliver's incredible contribution to the emerging world of motor cars that gave him the most fame.
He invented electric spark ignition for the internal combustion engine.
Sir Oliver passed on his love of scientific invention to at least two of his sons, Brodie and Alec.
Now the boys had nous and enterprise, but they had very little money.
Brodie was 23 and had served five years in the office of a shipping line in Liverpool.
Alec was 22 and worked in the drawing office of the Lanchester Motor Car Company in Birmingham.
Whether or not they had funds, Brodie and Alec dived in at the deep end and started their own company developing their father's invention.
In 1903 they took out a patent for a system of high-tension ignition that went one step further than Sir Oliver's invention.
A year later the brothers created a formal partnership as Lodge Bros in a one-room office in New Street, the very heart of Birmingham.
Within a couple of years the business was growing apace and demand was getting higher. They expanded and employed more workers and in 1907 they even dared to take their invention to the second ever Motor Show at Olympia, receiving a less than favourable welcome.
Brodie let Alec do most of the scientific and development work, while he concentrated on advertising and marketing until success finally came.
The Lodge Plug Company was born and it went on to become one of the biggest and most trusted names in motoring.
In 1949 Lodge Plugs Ltd was floated as a public company and in the same year Brodie Lodge retired and, with his new-found personal wealth, bought Flore House.
Sadly his father, who died in 1940, never lived long enough to witness his great success nor his generosity to his adopted village.
But Sir Oliver would certainly have approved of both.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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