From Oxford and Reading, to Basingstoke, this is the story of Smiths the locksmiths.

E.Smith and co the locksmiths was founded in 1850 in Oxford and soon established itself with a small shop on the corner of Walton Street and St Bernard’s Street. A picture of the shop can be found at the National gallery in London. Years later the company would change its name to Smiths security services.

In 1947 the company was brought by Sargent JC Stevens together with his wife Kay and two of his officers who would become the company’s accountant and solicitor. All three men had served in India. Mr Stevens would later appear on the popular BBC show “what’s my line” and won with the panel unable to guess he was a locksmith.

Smiths enjoyed years of growth and founded branches in Reading, Swindon and High Wycombe. The company had also expanded from locksmiths into other security fields including alarms, CCTV and access control. In the early 90’s Smiths purchased ABC alarms located on the corner of Briant’s Avenue and Marsack Street in Caversham, Reading.

In 2011 the company suffered a devastating setback and would have been lost forever if it wasn’t saved by a twist of fate. Smiths was broken up into two entities and sold. The electronic division was sold off to a large multi national who took the contracts and disbanded the division. Today Smiths do not work in electronic security such as alarms and CCTV.

The locksmith devision was sold to a company in Essex, who subsequently led the firm to bankruptcy. It was the company instructed to change the locks during the repossession that was to save the historic locksmiths.