It was once a family joke that fire service and bin lorries were all named Dennis, as the name was displayed across the front of front of the cab!

Of course, Dennis referred to the manufacturer: the brand name Dennis has appeared on a wide variety of vehicles since the company’s inception, including buses, fire engines, cycles, cars, lorries, ambulances and lawn mowers. Plus, of course, refuse collection vehicles – that’s bin lorries or dustcarts for most of us, depending on our ages!

The company behind the Dennis brand was not only based in Guildford but was once the town’s biggest employer, with a 35-acre factory. It also built housing for its workers, including those in the area still known as “Dennisville”.

As May is Local and Community History Month, Surrey History Centre in Woking is encouraging us to become local history detectives – and the 130-year story of Dennis Commercial Vehicles is a fascinating topic, ripe for investigation.

This isn’t the place for a detailed account of the Dennis company and its subsidiaries – whole books have been published on the subject. Briefly, its roots were in a cycle shop opened in Guildford’s High Street by John Dennis in 1895. He was soon joined by his brother, Raymond.

Dennis Brothers Limited, a private company, was formed in July 1901 with the two brothers as joint managing directors. They soon expanded from manufacturing cycles into the motor industry, first with cars and then other types of vehicles.

Just before the outbreak of the First World War, the company designed and started manufacturing lorries for the war effort. By the end of the war Dennis had supplied the army with over 7,000 of these vehicles.

However, following a long and complicated history, including several mergers, spin-offs and divestments of vehicle types, especially from the 1980s onwards, the Dennis name has all but disappeared from our streets.

In 1972 the business was bought by the Hestair group, which in 1984 decided to concentrate on building just the vehicles’ chassis, relying on other firms to build the bodies of the vehicles.

It continued to struggle and more parts were sold off, including bus manufacture which became Alexander Dennis, based in Falkirk.

Only bus chassis production continued in Guildford, from a workshop on Slyfield Industrial Estate. This too ended in 2020, when chassis production was transferred to the main Alexander Dennis factory in Falkirk.

Many documents relating to the Dennis company have been deposited at Surrey History Centre, including 12,000 factory production drawings of many different Dennis vehicles and their component parts.

The centre also has 14,000 photographs, cine films, and a fairly comprehensive set of company records, including royal warrants, patents and trademarks, as well as personnel records.

The centre’s catalogues of the Dennis collections are a major source of information used by historians and vehicle enthusiasts, especially from people renovating a prized vehicle.

A former managing director of the company, John Smith, and the late Bob Bryson spent months volunteering with Surrey History Centre to identify some of the material, and its resident expert, Laurence Spring, has spent over 30 years working with the collection and helping researchers from around the world.

Dennis researchers and enthusiasts also can head to the Rural Life Living Museum at Tilford, which is now home to a heritage collection of Dennis vehicles and archive material.

For more info visit Surrey History Centre page: tinyurl.com/dennis-history