Happily by the time their old home was destroyed Roberts Radios were safely installed in a former Thames-side boathouse in East Molesey, Surrey. After the war, the site was redeveloped as the Post Office sorting office, and it’s now occupied by Rathbone Square. Quite rightly - the Rathbone Place premises were bombed towards the end of that year.
In 1941 the company had left Fitzrovia because it was considered dangerous. The site of the Roberts Radio factory is now part of the Rathbone Square development They were so successful that in 1940 Harry received a letter from their contact at Harrods: ‘I personally had the pleasure yesterday of selling Her Majesty the Queen one of your models for her personal use.’ While celebrating her eighteenth birthday in April 1944 Princess Elizabeth, the current Queen, was filmed listening to a news item about herself on a Roberts portable. At first the pair called themselves Roberts and Bidmead, but within a few months Leslie nobly agreed that Roberts Radios had a much better ring to it. Prior to setting up his own business Harry had worked for Pell, Cahill, and Company Ltd, another manufacturer of wireless equipment at nearby 64 Newman Street. The company had been started by two enterprising young Londoners, Harry Roberts, from Mile End, and Leslie Bidmead, from Kilburn. So in March 1936 they moved across Oxford Street to 41 Rathbone Place, where they occupied three rooms on each of two floors. Demand was high, but in their current premises it was impossible to increase their output. By 1935 they were averaging eight receivers a week, all sold in London.
The Roberts Radio Company began making portable sets in 1932, in a basic factory converted from two rooms in Hills Place, Soho. Fast forward to 2021, and my new radio has just been delivered. The family Blundell bought its first transistor radio in 1964, and of course it was a Roberts. Rathbone Place was once the home to a factory making the Roberts Radios.
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