THE year 1862 and before Tower Bridge and the Natural History Museum was built in London John Dicks opens up a gas fitting and brass finishers shop called J. Dick and Co at 5 Jewry Street in Winchester and it’s lavishly adorned with the latest gas fittings and chandeliers from London. The business grows swiftly as they offer gas fitting installation, wrought iron and lead work services. In 1863 Dicks illuminated the exterior some of the prominent buildings by gas light in the city like the Guildhall, Westgate, Market House and Queen Anne’s statue.

By 1886 the business moved to 149 High Street as they had already acquired workshops in Silver Hill and by now were installing water systems into houses by putting pumps in their wells and piping the water into their homes. By the turn of the century John Dicks had died and his two sons Philip and John are now running the business and are installing telephones, speaking tubes in offices and designing and installing call alarm systems for the fire brigade.

In these early days the workforce would walk to jobs as far away as Crawley using push carts for their tools and materials and would lodge if the job took longer than a day. In time horse and carts were hired. Jobs in Stockbridge and Alresford meant train journeys, one of the men A.W. Faithfull recalls jobs like Odiham church was like going abroad he also recalls a young adventurous lad Ralph Moore who after finishing his apprenticeship in 1912 signs on as a crew member of the Titanic. His body was never recovered.

Dicks would embrace new technology, design and install central heating systems, refrigeration but it was the coming of electricity that Dicks would be the first locally in this field at first using generator plants until mains supplies had been laid that would elevate Dicks as a company and it was said in the early 1960s that from an unassuming somewhat dark fronted old fashioned fronted small shop Dicks would be responsible for illuminating a city, its churches and its most prominent buildings and some of the major buildings such as the Guildhall, Great Hall, Assizes Court, Magistrates rooms, Library, the Castle, St Cross Hospital, Winchester College, St Christes Hospital, the Barracks after it had burnt down in 1896, Sherriff and Wards shop although the first shop to have electricity was 26 High Street, that of William Hayward a tobacconist and all the city’s churches. Grand houses such as Broadlands, Beaulieu, Preshaw Park, Tichborne Park, Wherwell Priory, Mottisfont Abbey and Romsey Abbey.

In 1922 would see the workforce for the first time use motor transport to get to jobs further afield such as Shaftesbury.

But it would be in 1926 on the sudden death of her father Philip that his daughter Jeanie would take control of the company and some 75-plus employees and in time be known as Miss Jeanie Dicks but with it she would come across great prejudices from clients wanting to deal with a man, so Jeanie would turn her attentions to the more well-heeled clients.

Dicks over the years illuminated many outdoor occasions as 1901 the finishing of the erection of King Alfred’s statue, plays in Avington park, coronations of kings.

In 1950 Jeanie made a speech stating on the coming of electricity “electricity was but an infant in the cradle then only for the rich and wealthy in its early days”.

Jeanie in the 1920s would become the first female member of the male-dominated Electrical Contractors Association attending the conferences of 1928 and 1931 in London. She became a member of the Women’s Engineering Society and be mentioned in their Journal alongside air aviator Amy Johnson. In the late 1930s she is president of the Winchester Chamber of Commerce. In the Second World War Jeanie enlists as a A.R.P ambulance driver. In 1954 is president of the Electrical Industry Benevolent branch of Hampshire and Dorset. But its in 1934 she would come to prominence when her company won the contract to install electricity into Winchester Cathedral against many contractors from the UK and Europe. Jeanie would personally oversee all work done so as what she called “was to get the right effect” the cost of the first instalment was £3,000, a couple of years previously her company had installed plumbing and electricity in the Deanery for the new dean Gordon Selwyn. Papers all over the country would report on the completion of the job, mentioning about the “Girl Engineer”.

In 1937 Jeanie marries an Ian McVean a travelling salesman for Beestons Boilers, in Winchester Cathedral. They in time would live the family home Limberlost on St Giles Hill.

1960 Jeanie decides to retire aged 66 and with no children the business is sold, buildings belonging to the company such as the old slaughter house, City Baths, Mission Hall, store houses and the Coach and Horses pub, all in Silver Hall are sold. The new owners, not wanting her pride and joy, the electrical side is sold to four staff members for princely sum of £1. The firm calls itself Dicks Electrical in honour of the Dicks family name and by 1965 have new premises built in Winnall.

On July 6 1980 Jeanie McVean (nee Dicks) dies in a Winchester nursing home; the papers report that she was one of the leading business women in the city for 40 years and that she had been in declining health for some considerable time.

Dicks Electrical Ltd sold to new owners in early 2018 but by December 2018 the company ceased trading, ending 156 years of the Dicks family name.