The family coachbuilding firm was started near Worcester about 1740, and Joseph Thrupp came to London about 1765 to run a coach-making business in George Street, Grosvenor Square. In 1858 George Maberly merged his Welbeck Street business with Thrupp and the firm became Thrupp & Maberly, and by 1863 it advertised as coach builders by appointment to the Queen. George Athelstane Thrupp became a leader of the craft and wrote A History of the Art of Coachbuilding in 1877.
By the 1880s the firm was looking at motor vehicles, fitting Immisch electric motors to carriages, and in 1896 supplied an electric car to the Queen of Spain. It held the British licence for the Duryea Motor Wagon in 1897 and made many staff-car bodies in the First World War. In 1924 the works moved to Cricklewood Lane, and in 1925 the Rootes brothers bought it. It became a prestige coachbuilder for Rolls-Royce, Daimler and Bentley, built the body of Sir Henry Segrave’s Golden Arrow land speed record car in 1929, and from 1932 made bodies for the top Humbers.
After the war it concentrated on special bodies for Rootes vehicles, including all the catalogued open-top Humbers. The Cricklewood factory closed in 1967.
