George Joseph Haden moved to Hockley, Birmingham from the Stourbridge glass making area in the 1870s. He was intent on setting up business as a bicycle manufacturer, which he had easily accomplished by the 1890s, leaving his son to carry on in 1903, in Princip Street.
George's son, Alfred Hamlet Haden, developed the business into the manufacture of motor cycles and side cars using the marque name New Comet
from around 1913, five models being produced till around 1916 when
production was suspended for a year. After the first world war New
Comet's continued to be manufactured until 1931.
Haden Precision,
was also another trading name used by the company between 1920 and 1924
and would indicate that Haden were using the Birmingham based Frank
Baker's Precision engine. (See Frank Baker).
Haden also made both cycle and motorcycle component parts, and Alfred's sons, Donald William Haden and Denis Howard Haden, took up the manufacture of cycle component parts in the 1930s, naming the company HADEN trading in, Westley Street.
Donald Paul Haden carried the business through until 2003 but finally closed it under the sort of pressure which so much of Birmingham industry has experienced in the last few decades with foreign competition and changing needs.
Denis Howard Haden formed his own separate business in the 1960s making HADEN KETTLES in Brentwood.
We would like to learn more about the early years of the family business, from the 1880s through to the 1930s, and hope that someone may be able to help us. For those early years we have patchy information gleaned from trade directories and street maps, and a box of photos from the days when the Comet motorcycle was in production, but not much more.
I thank Sally Haden for much of this information