William Hurlock Junior seems to have descended from a fairly prestigeous engineering family, the father of which, William senior, was born in the 1840’s in the south of England. They were car and truck dealers, owned the car company A.C, made equipment for the military during World War One and we find them doing the same again in the Second World War when this stove seems to have appeared. Engineering companies throughout the UK were given contracts at the outbreak of the war to make all kinds if things and Hurlocks were asked to make paraffin stoves, an example of which we have here in the collection. There were other UK firms making paraffin stoves at the time, one of which was Townsend & Coxon so it’s possible Hurlock used some of their parts, like the burner head, for his hybrid version. The ‘IDEAL’ stove advert opposite is a classic example of post war army surplus marketing whereby an outdoor retailer buys a load of ex army gear, gives it a new name and sells it on. We are grateful to John Taylor who kindly suggested we alter our original entry for this stove since there were lots of errors- hope there aren’t now!