Chubb Fire

Charles Chubb started as a ship's ironmonger at Winchester and Portsmouth in 1804, and in 1818 he and his brother Jeremiah patented the Chubb detector lock and moved into the locksmith trade at Wolverhampton. The first Chubb safe followed in 1835 and a safe factory in Glengall Road, Old Kent Road, London, in 1837; Chubb & Son's Lock and Safe Co. was registered on 14 December 1882 to acquire the business, new works opened at Wolverhampton in 1909, and Chatwood-Milner was absorbed in 1958. Chubb entered electronic security in 1962 with Chubb Alarms.

The fire business was assembled through the 1960s. Chubb & Sons bought Read & Campbell, makers of the Petrolex petrol-fire extinguisher, in 1964, took over the Pyrene Company in 1967, and in 1968 added Samuel Jones (Engineering), the old Rampart Engineering extinguisher maker. Pyrene had come to Britain in 1914 selling pump extinguishers and in 1930 moved to its Art Deco factory on the Great West Road at Brentford, with demonstration grounds laid out like an oil depot, making the Conquest, Phomene and Pyrene extinguishers and, by 1960, a third of the car bumpers used by the British motor industry. These businesses traded under their own names until Chubb Fire Security Ltd was formed in 1971, when Pyrene was rebranded Chubb Fire; the 1973 merger with Minimax and Read & Campbell made it the largest fire-protection company in Great Britain. In 1975 Chubb Fire launched its 'seize and squeeze' range with a standardised pin-and-lever head for every type of extinguisher. Chubb Fire Services' vehicle side at Feltham passed to Gloster Saro in 1984-85, and the company was at Sunbury-on-Thames by 1988.

The Land Rover connection is the extinguisher and its bracket. The Chubb hand extinguisher, on its FV351285 support bracket, was the standard fire equipment of the military Series Land Rover, shared with the Ferret scout car and other vehicles; the vintage Chubb bracket is still traded for Series, Ferret and other military vehicles, its successors being the larger MoD bracket of the Snatch and Wolf and the bracket supplied with the Bowman vehicle installation kit.

Racal Electronics bought Chubb in August 1984 and demerged it in September 1992 as Chubb Security plc; Williams Holdings acquired it in February 1997 and merged it with Kidde Thorn. In August 2000 the lock and safe business was sold to Assa Abloy, and in November 2000 Chubb plc was demerged from Williams as a fire and security installation and service company. United Technologies bought Chubb plc for £622 million in 2003, added Initial Fire and Security in 2007, and in 2020 spun the business off with Carrier Global; on 3 January 2022 Carrier announced its sale to the APi Group for US$3.1 billion. Chubb Fire & Security's UK head office is at Chubb House, Shadsworth Road, Blackburn.