Home Lift Innovation: The Evolution and Legacy of Terry Lifts

Posted: 25th July 2024

It is incredible how history tends to repeat itself.

Terry Lifts were the UK pioneers of manufacturing and installing home lifts back in the 1960’s when Eric Terry realised that the best way to carry a person in a wheelchair up to the first floor was vertically through an aperture formed in the ceiling, rather than via the staircase.

The Terry Personal Lift (TPL) was designed and manufactured to offer a simple, affordable solution to the problem of inter-floor access for wheelchair users throughout the UK and, subsequently to clients in many countries throughout the world.

Awarded the Design Council Award for medical equipment in 1975, the TPL worked on a counterbalance system with the weight concealed in the supporting guides. Manually driven, minimal effort was required as the user and wheelchair became “weightless”.

Positioning the support guides to the middle of the platform helped to minimise drag and offered a balanced support for the simple carriage structure. The downside of this was that the supporting guides occupied useable space upstairs and down, as well as blocking light from windows. At the time, these were minor irritants compared with the huge benefit of being able to access the upstairs floor of the home in a wheelchair.

Times move on and the market demands and expects progress and product refinement.

Accordingly, in 1989, to address these issues, the Terry Harmony home lift was launched with the support guides against the rear wall, a trapdoor system which when in place gave full circulation for a wheelchair in the bedroom and left space in the living room when positioned upstairs. No support guide (elephant!?) in the middle of the room!.

This design has stood the test of time and has been refined to include fire seals between floors, essential to comply with building regulations and the several iterations of BS5900 to which all Terry home lifts conform.

Strangely, several products have now appeared on the market which emulate the layout we discarded all those years ago! 

Terry Lifts – the one to trust.

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