Yeovil manufacturing history

 Yeovil’s traditional industry was glove making from locally sourced hides. It was a substantial industry with the final glove factory closing only in 1989.

Continuing the agricultural theme, the St Ivel brand of cheese was produced by Western Counties Creameries.

Mechanisation did not pass the town by and at the end of the nineteenth century, James Petter set up as an iron monger and produced the acclaimed ‘Nautilus’ fire grate. From there he went on to install a one horse-power oil engine in a horseless carriage and produced well regarded stationary oil engines.

From this base his company went on to manufacture aircraft in the First World War. Short Type 166, Sopwith 1½ Strutters, de Havilland 4 and 9 two-seat bombers. de-Havilland planned to use the American Liberty engine in the DH-9 to produce the DH-9A and Westland were given the job.

Westland also built 25 Vickers Vimys making a total of 1,100 aircraft. The Yeovil site was transformed with hangers and workshop space.

During the interwar years, Westland survived but continued its drive for innovation.

One result of this quest was production of the Lysander transport aircraft ready to serve in the Second World War. It became known for its role in dropping agents into occupied France. Of more significance in terms of volume was Westland's role in building Spitfires following the bombing of the Southampton Supermarine factory.

Westland, which had built a large number of aircraft for other companies, in 1947 focused on rotor craft and built the Wyvern, the first Westland aircraft to enter service with Fleet Air Arm.

During the Second World War it had been agreed that the USA would take on the development of helicopters; Cierva, the UK pioneer of rotary aircraft was sold to flying boat manufacturer Saunders-Roe in 1951 and produced the Saro Skeeter. In 1959, Westland bought Saunders-Roe and developed the design into the Wasp for the Royal Navy. The decision to focus development work during the war in the USA gave Sikorsky a lead which it would retain for many years. Westland had produced the Sikorsky S-51 under licence and developed this into their own S51 Widgeon, followed by the Whirlwind, Wessex and Sea King.

The Times of 12 January 1960 reported that Westland had bought, in addition to Saunders-Roe, the Bristol Helicopter Division and the UK interests of Fairey Aviation. The enlarged company was now the biggest manufacturer of helicopters outside the USA, and it went on to produce further Sikorsky based craft under license from the Italian Agusta Company. The Sea King (shown in the image) was developed from the Agusta design and the other iconic name, the Lynx, from the 1968 Anglo-French Helicopter Agreement.

Notwithstanding the success of these craft, the company ran into financial difficulties in 1986 and eventually came under the control of GKN in 1994. The GKN Westland EH 101 Merlin was the child of this latter marriage and was regarded as the most advanced helicopter of its time going on to sell worldwide and in the early 2000s replacing Sikorsky as the craft used by US ‘Marine One’ Corps for the US President.

Westland later merged with Agusta a subsidiary of the Italian Finmeccania. In 2004, Finmeccania became the sole owner of AgustaWestland and in 2016 absorbed the business following which it changed its name to Leonardo in 2018.

Further reading:

• https://www.westland100.org.uk/content/history-of-westland/history-westland-1915-1998
• Leslie Brooke, Yeovil A Pictorial History (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)

Ardeer manufacturing history

Perhaps Alfred Nobel's greatest invention was dynamite, a combination of nitroglycerine and a soft, white, porous substance called kieselguhr. The demand for the new explosive was ‘overwhelming’ and Nobel built factories in some twelve countries. In England, the Nitroglycerine Act forbade ‘the manufacture, import, sale and transport of nitroglycerine and any substance containing it’. Nobel was not put off, but did clash with Frederick Abel who was trying to do at Woolwich Arsenal, with nitrocellulose, what Nobel was attempting with nitroglycerine. The net result was that Nobel failed to raise the money he needed for a factory in England.

Fortunately for him, Scotland, with its separate legal system, welcomed him and a factory, his first joint venture The British Dynamite Co. Ltd, was built at Ardeer on a desolate area of the Ayrshire coast in 1871.7 Nobel’s fellow investor in the British Dynamite Company was Sir Charles Tennant, the British champion, through his company Tennants of Glasgow, of the Leblanc process for producing soda ash.

Nobel is quoted as saying, ‘the real era of nitroglycerine opened with the year 1864 when a charge of pure nitroglycerine was first set off by means of a minute charge of gunpowder’. This was the first High Explosive, whereas rapid burning gun powder produces pressures of up to 6,000 atmospheres in a matter of milliseconds, the decomposition of nitroglycerine needs only microseconds and can give rise to pressures of up to 275,000 atmospheres. This was a ground breaking discovery that had the potential to make the life of the miner and civil engineer a great deal easier, but also to unleash weapons of previously unimagined ferocity.

It was not long before the next major development, the invention of cordite, again with Nobel and Abel vying for position. By the end of the nineteenth century, cordite was being manufactured by Kynoch & Co and by the National Explosives Company as well by Nobel’s factory at Ardeer.

The First World War witnessed the production of explosives on an unimaginable scale.

In the wake of the First World War, Harry McGowan headed up Explosive Trades Limited which brought together Britain's fifty-four explosives companies with ninety-three factories. In 1920 it changed its name to Nobel Industries Limited and proceeded to close and repurpose factories leaving it with explosive production at Ardeer, fuses in Cornwall and ammunition in Birmingham. It had substantial reserves which it sought to invest in promising industries. In 1926 it was a founder company of ICI.

W.J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries - Vol 1 the Forerunners 1870-1926 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)

 

Billingham and Wilton manufacturing history

 In 1917, the village of Billingham in County Durham suffered the agonies of the First World War as the rest of the country where young men joined up never to return - from Bellingham some 137 died; the population was 4,599. For Billingham, the war would result in massive physical change - A Brave New World.

The world war in which the country was engaged placed huge demands on industry. In particular the young chemical industry would undergo a revolution in order to manufacture the vast quantities of explosive which the shell filling factories were demanding. Brunner Mond of Northwich in Cheshire were asked to increase their production and in 1916 a new purpose built factory at Stratton in Swindon was dedicated to the production of nitrates.

It was a year later that the Ministry of Munitions commissioned the building of a yet larger plant at Billingham transforming the landscape. The plant was not in production by the end of the war, but in 1920 Brunner Mond formed Synthetic Ammonia and Nitrates Ltd to make ammonia for use in explosives but also ammonium sulphate fertiliser. The plant has access to a substantial bed of anhydrite a form of calcium sulphate which made it a suitable place for the production of ammonium sulphate. More significantly for the Ministry of Munitions, the plant had access to electricity from a soon to be commissioned station by the Newcastle Electricity Supply Co. With the coming of peace, there were severe doubts as to the market for nitrogen based chemicals and there was lengthy debate and negotiation with potential partners. But Brunner Mond did go ahead and set in stone the location of the heart of the soon to be born ICI .

The plant attracted chemists from around Britain including a young Aldous Huxley to whom Billingham represented an 'ordered universe in the midst of a wider world of planless incoherence'. It was ground breaking technology which, by the time Huxley arrived, was focused on the production of fertiliser to feed a hungry world. The world, though, had changed and other countries were equally able to produce the fertiliser they needed. Billingham had to look further afield.

In 1926 Brunner Mond became part of ICI and spurred Billingham to further growth. By 1932 it employed 5,000 out of the then population of 18,000. The Second World War renewed the demand for explosives. Billingham produced a high octane fuel from creosote which had added 25 mph to the top speed of a Spitfire in pursuit of German flying bombs.

A key invention was that of Perspex which proved ideal for the windscreens of Spitfires. Later other plants produced Perspex including Darwen in Blackburn, Lancashire.

In 1945, the company bought the site on which it would build its other major plant in the north east at Wilton. This was not only bigger, but would be home to Britain’s major chemicals manufacture for decades. It had its own power plant, with 33MW Metropolitan Vickers/AEI turbine-generator sets powered by Babcock and Wilcox boilers. It was vast then, but in 2013 boasted sixty miles of road, four hundred miles of electric cable and one hundred and fifty miles of pipework on the two thousand acre site. In the late forties and fifties, its production included nylon, terylene and perspex.

The postwar world saw the explosion of petrochemicals whereby a 'cracker' splits crude oil into its constituent chemicals. ICI’s cracker at Wilton was itself linked to Billingham by a ten-mile pipeline, making it the largest chemical plant then in the world. ICI Acrylics division would go on to produce the feedstocks for plastic manufacture and much more.

Further reading:

W.J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries - A History Vol II The First Quarter Century 1926-1952 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975)