Doncaster manufacturing history

Doncaster, in the early nineteenth century, was a town that had escaped the ravages of industrialisation. It had no iron or steel as had its neighbour Sheffield and had avoided the building of mills for cotton or wool. This was despite one of the town's clock makers, Benjamin Huntsman, inventing the crucible process for steel making and Thomas Cartwright the mechanical weaving machine; both men had taken their inventions elsewhere. The town was well laid out with fine houses and an acclaimed race course; it was a good place to live.

The town had long been a place through which travellers passed; it was on the Great North Road. When the railways came, no fewer than seven eventually linked to the town and its surroundings. One of these was the Great North Eastern which ran the route from London to Edinburgh. It seems to have been good fortune or skilled argument that persuaded the directors to adopt the route close to the Great North Road rather than it rival through Lincoln and Gainsborough. The process of merger had resulted in the Great North Eastern Railway having a route from Peterborough through Spalding and Boston and on to Lincoln, and its first main workshop was in Boston. The re-routing prompted the directors to move the workshops to Doncaster where they became a major employer.

I have written elsewhere about the railway workshops at Swindon and Crewe. At Doncaster, Ernest Phillips writes in The Story of Doncaster that there were 'forges, smithies, foundries, turning shops, erecting shops, joiners', cabinet makers', and wheelwrights' shops' manufacuring at the rate of a locomotive each week. In 1920, under the Chief Engineer, Mr H.N. Gresley, the workshop produced a giant engine weighing 71 tons capable of pulling 800 tons at 70 mph. Famously the workshop then built the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard. The Flying Scotsman was the first steam passenger locomotive to travel at over one hundred miles per hour and the Mallard holds the record of one hundred and thirteen miles on hour for the fastest steam locomotive in the world. This was engineering of the highest order.

In the twenties everything changed, for a rich coal seem had been discovered running far below the town and surrounding villages. The seem was deep but modern technology enabled pits to be sunk 900 yards or more. The sleepy villages around the town grew pit heads and gathered populations in their thousands, with trams linking the villages to the town. The once pristine streets became grimy with coal dust and the shops busy with miner's wives. The railways came into their own with pits each producing up to 4,000 tons of coal a day which needed transport.

Some years ago I explored population increases in the interwar years and Doncaster was in the list with 34% alongside towns which were all in the south. I attributed the Doncaster growth to boundary changes which were on reflection were clearly the result of the burgeoning of coal mining.

Ancillary industries developed such as Cementation for the construction of pit shafts and British Ropes (now Bridon). Other industries came to the town. Pilkington and Rockware set up glass making and a Lancashire firm established weaving. International Harvester began tractor production in 1934; the plant was closed in 2007.

The image is of contemporary Doncaster manufacturing is with thanks to Ben Harrison and Visit Doncaster

Further reading:

• Ernest Phillips, The Story of Doncaster (London: Pitman, 1921)

Consett manufacturing history

 There is evidence of metalurgical activity in the Derwent valley in County Durham from early times. There was a rich deposit of coal under a thick layer of limestone from which lead could be extracted. Iron ore was abundant and led to the manufacture of swords at Shotley Bridge.

In his book, Thread of Iron, Douglas Vernon traces the history of the industry and notes the date of 1839 as the point when entrepreneur, Jonathan Richardson took the plunge and formed The Derwent Iron company to take advantage of local coal, the rights to which he bought, local iron ore which he discovered and importantly the Consett to South Shields Railway which could bring the resulting iron to a national and international market hungry for it. Once finance was raised, the beginning was a period of success with quality iron winning prizes at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Already both the amount and quality of local ore was being called into question and a cheaper source was found in the nearby Cleveland Hills. Transport presented a challenge with a gorge to be crossed. Initially this was address by an ingenious system of pulleys; later a magnificent viaduct was built. Ore was also brought in by train from the northwest.

Consett was big, having fourteen furnaces compared to four at Bolckow and Vaughan at Witton, Middlesbrough. Interestingly it joined with Krupp of Germany and the Dowlais Iron Company in exploiting iron ore reserves discovered in northern Spain.

The works survived financial crises, one of which resulted in the formation of a new company, the Consett Iron Company, and a period of highly profitable growth. This company entered the late nineteenth century ready to embrace the move to steel. I wrote about Bessemer and Siemens and steel making in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World but also in my blog pieces on Middlesbrough and Sheffield. In Consett, investment was made in Siemens open hearth furnaces and the plant expanded and prospered with some six thousand employees working in coal mines, mills, foundries, melting shops, a brick works and an engine and wagon shops. Consett survived the First World War despite problems with raw materials and shortages of labour, but it was a weakened company which entered the economic storms of the twenties. It was then part of the reconstruction of the national steel industry of which I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Years after the Second World War saw the strongest growth ever in the British steel indsutry from 13 million tons in 1939 to 24 million in 1960. Nationalisation meant that Consett lost both its coal mines, power stations and its rail and rolling stock. For a previously integrated business, this loss was devastating. Nevertheless improvements were commissioned including a new ore handling system. Nationalisation of the steel industry followed only to be reversed by the next Conservative government. I write about the subsequent passage of the steel industry in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Consett Iron Co closed in 1980 and here is a link to a comprehensive blog of its history.

Further reading:

• Douglas Vernon, Thread of Iron (Knebworth: Able Publishing, 2003)
• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.

Sunderland manufacturing history

As a port on the Wear, Sunderland grew from handling exports of coal from the Northumberland coal field. Coal went to London and the southwest as well as over the North Sea.

Along with coal, two related industries can be traced back to before the industrial revolution: glass making and pottery. These industries were present elsewhere in the northeast and indeed elsewhere in the UK. Glass was for bottles, for windows and tableware and, as the urban areas grew and prosperity spread from the fruits of industry, so the demand for all three types of glass grew. Sunderland's Wear Glassworks became a producer of national importance. Pottery tended to be earthenware for general use and was some glass tableware. However, Wear Flint Glass could boast the Marquess of Londonderry among its customers.

Like many coastal towns, Sunderland had a long history in shipbuilding and, alongside this, rope making was significant in the town. Ropes were also needed for railways where trucks were pulled along by static steam engines. Webster's rope works at Depford boasted the first machine-made rope in the country.

For shipbuilding, we can look to Austin and Pickersgill, Doxfords, J.L. Thompson and Sir James Laing & Son. In early days it was wood and sail, in particular keels to bring coal from the mines to the waiting colliers. The use of iron and steel and the advent of the steam engine enabled Sunderland's shipbuilding to boom in the mid nineteenth century making it one of the prime shipbuilding ports on the world. Decline followed boom and, with the exception of busy wars and short periods of catch up after the wars, the days of large scale shipbuilding on the Wear were numbered. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines of the last gasp with the combination into North East Shipbuilders Limited.

Sunderland was very far from lost, for Nissan chose to build its British motor car factory near to the town and this continues to prosper.

Further reading:

• Glen Lyndon Dodds, A History of Sunderland (Sunderland: Albion Press, 1995)
• Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World
• Vehicles to Vaccines