East Anglia manufacturing history

 A predominantly agricultural region with historically a heritage of farm equipment manufacture. The presence of one of the world's top universities is of course significant. In much earlier history East Anglia was impacted by invasions from Rome and then Anglo-Saxons, Danes and William the Conqueror. Later it benefitted from successive influxes of Flemish weavers and Huguenots. Each of these invasions left their beneficial mark not least at Sutton Hoo near Ipswich.

Cambridge

The University is a major collaborator with British industry. It was from where ARM came. Read more in this link.

King’s Lynn

A fishing port for many centuries. British Sugar has a large factory at nearby Wissington

Great Yarmouth

Where the American Birds Eye began freezing fish in Britain. It became part of Unilever.

Lowestoft

Home to one of the Pye Radio factories. At nearby Bungay, Clays print books. Birds Eye frozen vegetables factory now owned by Nomad Foods.

Norwich

One of the great early wool towns. Home to Norvic Shoes and a centre of shoe making. The Boulton Aircraft company developed from a woodworking firm. The company was re-established in Wolverhampton in 1936 as Boulton Paul and in 1961 joined Dowty Group. Mackintosh of Halifax bought AJ Caley of Norwich and there developed Quality Street and Rolo. You can find more by following this link.

Thetford

Charles Burrell Ltd were the largest employer in Thetford and at one time were the largest manufacturer of traction engines in the world. In 1919 they joined Agricultural and General Engineers and when that company failed in 1932, Burrells closed with the loss of many jobs. Fisons first set up here.

Ipswich

Ransomes were the biggest employers and Fisons main factory was here having originated in nearby Thetford. I tell more by following this link.

Harwich and Felixstowe

Together with Ipswich, these are known as the three Haven ports on the North Sea thanks to their deep harbours.

Colchester

Thought to be the first English town a century before the Romans. A wool town in the middle ages and in the nineteenth century a centre of mechanical engineering with Paxman engines and Crompton's dynamos. You can read much more by following this link.

Southend on Sea

Ekco built a factory here in 1930 to manufacture radio and plastics. As I observed in the design review of the Festival of Britain, EK Cole was especially good at diversifying. In the Second World War, Ekco’s factory at Southend was considered too vulnerable to air attack and so they relocated in part to Aylesbury, and, in part, to a 19th century mansion near Malmesbury in Wiltshire. They made radio for bombers and airborne radars and walkie-talkies for infantry.

Basildon

The neighbouring village of Fobbing was where the Peasant's Revolt began in 1381 with Wat Tyler leading a march on London. Basildon is a town with a distinctly agricultural heritage and which moved into the twentieth century with brick works producing seven million bricks a year. The works were used by the military during the First World War and thereafter were dismantled. It was designated a new town after the Second World War. New Holland tractors set up in 1964 and Marconi manufactured here. Read more by following this link.

Brentwood

Ilford Ltd opened a factory producing dry photographic plates in Great Worley.

Billericay

Home to one of three Marconi components factories (the others at Wembley and Hackbridge, Surrey)

Braintree

Samuel Courtauld began with a silk mill making mourning clothing. Read more about silk and Braintree but following this link.

Chelmsford

In nearby Great Baddow there is the BAE Systems AI laboratories, formerly the Marconi Research Centre. GEC Marconi had a big manufacturing presence in the town with Radar and Communications. You can read much more by following this link.

Ilford

Plessey manufactured radio components and a large range of electronics. You can read more by following this link

Langford

Home to CML Microsystems set up in 1968 and now with a worldwide market.

Sudbury

Lucas diesel components were made here. It has the last British silk weavers. I tell more in my blog piece on Braintree.

Brantham

The early British plastics manufacturer moved production of Halex from Hackney.

East Midlands manufacturing history

 Textiles and footwear. Engineering built on an agricultural heritage and steel based on ore in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. The image is of Lincoln Cathedral.

Nottinghamshire

Nottingham

One of the five towns of the Danelaw. Hosiery was centred on the East Midlands and so Nottingham along with Derby and Leicester. This led to framework knitting and then to Nottingham lace. I write about framework knitting in the page on Leicester (below). Nottingham suffered from dreadful overcrowding and this combined with a decline in the hosiery trade after the Napoleonic wars led to the action of the Luddites.

The city was home to Jesse Boot and pharmaceuticals, Raleigh Bicycles (later part of TI plc) and Stanton and Staveley steel and spun pipes (formerly part of British Steel and before that Stewarts & Lloyds). It was also home to John Player cigarettes and a good deal of Courtaulds and other textile manufacturers. Follow this link to read more about Nottingham.

Long Eaton

Long Eaton was home to lace making and furniture. In the late 19th century three large tenement lace mills were built one financed by the notorious financier Ernest Terah Hooley who was born in the town. You can read more about long Eaton manufacturing in this link.

Beeston

Just outside Nottingham, Beeston was home to Plessey Telecommunication following their purchase of Ericcson. Long before then it was home to the Humber Company before their move to Coventry. It was the vacant Humber factory that in 1901 was occupied by the National Telephone Company (later taken over by British Ericcson) to manufacture telephone equipment under licence from the American Bell and Edison. Nearby Chilwell had been home to a massive shell filling factory in the First World War and I wrote of this in Ordnance. In the Second World War it became home to the Army Centre for Mechanisation of which I wrote in War on Wheels.

Sutton in Ashfield

A coal mining town which became home to hosiery manufacturer, Pretty Polly. Parker-Knoll upholstery moved here

Mansfield

William Hollins set up its mill in Pleasley that same year, attracted by the availability of water and a climate kept damp by the number of trees. Labour was provided by a workhouse; many of the workers were children
At the Great Exhibition of 1851 I noted that William Hollins of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire exhibited both cotton and wool which when combined was patented as Viyella.

Worksop

One of the major producers of liquorice. Home also to hat making and furniture. Also Sharwoods, owned by RHM and then Premier Foods, make their famous curry sauces.

Newark

Home to British Sugar, later part of Associated British Food. Home to Worthington Simpson Pumps, later part of a joint venture between Ingersol-Rand and Dresser Pumps. Ransome and Marles Bearing Co became part of Ransome Hoffman Pollard bearings formed at the initiative of the IRC in the sixties. It became a subsidiary of Ingersol-Rand. After a management buy out, the bearings business eventually became part of the Japanese NSK.

Leicestershire

Leicester

One of the five towns of the Danelaw. Leicester embraced hosiery and foot wear from which came engineering to mechanise those industries, and then much more. Follow this link to read more of Leicester's manufacturing history and framework knitters.

Ashby de la Zouch

United Biscuits produce McVitie, Crawford and McCoy's biscuits and snacks

Hinckley

The first stocking making machine was used in the town in the mid seventeenth century. Much more recently Hinckley is home to a new factory manufacturing Triumph Motor Cycles.

Ibstock

The company began in 1825 as a colliery, but refocused on bricks with annual production of 3 million in 1914, 10 million in 1939 and 18 million in 1946. Ibstock Brick became a punlic company in 1963. By 1990 it had 5,000 employees expanded through acquisition including Redland and Tarmac brick businesses. The business weas bought by CHR but then sold to management in 2015. It was then re-floated. Its Eclipse factory near Leicester was opened in 2018.

Loughborough

Home to Brush Electric Machines . I write of the American Brush Company in my blog on American electricity. The British Brush company operated first in London but grew out of its premises and looked for a suitable place for expansion. The site selected was in Loughborough next to the Midland Railway where the Falcon Engineering Works had been built by Henry Hughes who had begun by building carriages, railways carriage and eventually steam locomotives. Brush Electrical Engineering became a major manufacturer of electric powered locomotives whilst continuing with steam locomotive particularly for export markets. Ladybird produce their children's books in the town. Nearby Mountsorrel became home in 1941 to the Alvis workforce relocated from Coventry after the bombing of 14 November 1940. After the war the factory was bought by Rolls-Royce and only closed in 1994. British Gypsum producing plasterboard is at East Leake, now owned by St Gobain.

Market Harborough

Summingtons made Liberty corsets and the famous Liberty bodice.

Melton Mowbray

Promoted as the food capital of England, this market town is home to Samworth Brothers makers of sandwiches and porkpies and Clawson Dairy makers of Stilton and other cheeses. Until 2000, the neighbouring village of Old Dalby was home to the army depot maintaining our missiles. Mars chose the town for its Pedigree Petfood factory. Stanton & Stavely had an iron works manufacturing fitments and manhole covers at Holwell just outside Melton.

Derbyshire

Derby

One of the five towns of the Danelaw. Home to Rolls-Royce, railway and engineering history. I tell more about the city's manufacturing story with the help of a visit to the Derby museum of making.

Spondon

In 1923 British Cellulose had changed its name to British Celanese and by the 1930s was producing Celanese filament yarn well suited to the fashions of the twenties and thirties. Its acetate drape was being used in competition with silk. British Celanese was later bought by Courtaulds. In the Second World War, British Celanese manufactured parachutes and underclothing. By the end of the war, they employed 20,000 people. In conjunction with Courtaulds, ICI formed British Nylon Spinners to exploit the Du Pont patent of Nylon for the manufacture of parachutes.

Belper

Was home to Glowworm and Parkray boilers, part of TI plc and then Hepworth Ceramic plc.

Langley Mill

The Valley works became a shadow factory producing a variety of armaments. It was then repurposed by Vic Hallam to manufacture prefabricated buildings. Aristoc manufactured silk hosiery and GR Turner manufactured wagons.

Chesterfield

John Robinson set up a business here in 1839 making pill boxes. In the fifties the company patented the first disposable nappies and now as Robinson plc make a whole range of packaging material.

Burton on Trent

At one time it was home to thirty breweries. The Branston pickle factory was repurposed as a Central Ordnance Depot for Army clothing in the Second World War. Read more in this link.

Burnaston

Toyota built a plant here in the early 1990s to manufacture motor cars for the UK and European market

Cromford

Richard Arkwright’s water frame massively increased the speed of spinning cotton. Cromford is the site of his first factory and also John Smedley wool knitters.

Alfreton

Home to Thornton's Chocolates founded in Sheffield in 1911. Butterley was an engineering company at nearby Ripley and produced cast iron (for St Pancras Station and the Falkirk Wheel) and bricks, the latter became part of Hanson and then Heidelberg Cement. The engineering business was bought by Slater Walker and merged with Crittall. Read more in this link. Also nearby is the Denby Pottery.

High Peak

Home to Swizzles Matlow.

Northamptonshire

Northampton

New Town designated in 1968. Home to boot-making, becoming busy during the First World War with huge demand from the army. From this came shoe making which now is at the quality end of the market with Churches. The town was home to Express Lifts, Britain's largest manufacturer of lifts, and their test tower built in 1982 is now a listed building. I tell more in this blog.

Corby

A new town designated after the Second World War in 1950. Stewarts and Lloyds in effect relocated their steel making in the interwar years but steel production ceased in the eighties. Tata Steel has a presence in the town manufacturing thin walled tube. I tell more in this blog.

Kettering

This was a home to footwear manufacturing along with Northampton. Weetabix is made at nearby Burton Latimer

Wellingborough

Another footwear town also home to flour mills. Read more by following this link.

Irthlingborough

Home to Whitworth's dried fruit and to the Lantern Tower on St Peter's Church which was built as a beacon to guide travellers through the 'treacherous' Nene Valley

Daventry

Cummins Inc power systems factory was set up here and combines with their UK logistics centre. Home to DIRFT, the International Rail Freight Terminal. At nearby Long Buckby is McLaren automotive.

Peterborough

New Town designated in 1967. A deeply agricultural town which embraced engineering as I tell more in this blog.

Lincolnshire

Lincoln

The Romans installed garrisons at strategic towns across England and Lincoln was one. One of the five towns of the Danelaw. William the Conqueror built a castle and cathedral and the town was one of the largest in medieval England, wealthy from wool. More recently famous for its cathedral and relationship with the RAF and Bomber Command. Follow the link to Lincoln's manufacturing story

Grantham

An engineering town. You can read about it in this blog.

Scunthorpe

Home to United Steel Companies (Lincolnshire) now renamed British Steel and owned by the Chinese. I write more in this blog.

Stamford

One of the five towns of the Danelaw. A town famous for the Cecil family to whom we owe thanks for British patent law. The town, in its later years, attracted engineering. You can read more in this blog.

Boston

An ancient town with a busy port. In a county where chickens were grown in the hundreds of thousands Fogarty took advantage of byproduct of feathers for their pillows and duvets. Deep in farming country there is currently a plan to build a factory for a vegan food processor. Greencore produce prepared salads and vegetables.

Spalding

Home to vegetable processors including Greencore and FreshLinc.

Long Sutton

Home to Princes largest vegetable processing plant

Grimsby

Known for its fish as early as the thirteenth century. Fishing and fish processing dominated the town in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In nearby Caistor, Sealord (now Japanese owned) make high end fish fingers for Waitrose.

Humberside

The south bank of the Humber was and is home to much heavy chemical industry. British Titan Products built a factory on the Pyewipe industrial estate on the outskirts of Grimsby. They were followed by Laporte also with titanium dioxide, Dunlop with industrial hoses, Ciba Chemicals and Courtaulds with man made fibre. Fisons had a factory at Immingham.

Yorkshire manufacturing history

 Britain's largest county with a long history of wool, coal and steelmaking. I draw together an overview of coal mining and iron and steel making to place individual regions in a national context.

Sheffield

Sheffield was to steel as Manchester was to cotton and Leeds to wool. This developed in Sheffield plate (silver plating) and stainless steel. On a larger scale, it was the place of Huntsman’s invention of crucible steel and the development of the Bessemer processes embraced by the father of Sheffield steel, John Brown, for rails and armour plating for naval ships. It was the birthplace of Vickers and the Vickers/Cammell Laird English Steel Corporation (Sheffield). Part of this now continues in public ownership as Sheffield Forgemasters. Read more about Sheffield manufacturing by following this link.

Leeds

A city that made its wealth from the wool industry; in the years following the Second World War the Burton factory employed 20,000 people. Wool attracted textile machinery manufacturers and engineering more generally, including the railways. Yorkshire Chemical Company provided the dyes for the wool industry. See much more by following this link. In nearby Temple Newsam one of the first fulling mills was erected in 1185.

Bradford

The home of worsted production and a major iron producer. In 2025 the UK City of Culture. See much more by following this link.

Wakefield

A coal mining town on the river Calder with a history of working with wool. Sirdar knitting wool is spun here. Sirdar was also famous for their knitting patterns. Hodgson and Simpson, soap manufacturer later part of Unilever, was active here. Coca Cola has major plant here. The British Premium Sausage Company formed in Bradford to produce high end sausages distinct from then prevalence of cheap sausages with low quality ingredients. At nearby Batley Angloco make fire engines.

Castleford

In 1972 Burberry moved its production of gabardine overcoats.

Yeadon

North of Leeds, Avro produced Lancasters and and Ansons in what was reputedly the largest single factory unit in Europe at the time employing 17,500 people. The Dowty Heritage site offers more fascinating detail on aircraft production and the shadow factories.

Rotherham

Yorkshire was home to Park Gate Iron and Steel Co formerly owned by Tube Investments. Liberty’s Speciality Steel is part of its progeny. J & E Walker's tin plate works was known as one of the greatest in the country until 1829. Tinplate later focused on South Wales. J&E Walker's predecessor Samuel Walker cast both iron and brass (bronze) cannon.

Halifax

Famous for its Piece Hall where merchants traded woollen products made by the many hundreds of spinners and weavers in the surrounding area. A keen competitor of Bradford in the worsted trade having the advantage of more water power. It later concentrated on 'fancy' worsted. Together with Keighley and Huddersfield, Halifax was part of a cluster of Yorkshire towns where machine tool manufacturers explored new ideas in the nineteenth century. It was where John Mackintosh set up his shop selling toffee; it merged with Rowntree in 1969. I tell more of Halifax in this blog.

Huddersfield

The home to wool products which made the town wealthy. "It is believed, in the 1940s, Huddersfield had more Rolls-Royce owners per capita than anywhere else in England, displaying the wealth of the mill owners at the time". English Cloth are one of the remaining wool manufacturers and their website tells the story. You can read more about Huddersfield manufacturing by following this link.

Barnsley

A town in the Yorkshire coalfield where mining and related metal manufacturing dominated. It was famous for its nail makers operating from small workshops, also wire stretchers. Joseph Bramah produced his famous unpickable locks in London to which he had travelled from Barnsley to seek his fortune. Metal working skills were adapted to clock making very much aimed at the monied classes. Redfearn Glass at Monk Breton near Barnsley at one time had 16% of the UK’s glass bottle production. RHM made Mr Kipling 'exceedingly good cakes' in Barnsley, subsequently owned by Premier Foods.

Whitby

Was a coal and whaling port. The ship Endeavour was built there.

Scarborough

The Canadian McCain have made frozen chips nearby since the sixties.

Hull

The city was one of the two great ports serving the industrial revolution, the other being Liverpool. Historically the docks were home to commercial shipbuilding and manufacturing activity grew up around the products traded. In the later nineteenth century fishing became a massive part of Hull. I write more about Hull manufacturing in this blog.

York

Home to Rowntree, Terry's and the National Rail Museum which grew out of the railway workshops in the city. Although without a university until 1963, it was a place of scientific invention. I tell in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World how technical development tended to be on the job rather than in formal educational settings as in France or Germany. Many towns had their scientific society where ideas were shared and stimulated. You can read more about York manufacturing by following this link.

Doncaster

Where the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard were built. International Harvester set up their first UK full manufacturing plant before the Second World War. I write more in this blog.

Goole

The company town of the Aire and Calder canal through which many thousands of tons of coal from the South Yorkshire coalfield. It is now home to Siemens new railway factory. Croda Chemicals began production in 1925

Skipton

Was home to Dewhurst, maker of Silko thread. Metcalfe Models now make wonderful card kits for model railways.