Eighteenth century Warrington was a town of picturesque black and white buildings with a flowing river a dream of clear loveliness. Alan Crosby, in his A History of Warrington, sets the scene with recollections perhaps coloured by rose tinted glasses. The town would become a remarkably diversified industrial hub.

In the eighteenth century there were already copper smelters on Bank Quay benefitting from access to the sea and hence to the copper mines of Cornwall and North Wales. There were also works refining salt from the Cheshire plane.

The nineteenth century saw a vital link with the early coming of the railways which would place Warrington on the main west coast line. The town was also recipient of competing cross country lines born of the rail mania. The net result was of a town accessing, equally, raw materials and markets for finished goods.

There were breweries in most towns, but in Warrington what became Greenall Whitley & Co was more successful than most and provided core employment in the town. It had been founded in St Helens but in Warrington became better known for its gin distillery which turned its hand to Vodka with strap line ‘Vodka from Varrington’. Gin was probably more enduring and a famous brand was Bombay Saphire. Following the break up of the company when it had to separate brewing from its pubs, its distilling continues in the town under the name G & J Distilleries. Bombay Saphire is now owned, along with much of the British spirit industry, by Diagio.

Equally many towns had tanneries, Warrington achieved particular success with thick soles for boots and strong belts for machinery.

Textiles played their part. Warrington was known for fustian-cutting to make corduroy, velvet and velveteen, ‘in which a high pile is created by cutting a raised loop of the weft which is woven into the cloth.’ The warp was linen and the weft cotton. The process described by Crosby involved the cutting by hand of the weft with sharp fine-bladed knives with the cutter walking up and down the cloth which could be 150 yds long. The other textile related activity was pin making, again largely by hand.

Metal working was another sector widely represented across the country. In Warrington, two great iron works covered large areas of the town and, in addition to producing railway wheels and axles, bridge girders and steel tubing, provided the raw material for Warrington’s two specialist metal trades

Peter Stubs began making files in 1777 and, from this beginning, developed a company manufacturing not only files but a whole variety of tools. The company manufactured in the town until shortly after it was bought by the Swedish Erasteel in 2001.

Wire-working was a more substantial Warrington activity with two main competitors in Nathaniel Greening, and Ryland Brothers which combined with Tinsley Wire of Sheffield and is still producing in the town. A third wire company, Thomas Locker, is also still manufacturing with a focus on specialist wire meshes.

Like so many towns with access to the sea, Warrington had its shipbuilders. Like nearby St Helens, Warrington had its glass makers producing at one time some of the finest cut glass. In the fulness of time St Helens drew to itself a critical mass of glass making. As to shipbuilding, Merseyside with the exception of Cammell-Laird could not compete with the north east and Scotland.

Where Warrington did win was in soap where Crosfields built a massive soap works on Bank Quay and where Persil was produced, serving at one time some 35% of the British market. By then Crosfields was part of Lever Brothers which had started in Warrington before creating Port Sunlight. I explore the importance of the soap industry in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

The Second World War created a massive military presence in the Burtonwood area of the town. There were some 18,000 personnel on site producing aircraft for the US role on D Day. After the war, the site reverted to the RAF where it played a crucial role in the Berlin airlift. By the sixties its use was brought to an end and it was replaced by the 558 acre Omega project becoming part of Warrington new town which attracted new industries and provided much needed housing.

Further reading:

Alan Crosby, A History of Warrington (Chichester: Phillimore, 2002)