Basildon manufacturing history

 The new town of Basildon was only eight miles from Tilbury Docks with good road links to the east of London. This location clearly attracted the Ford Motor Company, which was outgrowing its Dagenham site, to move its tractor manufacture to Basildon. The proximity to the docks also attracted cigarette makers, Carreras. In 1964 New Holland completed their first tractor factory in the town, followed by Standard Telephones, MK Electric and Yardley.

The development corporation produced a promotional brochure encouraging other businesses to the town. Highlighted were the availability of good housing and community facilities for employees and their families. The businesses mentioned in the brochure were not only the big names although Marconi was highlighted a building a factory for the ‘meticulously accurate construction of delicate precisions equipment’ for radio, radar and other electronics.

Albert Mann’s Engineering Company manufactured rolling mills, Nufloor manufactured floor sanders and polishers and Teleflex of Shadwell Heath built a new factory manufacturing conveyors and remote controls. The new town also attracted old skills such as Engineers Patternmaking and Thompson & Foster cardboard boxes and corrugated paper.

Further reading

Industrial Development in Basildon New Town (Basildon Development Corporation)

Harlow manufacturing history

 Harlow was a village to the north of the industrial areas of east London and on the London to Cambridge railway. It was chosen as one of the new towns designed to relieve the pressure on greater London.

As with other new towns, it sought a spread of industry to avoid the concentration that caused problems in Corby. Although it was not thought suitable for heavy industry, two of its early arrivals were on the heavy side : Johnson Matthey the precious metals company and United Glass manufacturer of bottles.

They were followed by Revertex resins, and Schreiber furniture founded by a Polish immigrant, which would compete with Lebus and Hille and become part of GEC Domestic appliances before moving to MFI and finally Sainsbury.

Shenval Press were an early arrival joined in time by book binders Dorstel Press. Publishing later received a major boost when Longman Green arrived in the late sixties.

Standard Telephones became the largest employer in the town with 3,000 at one time. They were joined by the Standard Telecommunications Laboratory. Another electronics business came to the town by default after de Havilland had to cancel a new factory as a result of cuts in defence spending. Cossor was moving out of valves into radar and so needed new premises; they later became a subsidiary of the American Raytheon Corporation. The AEI research division was based in the town but moved to Manchester when AEI joined with GEC.

American office equipment manufacturer Pitney Bowes moved their manufacturing in 1962 and head office a year later. They were joined by Minnesota 3M Research and educational suppliers ESA.

In the sixties, Gilbey's Gin built a striking new factory moving its production from London. The family had a long connection with the former village. Gilbey became part of International Vintners which was bought by Grand Metropolitan. The Gilbey brand is now within Diageo. Rank Hovis McDougal built an administrative headquarters. GSK has a research facility in the town.

Further reading:

Frederick Gibberd, Ben Hyde Harvey, Len White Harlow: The Story of a New Town (Stevenage: Publications for Companies, 1980)

Stevenage manufacturing history

 This agricultural community on the Great North Road just outside London became prosperous from the business generated by coaches stopping for refreshment. The mid nineteenth century saw the arrival of the Great Northern Railway which encouraged the building of homes for those working in London. The late nineteenth century witnessed the arrival of an organisation very much of its time. The time was marked by the spread of education to the population as a whole and this demanded resource in the form of furniture, books, laboratory equipment and the general supplies a school needs in order to function. It was the Educational Supply Association and would remain the town’s most significant employer until after the Second World War. Another old town company was Hertfordshire Knitting known for its provision for the employment of women. Yet another was Vincent HRD Motorcycles.

Stevenage was perfectly placed to become one of the New Towns to be designated under the 1946 Act. The first employer to be tempted to the new town was Geo. W. King from Hitchin. They manufactured cranes and hoists and would later become part of TI plc. Kings were followed in 1952 by Hawker Siddeley Dynamics, ICI and Pye Ether a manufacturer of controls and owned by Pye Radio. Next was a longer term resident of old Stevenage W.H. Saunders an electronics company which later became part of Marconi. There followed ICL, Kodak, Bowater Packaging, English Electric aircraft and Mentmore Manufacturing which came from Hackney and would become Platignum makers of writing implements. English Electric became part of the British Aircraft Corporation which would merge with Hawker Siddeley aircraft to become British Aerospace.

This aviation capability has now become MBDA manufacturer of complex weapon systems and Airbus Defence and Space which manufactures space vehicles, satellites and related equipment giving Stevenage the nickname Space City. The science credentials of the town are underling by GSK R&D Hub, one of only two worldwide.

Further reading :

• Margaret Ashby, Stevenage: History and Guide (Dover: Alan Sutton, 1994)
• Margaret Ashby, Stevenage Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 1995)

Hemel Hempstead manufacturing history

 The site of Hemel Hempstead has revealed Roman remains and the town not only was prosperous but had a proud heritage. So to be identified as a potential new town was not particularly welcome. The town enjoyed the employment of its large and long standing paper manufacturing business, John Dickinson, at Apsley Mill. I wrote about this in the context of nineteenth century publishing in my book Charlotte Bronte's Devotee about the man who discovered her genius. John Dickinson would go from strength to strength and was not alone in local manufacturing although much larger probably than the others taken together.

The designation as a new town was proposed in 1947 along with a first plan. Argument raged for five years until a final plan was agreed in 1952. Scott Hastie's and Lynne Fletcher's book Hemel Hempstead The story of New Town Development 1947-1997 is particularly helpful since it covers not only the first waive of industry but also the transition from manufacturing to high tech and service industries.

The long term prosperity of the town had a good deal to do with communications. The canal arrived in 1797 following by the railway in 1837. Now the M1 motorway passes nearby and has an exit direct to the industrial area. The M25 is also close and provides vital connectivity to London's airports but also the seaports of the southeast. Anyone driving through Hemel and unfamiliar with it may well be bemused by the Plough (or Magic) roundabout shown in the image.

New industry began to take units in the first designated area on Maylands Avenue and first off the block was the Central Tool and Equipment Company, a manufacturer of milling machines. There followed another engineering company, Alford and Alder, which supplied the motor industry. It seems that neither company survived after the sixties. Rolls Razor, another early arrival, had a colourful end to its production of razors when it went into the direct selling of washing machines and I write of this in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Addressograph Multigraph, an American company, moved from Cricklewood and employed 800 people. The largest of the early factories was for Rotax which later became part of Lucas Aerospace and of which I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines. Multicore Solders moved from Slough in 1952; I certainly remember using their product.

Following a further number of smaller companies, the big move was the arrival of Kodak in 1957 with their colour film processing plant. Kodak increased its presence in the town over the years until the move of colour wprocessing to France and Germany in 1985. Another large arrival was Dexion with storage systems. Hastie and Fletcher pause in 1961 to list the industries then represented in the town:

• office machinery
• photographic equipment and materials
• clothing
• paper moulding
• scientific laboratory apparatus
• electronic equipment
• rubberised goods including hot water bottles
• surgical appliances
• accumulators
• printing equipment

1962 witnessed the arrival of a big employer, although not wholly a manufacturer, BP Oil. The American Du Pont company followed as did the Swedish Atlas Copco.

The gradual move to services is evidenced by the arrival of BOC Transhield for the transport of Marks & Spencer food products and the move to higher tech by Honeywell Ltd, Epson, Apple, ACT, Crosfield Electronics and McDonnell Douglas. Crosfield made electronic equipment for the graphic arts industry.

Hastie and Fletcher again pause this time to look at the 1991 census which reveals a total workforce of approximately 65,000 comprising 58% classified as professional, managerial or office based and only 17% working in manufacturing.

A third stage in Hemel's Development followed the closure of Kodak's film processing and also Lucas Aerospace providing sites for Dixons Head Office (then the high street retailer) and the Rank Organisation's leisure business.

Further reading:

• Scott Hastie and Lynne Fletcher, Hemel Hempstead: The story of New Town Development 1947-1997 (Hemel Hempstead: Dacorum Borough Council, 1997)

Welwyn Garden city Manufacturing History

 The founders of Welwyn had the experience of Letchworth Garden City, built some twenty years earlier, to fall back on. Work began in 1920 and the first manufacturing companies soon followed.

Of most enduring importance was Shredded Wheat, a Canadian company which had set up in Britain in 1908 in London's Aldwych. It was said that the company decided to take a considerable chance by moving to the new Garden City. Work started on the first three-storey block in 1924 and really very soon the factory was operating with great success. The business prospered and in 1928 was bought by Nabisco which added further products including Shreddies.

The next name that would become equally well known was Murphy which began in a garage making radios. As I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, demand for radios was strong and so the company grew and by the thirties had five hundred employees producing 33,000 radios a year. By 1939 it was one of the six biggest manufacturers of radios in the world. It was bought by the Rank Organisation in 1962 and in 1969 moved production to Ware and the premises was taken by Rank Xerox with a workforce of 1,400.

Nivea runs a close third. Beiersdorf took premises in Bessemer Road in 1931 and manufactured Nivea products. They then became Herts Pharmaceutical Company before becoming part of Smith + Nephew.

A big win for Welwyn was when they persuaded the American Norton Grinding Wheels to build what was then the largest factory in the town in 1931. Norton prospered in Welwyn until 1982 when manufacturing was moved abroad. Norton was another company bought by the French St Gobain, a former client of mine, and I recall a ceramics plant in Stoke on Trent.

Another American company, Lincoln Electric, began production in Welwyn in 1935. It later became part of GKN.

Under the New Towns Act of 1946, Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield were to be two distinct towns. In practice they are so close as to be a single conurbation. Sir Geoffrey de Havilland moved his aircraft company to Hatfield from Edgware in 1934. It became by a long way that town's largest employer. I tell its story in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. The company was famous for the Mosquito aircraft in the Second World War and the first commercial jet, The Comet, in the fifties.

Plastics came to Welwyn in 1938 when ICI created its Plastics Division and took a 10 acre site in Welwyn. In the next ten years it became the largest producer of plastics in the Commonwealth. In the fifites ICI relocated plastics to the north of England and the Welwyn site refocused on research.

Staying with chemicals, Hoffman La Roche manufactured Redoxin and then Librium and Valium. Smith Kline and French moved from Camberwell in 1939 and built the then tallest building in the town.

Other manufacturers include the Danish Bacon company, Allied Bakeries, Knorr soup and Suchard confectioners.

Further reading:

• Roger Filler, A History of Welwyn Garden City (Chichester: Phillimore, 1986)
• Hatfield and its people Pt 12 The Twentieth Century (The Hatfield WEA, 1964)

Letchworth manufacturing history

 Letchworth Garden City was conceived by Sir Ebenezer Howard who set out his thinking in a book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow. His aim was to combine town and city advantages. Thinking reached reality in 1902 when a company was formed to buy land and lay down designs for the new city. This was at the time of the Arts and Crafts Movement and echoes of the movement were to be found in the new city. There had to be industry providing jobs for the new population. The site chosen was on the railway line from London to Cambridge, but the route to the northern industrial areas was at nearby Hitchin. Many thought that the new town was too far from London and indeed later new towns were nearer. Writing in 2025, it may well be that a position between Cambridge and Oxford may turn out rather well.

Back to Edwardian England. The planning of a brand new conurbation required a return to first principles and the sourcing of water and also the routing of sewerage disposal. In was though 1900 and so a gas works was built. Electricity wasn't ignored but neither was it embraced. A generating station was built which provided for industrial users only DC current at 500 volts. It wasn't until the coming of the national grid in the twenties that the country as a whole adopted AC and standardise the voltage of supply.

The first company attracted to the new town was Idris, the soft drink company which was based in Camden in London. The first industries attracted to the new town were printers. A co-operative group of printers from Leicester set up Garden City Press and Joseph Dent whose company produced Everyman editions which had outgrown their factory based in Bishopsgate in the City of London. WH Smith brought to the town the Arden Press which picked up on the Arts and Crafts connection through the work of Bernard Newdigate and the type style of Eric Gill but also Morris's Kelmscott Press.

It was the time of the early motor car enthusiast and the town attracted the Lacre Motor Company from Long Acre in Covent Garden which built chassis. A successor company went on to produce mechanical road sweepers under the name Shelvoke and Drewry. Phoenix Motor Company came from its base in Finchley. Phoenix hand built beautiful cars each carrying the Phoenix Crest. Sadly with so many other motor companies chasing customers they ceased production in 1928.

The Westinghouse Morose Chain Company set up a factory in 1920 to produce chain drive for vehicles and were bought by Borg Warner after the Second World War. Borg Warner became one of the town's biggest employers and only ceased production after the recession of the 1980s.

Herz and Falk made embroidered textiles and St Edmundsbury Weavers again picked up Arts and Crafts in their handloom produced fabrics for churches, cathedrals, country houses and theatre sets. Another textile related company was created by Californian Leslie Irvin who manufactured parachutes. It was estimated that these had saved 36,000 lives in the Second World War.

One company that was to have big impact on Letchworth was Meredew cabinet makers which also collaborated with Murphy making radios in Welwyn. During the Second World War they made glider panels.

The Spirella Company from the USA had developed a wire spring alternative to bone for corsets and these proved extremely popular to twentieth century's more active woman. They set up in temporary premises in 1910 - huts that had been used to house the workers who carried out of the groundworks for the town. Over the next three years they built a factory complex known as Castle Corset which once again drew on Arts and Crafts design. In time the company recruited an army of sales women who would achieve daily sales of 200,000 in 1950. Later the making of brasiers moved to Harlow and the Letchworth factory focused on surgical corsets.

The K&L company originated with Belgian refugees during the First World War. Led by Jacques Kryn they built a foundry and during the First World War made munitions with a workforce of 3,000. They became part of the Cohen 600 Group and by 1930 claimed they were the best equipped foundry in Britain making carbon steel castings for everything from hydraulic cylinders to bridges and cranes. During the Second World War they made secret miniature submarines. They closed operations in the 80's.

The British Tabulating Company manufactured Hollerinth machines capable of processing numerical data such as census returns. They moved to Letchworth from Lambeth and would employ some 4,000 people in their new factory. In the Second World War they were vital in helping to produce the BOMBE code breaking machines for nearby Bletchley Park. Spirella also worked on assembly. British Tabulating joined with Powers Samas and eventually became International Computers Limited ICL after they were joined by the Ferranti and the English Electric computer businesses. They left Letchworth in 1989.

Letchworth has repurposed unused buildings and is well placed to continue to support the technology sector.

Further reading:

Melvyn Miller, Letchworth Garden City (Stroud: Chalford, 1995)

Chelmsford manufacturing history

 A treat for any amateur industrial archeologist, in 1987 Stanley Wood published a booklet describing Chelmsford Industrial Trail updated by Tony Crosby and Dave Buckley in 2018. This offers the reader a wonderful taste of this late industrial town and I draw upon it in this blog piece, though far from entirely.

Chelmsford was where Marconi first manufactured and I wrote extensively of him and his business in both How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. Just a little earlier Colonel Crompton came to the town following a distinguished military career and bought a local iron works. This is at the heart of the development of electricity in Britain and, again I wrote of it in both books but also the American angle in this blog. There are many other connections with the town which I highlight below. So, to Chelmsford.

It was a Roman town as indeed was neighbouring Colchester. It was an agricultural centre opened up by the Chelmer and Blackwater navigation in 1797 and by the railway in 1843 with the opening of the Brentwood to Colchester line. The London Road Iron works was taken over by Richard Coleman in 1848 and three years later he was among the prize winners at the Great Exhibition. In 1866 the business became Coleman & Morton which produced highly regarded agricultural implements until 1907.

The Anchor Works, which Colonel Crompton bought in 1878, began life as an iron works in 1833 and was later taken over by THP Dennis another agricultural implement maker. Crompton made it a key actor in the electrification of Britain.

It was the coming of electricity and Cromptons which radically changed Chelmsford, not least because in due course its streets were lit by bright electric light. Dynamos needed power to drive them and neighbouring Colchester had James Paxman all too keen to get involved. Steam engines were a competitive market and so Cromptons developed a good number of fruitful relationships. In his Reminiscences he singles out Willans as his chief steam engine collaborator and describes the single generation unit that combined on one platform a dynamo made by Cromptons with a fast steam engine made by Willans & Robinson of Thames Ditton. Cromptons could claim credit for many prestigious installations including Lord Randolph Churchill's house and the Royal Courts of Justice. Of no less importance was the ability to use incandescent lamps in coal mines.

Of possibly as great importance there is a story of Crompton himself inspiring the young Sebastian de Ferranti whose influence in the British electrical engineering industry would exceed that of Crompton and I write of it in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. Whilst Crompton acknowledges his possible influence on Ferranti he spells out the fact that they were on different sides of The Battle of the Systems. I describe that in the USA between Edison and Westinghouse in the blog piece I referred to earler. In Britain it was in London that Ferranti championed high voltage AC current from his Deptford power station, whereas Crompton made money out of more local schemes using a lower voltage DC. Crompton were great adapters.

Cromptons moved to a much larger factory in 1896 whose vast assembly bays enabled the company to build the big generators, transformers and switchgear needed by the new national grid in the twenties. After a period of investment by Armstrong Siddeley, Crompton merged with Parkinson of Leeds to become Crompton Parkinson which would later join their earlier rival Brush becoming part of Hawker Siddeley.

Of interest to me but perhaps less so to Chelmsford, Colonel Crompton was a champion of motorised transport for the army, first in India but then in the First World War. Crompton tells in his Reminiscences his role in the development of the tank. I wrote about the development of the tank in Ordnance but omitted a reference to Crompton in connection with the smaller, faster Whippet. As with so many inventions, there were many hands and brains involved.

The Marriage family had been millers in and around Chelmsford for many years, and in 1898 took the plunge into the twentieth century by building Chelmer Steam Mill with modern rollers rather than millstones.

Ernst Gustav Hoffmann's invention of an automatic lathe for making ball bearings was sufficient incentive for the building, also in 1898, of the Hoffmann Works for the production of ball bearings. In 1970, Hoffmann merged with Ransomes and Marles Bearing Co, a Newark business with a connection with the Ransomes of Ipswich, and the Pollard Ball and Roller Bearing Co of Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire to form RHP plc in Newark on the River Trent in Nottinghamshire.

Guglielmo Marconi at the age of 22, again in 1898, set up in a former mill in Chelmsford the first wireless factory in the world. The mill had worked with silk but closed in 1863 when French imports flooded the market. The mill was revived briefly by Samuel Courtauld of nearby Braintree. For Marconi the beginning was all about wireless communication with ships but it grew to become serious competition to the cable operators. In 1901, he famously transmitted a signal from Poldhu in Cornwall to Signal Hill in Newfoundland. I noted elsewhere that the electricity powering the signal was generated by a Hornsby engine. Marconi developed radio transmission and after the First World War would transmit programmes from Chelmsford to the small number of radio enthusiasts. The formation of the BBC by a group of radio manufacturers including Marconi in 1922 would accelerate the growth of broadcast radio in Britain.

The next Marconi connection with Chelmsford was radar where it manufactured many sets and components before, during and after the Second World War. Related to radar was television and it was the Marconi-EMI system that was adopted by the BBC and subsequent commercial channels. A research facility was built at Great Baddow on the outskirts of the town. The company designed and built studio and broadcast equipment in its New Street factory. The adjacent factory was built for the production magnetrons for radar and after the war was occupied by the English Electric Valve company manufacturing a whole range of electronic tubes. I write at greater length about Marconi and broadcasting in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.

In the postwar era, Marconi became part of English Electric and expanded in aeronautical, marine and broadcasting. English Electric became part of GEC on the breakup of which the Marconi defence business joined with British Aerospace to become BAE Systems which still have a research facility at Great Baddow.

Away from electronics, Britvic opened a new factory in 1955 but moved its headquarters to Hemel Hempstead in 2012 and closed the Chelmsford factory.

The Chelmsford Industrial Trail includes a description of what happened to some of the factories mentioned. Marconi International Marine became a car showroom and Britvic a retail park. The new Marconi factory became a Homebase DIY store. This is a pattern seen in most former industrial towns. We know from the statistics that manufacturing has reduced in size, these specifics bring this home. It is of course brought home much more starkly to those many thousands of men and women who saw their jobs disappear.

Further reading

• W.J. Baker, A History of the Marconi Company (London: Methuen, 1970).
• Stanley Wood, Chelmsford Industrial Trail updated by Tony Crosby and Dave Buckley (Essex Society for Archaeology and History, 1987, 2018)
• R.E. Crompton, Reminiscences (London: Constable & Co, 1928)

Colchester manufacturing history

 Colchester was said to be the first English town, established before 100 BC. It was rebuilt as a model Roman town following the invasion of AD 50 only to be destroyed along with London and Verulamium by Queen Boudicca ten years later. The Romans rebuilt it and it prospered until the Legions left and the Saxons invaded. A settled existence was then eventually enjoyed until the Danes invaded. The town became part of what would become England in the first half of the tenth century only to be disturbed this time by the Normans who left their mark on the town as evidenced by common surnames.

Like so many places, wool trade and wool manufacture formed the bedrock of industry, boosted by refugees from Holland in the sixteenth century. The town gained a reputation for quality textiles. There followed a period of decline when trading took over, the town being well placed for continental trade. Throughout this time, craftsmen in the town became well regarded for their skills at clockmaking. Clockmaking prospered in Colchester and Coventry and many other provincial towns until factory production took over in London and Birmingham. Then, as with so much, clockmaking went overseas.

The 1830s saw the coming into prominence of some of the great mechanical engineers of the East of England. In Greenwich, John Penn owned the largest marine engine business in Britain. There is evidence of regular communication between him and the much younger James Paxman who made agricultural machinery in Colchester. There was a further connection with Robert Ransome in Ipswich. I write more of Penn in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and more of Ransome in my blog on Ipswich. Here the focus is on Paxman.

In his book Steam and the Road to Glory The Paxman Story, Andrew Phillips, acknowledged that by 1865, when Paxman joined with the two Davey brothers, Davey Paxman was one of the smaller manufacturers of steam engines, so dwarfed by Ransome but also by Robey of Lincoln. Electricity changed everything. Dynamos to generate electricity for Swan's incandescent lamp demanded power and in the absence of fast running water, this was provided by all manner of steam engine. Electrical engineers, of which Crompton of Chelmsford was a leader, were spoilt for choice and would use steam engines made by any one the many manufacturers. James Paxton was definitely one and he, I suggest like Joseph Ruston, was very good at nurturing relationships. He got on well with Crompton who would use his steam engines, but not uniquely. Andrew Phillips tells the story of Paxman's big break.

Paris was host to the first electrical exhibition and was followed a year later by one at London's Crystal Palace. James Paxman won a gold medal, but so did six other manufacturers. Exhibitions were the coming thing and a purpose built space had been created in South Kensington, but this could only be fully exploited if open to evening visitors and this required light. Larger manufacturers were reluctant to exhibit again so soon, but James Paxman was at hand and Phillips tells how he met with the Prince of Wales and promised a fully functional system in just ten weeks. He delivered using his energy efficient double expansion engine. In time installations increased in size and Paxman's slower engine began to lose out. The answer was found in the high speed engine developed by J.C. Peach.

Peach had been working with the Thames Ditton firm of Willans and Robinson. On Willans’ untimely death Peach went to work with Musgraves in Bolton. James Paxman had heard of the new engine and sought an opinion from a valued colleague. The opinion was positive and Peach brought his invention to Paxman and the company went on to power a good number of electrical installations.

Paxman’s other mainstay had been winding machine engines for South Africa diamond and gold mines. Like other steam engine manufacturers they embraced the oil engine.

Davey Paxman had moved to a larger site at the Standard Works and their former site was taken by Arthur Mumford who from 1877 manufactured marine pumps. Mumford joined the Weir Group in 1933. In 1887 John Ernest Cohen founded the Colchester Lathe Co which in 1954 would be bought by George Cohen's 600 Group, of which I write more in Vehicles to Vaccines. Colchester Lathe was in competition with the less successful Britannia Engineering whose works were later used by Davey Paxman to make diesel engines in the Second World War.

Davey Paxman was one of the East Anglian companies to join Agricultural Engineering in the thirties from where it entered into a relationship with Ruston and Hornsby; both companies were bought by English Electric in 1966.

Further reading:

• Norman Jacobs, Colchester The Last Hundred Years (Lowestoft: Tyndale Press, 1989)
• Andrew Phillips, Steam and the Road to Glory The Paxman Story (Colchester: Harvey-Benham Charitable Trust, 2002)

Braintree manufacturing history - the story of silk

Like many of its neighbouring towns, Braintree was a weaving town producing heavy Anglian broadcloth. Again, like other towns, it received an influx of Flemish refugees who brought techniques enabling a lighter ‘Brockings’ cloth. A little later Huguenots arrived from France bringing with them skills in silk work. Most went to Spittlefields in east London and one such, George Courtauld, set up a factory in Pebmarsh and later moved to Braintree. It was his son, Samuel, who really began the silk business which would become a world famous textile giant.

Before looking at Courtauld, I took a step back to explore the story of Silk. It was Confucius who recorded the first evidence of this natural luxury material in 2604 BC and of course it was in China that silk worms were fed on the leaves mulberry trees, their cocoons gathered and thrown and silk thread spun for weaving into cloth. Neil Ferguson tells the story of the Princess who, in around 700 AD, stole the secret of silk and took it to neighbouring Khotan. Silk spread throughout Asia and the Romans brought it to Byzantium in time for the advance of Islam to spread silk wherever it invaded. In the thirteenth century, Marco Polo brought the secret to Venice where thrived. It prospered too in Catalonia and Lyon, the latter so much so that the King handed to the town a monopoly. James I wanted a silk industry in Britain and imported mulberry trees which grew well. There is an ancient mulberry tree in the grounds of the old Bishops Palace in Lincoln which each year would produce fruit for my wife to collect. Sadly the silk worms struggled in the cold climate. This did not put off my father whose boyhood hobby at the turn of the twentieth century was breeding silk worms in his south London bedroom; his uncle had a mulberry tree in his garden from which my father would gather leaves for his hungry worms. I tell that story in Dunkirk to D Day.

Despite the unsuitability of the British climate for silk worms, it was perfect for spinning and weaving. The coming of the Hugenots brought skills and many settled. The industry grew in London, East Anglia, Macclesfield, Congleton, Derby and Coventry with ribbons. This British industry needed protection from imported cloth and this too was forthcoming. The Industrial Revolution brought mechanisation to the industry which thrived until free trade open the flood gates to imports. Nearby Sudbury is now home to the remaining British silk weavers.

But back to Courtauld and Braintree...

In the first volume of his Courtaulds A Social and Economic History, D.C. Coleman delights his reader with the complexities of family and business relationships that led to Samuel being born in America and then spending the years from 1807 to 1816 getting into and out of the business of silk. Twelve years of trial and error then passed until in 1828 the firm of Courtauld, Taylor and Courtauld was formed. This went from silk to crepe silk for mourning dress on the death of Prince Albert to the world of artificial fibres and beyond. I write of Courtaulds in the context of the textile story in both How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.

Crittall Windows were another Braintree firm to arrive on the national stage. As was the case elsewhere, it was the First World War which marked the step change for Crittall. In 1905, they had moved into a large new factory employing 500 men. By 1918, they employed 2,000 men and women, having spent the war years on munitions work. The mass production techniques learnt from this work enabled the mass production of metal windows. These were to be found in famous buildings including the BBC at Portland Place, the Shell-Mex building on the Strand and London County Hall. The company fell into the clutches of Slater Walker but then found a home in the Norcros building products group before regaining independence through a management buyout. Crittall now manufacture in nearby Witham.

Further reading:

• D.C. Coleman, Courtaulds A Social and Economic History Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969)
• John Marriage, Braintree & Brocking (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)
• Neil Ferguson, A History of the World in a Hundred Objects
• http://www.silk.org.uk/history.php

 

Ipswich manufacturing history

 Ipswich was a major port in the time before Hull and Liverpool took up the strain of the industrial revolution. It was not, however, without industry, not least some shipbuilding. The east of England was wool country and both traded wool and manufactured from it.

Nearby Sutton Hoo revealed evidence of the Anglo Saxon world of which East Anglia was very much part with trading relationships with the Nordic national but also France and through to the Mediterranean and beyond.

The agricultural revolution was the turning point, especially in the latter part where farmers struggling to feed a hungry nation turned to mechanisation in their fields.

In Ipswich it was a man named Robert Ransome who was a Quaker and set up a foundry in an old malting in Ipswich in 1789. He was the son of Richard Ransome, a school master from Wells, and had served an apprenticeship with an iron monger in Norwich. It was a time when ideas were being explored for tools for the better use of land. The choice of Ispwich is interesting for the town had been suffering from the loss of the wool trade to other centres. Ipswich was, though, on the route taken by colliers and so had an ample supply of coal. Ransome's first major invention appeared in 1803 where he observed that molten iron coming into contact with a cold surface would quickly become very hard, something he adapted to the plough share making it in effect self sharpening. From this beginning he went on to develop a plough with separate interchangeable parts which gave it excellent adaptability for all kinds of land. The business prospered despite the ups and downs of the economy.

Robert took his two sons into partnership just as the agricultural depression of the early nineteenth century hit. Diversification was the order of the day and the partnership entered into a contract with the celebrated civil engineer William Cubit and extended their product range to cast bridge sections to replace Stokes bridge in Ipswich which had been destroyed. A further diversification with a much longer future for the company was grass cutting machinery.

In 1836 a young chemist, Charles May, joined the business and this accompanied a further major diversification into production for the railway boom and the work force grew to 1,000. Ipswich was now also linked by the railway to London and the north. The railway work was spilt into a new company, Ransome & Rapier, and the agricultural business continued with frequent diversifications not least into steam engines as Ransome & May. Charles May joined a London firm following the Great Exhibition at which they exhibited and the company became Ransome and Sims; Jeffries would follow later. The company developed a close relationship with the new agricultural regions of Russia and an export trade more generally. In the years up to the First World War the workforce seldom fell below 1,500.

The first half of the twentieth century saw the introduction of the internal combustion engine and the development of the grass cutting business. In the First World War the Stokes Mortar was invented by Sir Wilfred Scott-Stokes chairman of Ransome & Rapier and I write of this in Ordnance. Ransome Sims & Jefferies built aeroplanes and employed some 5,000 men and women. After the war RSJ switched its efforts to battery vehicles and trucks for factory use and fork lift trucks figured largely in its work in the Second World War. Ransome & Rapier diversified away from railways into cranes, water control gates and earth moving machinery. Grass cutting equipment is still produced under the Ransomes name.

Of course it wasn't just Ransomes. The Manganese Bronze & Brass Company built a foundry and extrusion plant in Ipswich producing high-duty brass and bronze alloys much for naval use.

Reavell & Company made compressors, one use of which was in conjunction with the engines made by Dr Diesel injecting fuel. Another use was in gas distribution and in experimental work with atomic energy. Reavells later became part of Compair of Slough.

E.R. & F. Turner manufactured portable steam engines and roller-mills for flour. Turners became part of Agricultural and General Engineers of which Bull Motors were also a part and which had moved its manufacturing to Ipswich. This comprised electric motors and generators, more specifically super-silent motors and battery powered motors for passenger vehicles. In the First World War, Turner’s expertise in rollers was put to good use in developing a lathe to manufacture shell cases. The same was used in the Second World War until American machine tools took over. Turners then focused on electric motors. With the advent of combine harvesters, Turners skills at seed cleaning came in. Turners acquired Christy Hunt of Scunthorpe and the enlarged company still manufactures in Ipswich under the name Christy Turner. The Bull Motors business eventually became part of Hawker Siddeley.

The chemical company Fisons exploited the development of super-phosphates as fertiliser from the invention by J.B. Lawes of Barking in 1839. Fisons as such only came into being a century later as the fragmented East Anglian fertiliser industry slowly gathered eventually focusing on a plant on Cliff Quay in Ipswich where it produced the sulphuric acid and superphosphate required for the fertiliser.

Cocksedge & Co was a company that combined construction (which continues to this day and here is a link) and mechanical engineering of which the most prodigious was production for two world wars. The company produced temporary bridges, Bailey Bridges and adapted tanks to carry massive bridge sections. In terms of tanks, they cast turrets weighing 3.5 tons and devised a method of carrying and laying temporary roadway for tanks following the invasion of Europe. They also carried out ship repairs. In peacetime that had produce heavy cutting machinery to process sugar beat.

Further reading:

• The History of Engineering in Ipswich (Ipswich: The Ipswich Engineering Society)
• D.R. Grace and D.C. Phillips, Ransomes of Ipswich A History of the firm and guide to its records (Institute of Agricultural History, 1975)
• Carol and Michael Weaver, Ransomes A Bicentennial Celebration, 1989