Britain shaped the manufacturing world. A bold assertion, but is it true? My book How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World seeks to answer this question. The next question is what happened to British manufacturing? The result of my quest to find answers to that question is in Vehicles to Vaccines. I am now exploring Manufacturing places.
The Rennies were a Scots family that epitomises the connectivity of civil and mechanical engineering.
I begin, though, with the father of civil engineering, John Smeaton, who is best known for rebuilding the Eddystone Lighthouse during which he discovered that the property of hardening whilst submerged in water was linked to the clay content of the cement. In 1824, a Leeds stonemason, Joseph Aspdin, took this a stage further and invented a method of making from limestone and clay a cement which he called Portland Cement given the similarity in colour between it and Portland stone.
Smeaton, born in 1724 in Austhorpe near Leeds, began as a mathematical instrument maker, as did James Watt. Smeaton then went on to design some sixty water and wind mills. He pioneered the use of cast iron pipes. His civil engineering projects included canals and bridges. He founded the engineering society which became the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Thomas Telford was younger born in 1757 near Lockerbie. He began as a stone mason working on Somerset House in London and then a number of restoration projects. He is know for many civil engineering masterpieces.
The Menai suspension bridgeThe Caledonian canal
He built some 1,200 miles of well drained roads in Scotland. He built the Ellesmere canal and worked on many harbours and bridges. He championed the use of Roman cement, the forerunner to Portland.
John Rennie senior was born in East Lothian in 1761 and was soon fascinated by all things mechanical. He worked for Andrew Meikle a millwright who invented the mechanical thresher. He attended the University of Edinburgh and then set off to explore canals. He was introduced by his university professor to James Watt and went to work for Boulton & Watt, his first project being the installation of steam engines at the Albion flour mills in Southwark. From there he set up his own business making food manufacturing machinery.
Canal mania caught up with him and he produced magnificent civil engineering structures including the Caen Hill flight of locks on the Kennet and Avon canal. He went on to design docks including the East and West India docks and bridges including Waterloo and Southwark bridge.
His son George took over the mechanical engineering side of the business eventually becoming fascinated by the mechanics of the screw propellor and he built a number of ships so powered for the navy
The civil engineering business was left to his son John who completed his father’s projects including London Bridge. He went on to design major drainage projects and was involved with railway building. He became president of the ICE in 1845 and received a knighthood for his services.
Both sons were part of the G and J Rennie shipbuilding yard at Greenwich.
John senior’s youngest son was named Matthew Boulton Rennie perhaps underlining the connections.
Iron ore was smelted by burning charcoal in the Weald and as forests were denuded, smelting spread to other forested areas. Eventually it became clear that an alternative to charcoal was needed. The Earl of Dudley's son 'Dud' claimed to have smelted iron ore with coal but there is no evidence of this. Dud was born in 1599 and Abraham Darby in 1678 both close to Dudley Castle. Abraham's father was a nail-maker and locksmith and so it is almost certain that Abraham would have been aware of Dud's experiments. He was certainly aware that an alternative to charcoal had to be found.
Abraham was apprenticed to Jonathan Freeth, a maker of malt mills in Birmingham. Of great significance the fuel used to make malt mills was coke which provided the heat of coal but without the impurities. Once free, Abraham made his way to Bristol where he set up as a malt mill maker where he soon joined forces with a fellow Quaker to form the Bristol Brass Wire Company where he further advanced his metal casting skills.
Possibly because of his Quaker upbringing, Abraham had a strong social conscience and he would see possibly most of the population of Bristol too poor to buy the pot bellied cooking vessels he cast from brass. Something cheeper was needed. There started his experiments smelting iron ore with coke. I tell more in my piece on Coalbrookdale where he established his business. His cooking vessels became very popular as did his much larger vessel for heating quantities of water, known as coppers after the material from which they were first made.
Why is that the English struggle so to embrace change? It was clear to Abraham that one reason for Dud's failure was the resistance of smiths to pig iron smelted with coal. Abraham found that pig iron smelted with coke was met by the same resistance. He was blessed with wisdom and decided not to fight the smiths, but rather to focus on casting, where his skills lay. The core business was the casting of cooking pots of all sizes for which he made a variety of moulds. In time the more adventurous smith would take his pig iron and find that it was entirely suitable. It would not be until Henry Cort at Fareham and his puddling process that production of wrought iron really took off.
Abraham Darby died at the age of thirty-nine in 1717. There followed a succession of Darbys for the next one hundred and fifty years. Abraham Darby had unlocked the industrial revolution now that large quantities of iron could be produced. In time wrought iron would be perfected and in due course be super-ceded by steel. Iron enabled the building of steam power, railways, bridges and so much more.
A Newcomen engine was erected near Dudley in 1712 and by 1716 'fire engines' as they were known were at work in Warwick, Stafford and Flint. Coalbrookdale cast their first iron pipes in 1718 and their first cylinder four years later. Iron cylinders were cheaper than those made of brass and could be much bigger. A large cylinder was cast for Killingworth High Pit where George Stephenson worked. James Watt used Coalbrook cylinders as did Trevithick who also benefitted from cast iron rails. Thomas Telford was inspired by Coalbrook casting and Dr Roebuck at Carron modelled his works on the Coalbrookdale example.
Further reading
L.T.C. Rolt, Great Engineers (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1962)
George Stephenson was born in 1781 into a mining community just inland of Newcastle near Wylam on the Tyne where his father worked as a fireman at the colliery. They lived with George's mother, Mabel the daughter of a dyer, and two younger brothers and sisters in Street House only yards from the wagon way which transported coal from the pit. He was thus attuned to the unremitting life of mining families. The family moved from place to place as was the life of coal as mines were sunk, exploited and exhausted.
George grew up wiry and muscular and worked on a farm before becoming assistant fireman to his father. There is no evidence of much formal education, but George was gifted with things mechanical. At age seventeen he was given charge of a pumping engine erected by Robert Hawthorne, later a famous railway engineer. Here George became friendly with William Locke whose famous engineer son Joseph would be one of George's later apprentices.
George married Frances Henderson in 1802 and a year later their only child Robert was born. George was now a brakesman at Willington on Hawthorn's recommendation. Here he met William Fairbairn and took on clock repairs in his spare time. Tragedy stuck when Fanny died soon after childbirth in 1805.
George was intent on improvement and took arithmetic at night classes. His chance came when the pumping engine at Killingworth was failing to clear the pit. George quickly identified the problem and his offer to try to rectify it was accepted. Success built George's reputation and he was appointed engineer at Killingworth and he gained ad hoc worked from many nearby pits. He was earning well and invested in Robert's education.
We now come to the inventions attributed to both father and son. The story is though the same as elsewhere in the history I have tried to write, no single person can claim or indeed should claim the whole credit. This is not the picture of a scientist in a laboratory crying eureka, but of engineers working day in day out on the machinery used in daily work. It is natural that the more inventive will come up with ideas for ways to 'do things better'. We can think of spinners and weavers of wool. With George Stephenson, one such was the practical challenge of having light underground that did not ignite escaping gas. The eminent scientists Humphrey Davy had been sent off to his laboratory to work out a solution. George took a candle and something that looked like a table lamp down into the most dangerous part of the most dangerous mine and by trial and error eventually found a lamp that seemed to work safely. To cut a long story short, they both emerged with a solution at about the same time; Davy's became the better known. The term Geordie, is attributed to George and his lamp.
I have written elsewhere of the challenge of pumping mines clear of water, with the names Newcomen and Watt; indeed I have also described one of George's successes with such machinery. Now George Stephenson had his sights set on locomotion powered by steam. It was hardly surprising that others were exploring the same challenge which all mine owners faced and it was the mine owners who would pay but only if they saw a clear benefit.
In 1804, Richard Trevithick attempted locomotion on the Merthyr Tydfil railway in the South Wales coalfield. He used a single piston and flywheel, but found that the power produced was insufficient to cope with the weight of the engine.
Problems remained to be solved. Locomotives were too heavy for the existing oak rails and did not promise enough benefit for them to be replaced. So yet more power was needed and weight needed to be reduced or at least more widely distributed. Bogies were added with some success.
In 1811, John Blenkinsop patented a mechanism something akin to a rack and pinion. He engaged the engineering firm of Fenton, Murray and Wood, and used steam engines with two cylinders working cranks at right angles to each other. It was a success. Blenkinsop wrote that, ‘an engine with two eight-inch cylinders weighing five tons, drew twenty-seven waggons, weighing ninety-four tons, up an ascent of two inches in the yard; when lightly loaded, it travelled at ten miles an hour, did the work of sixteen horses in twelve hours, and cost £400’.
Blenkinsop was followed by other inventors exploring variations on his theme, and Blenkinsop himself installed his engines at a number of collieries including at Wylam, the 'Dilly'.
George was working with the installation of static engines and had been experimenting with differing boiler set ups. The problem remained a lack of power. Where Stephenson advanced on the work of Blenkinsop was that the railway was laid with cast iron edge rails and the locomotive, the Bulcher, had flanged wheels with power direct to them rather than for example to a rack and pinion.
The Northumberland coalfield was well served by the Tyne and the pit railways running to it. Not so the Durham field and so attention turned to a possible canal, iron plated tram route or railway from Darlington through to Stockton. The pit owners favoured the latter, after all the fuel would be free. They approached George Overton who had worked with Trevithick at Merthyr Tydfil. He in turn sought to work with the Newcastle Iron masters who had build Stephenson's locomotives. The project stalled and Stephenson was approached by the Middlesborough businessman Edward Pease. They, together with George’s son Robert, still onlt twenty, put forward a scheme to Parliament which received approval. Work began. The project lacked an iron master to build locomotives and this gave birth to Robert Stephenson & Co which produced the four vehicles needed. In addition there were two static engines to pull the trains up two steep inclines; there was also to be a section where horsepower was used.
The line was opened to huge crowds and much anxiety on 27 September 1825. Thereafter it did its job but not without challenges.
A name comes into the story, now, which is perhaps lesser known, that of Timothy Hackworth ‘an ingenious mechanic’. He was manager of the works department of the new line and was thus in the perfect position to see problems as they arose and then fix them. Railways were always going to progress by learning on the job. In due course Hackworth persuaded the directors to allow him to develop an engine ‘after his own design’, which was, inevitably, a variation on the existing themes.
The new engine soon made those of Blenkinsop and Stephenson redundant, but still did not satisfy demands. The final twist in the early story of steam railways came with the Liverpool and Manchester railway, and it was the demands of cotton traders, led by corn merchant Joseph Sandars, that brought George Stephenson back into the picture. Manchester mills were transporting tons of cotton goods to the port of Liverpool by canal which took some thirty-six hours and which was expensive. What was needed was a steam railway.
Robert Stephenson left England for Columbia perhaps following in the footsteps of Richard Trevithic who spent some years in Peru working for mining companies because the English had banned his his pressure boiler as being too dangerous. Robert's absence left his father without his right hand man and when a Manchester to Liverpool railway was mooted, the directors turned to the Scot Rennie. Rennie was not a team player and his proposal fell apart. Other engineers were tried and eventually George was appointed.
George Stephenson planned the rail route to Liverpool, which included sixty-four bridges and viaducts along thirty-five miles of track. Without Robert by his side, the project faltered. Eventually, Robert returned but with his focus on his locomotive building company. George struggled especially with money where his lenders expressed their dissatisfaction by withholding funds. They apppointed Thomas Telford to report to them on the state of the project. George, for ever a proud man, reluctantly accepted the recommendations of Britain's top civil engineer and the project continued until it came to the choice of power.
The directors were far from convinced by locomotives and favoured static engines and ropes. This was where George's character came into play. He was convinced that the railway locomotive was the answer on many grounds which he argued patiently. Even when the directors eventually relented, they insisted on three alternative locomotives including one by Hackworth. The three competed over a tough test and George’s Rocket won easily.
It was thought more likely that his son, Robert, designed and built his “Rocket”, ‘by the happy combination of the multi-tubular boiler and the steam-blast, Mr Robert Stephenson succeeded in producing an engine far superior to any previously built in point of speed and efficiency.’ Heavy rails were laid at considerable cost and, with heavier locomotives, ‘the superiority of the railway system to every other mode of conveyance was placed beyond question’.
Following the ground breaking Manchester to Liverpool railway, a number of smaller lines were built, some by the Stephensons. Robert Stephenson & Co were busy building locomotives for use on the growing number of railways across the world. It was far from plain sailing as landowners, coach operators, road builders and canal operators all opposed the iron beast. It was though here to stay.
The London Birmingham railway was the next major project and there were differences between the London committee and that of Birmingham, in addition to the opposition ranks already mentioned. The route also had challenging geology. What it didn't have was poor project management. George had lobbied hard for his son to be appointed and Robert had learnt from Thomas Telford and Locke, and from his father's mistakes, the importance of planning and clear delegation. The line was divided into four each with its own engineer reporting to Robert. The grand entrance to Euston Station was an appropriate monument to northern grit as displayed by the Stephensons.
Robert did have a further legacy in mind. As is apparent, railways are about much more than locomotives. Bridges are not only vital components but works of genius in their own right. Robert’s bridge over the Menai straits is a classic example. There were to be two bridges one at Conway and one rather longer a mile from Telford's suspension bridge. Robert had learnt a painful lesson from the Dee Bridge disaster after which he abandoned cast iron in favour of wrought iron sheets brought together to make long rectangular tubes through which the trains would run. These were both cumbersome and heavy and had to be fabricated on site and then floated adjacent to the pillars on which they would sit and then lifted into place by hydraulic presses. Sounds easy. Add currents and wind and the task becomes monumental.
The stone structure of Stephenson’s bridge is still in use
Following a substantial fire in 1970, the tubular girders were removed as they were deemed to have become structurally instable due to the heat of the blaze. The bridge was reconstructed and now features two decks, the lower one still allowing trains to cross the Menai Strait, while the top carries the A55 road.
Further reading:
L.T.C. Rolt, George and Robert Stephenson - the Railway Revolution (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1960)
The West Country, Cornwall in particular, was where deep mines were first sunk, in search of metals rather than coal. The problem with depth was the water table which meant that mines would flood. To begin with, pumps were powered by animals or water and windmills. Something more powerful was needed and in stepped first Savery and then Newcomen.
Thomas Newcomen was born in Dartmouth in 1663. He became an iron monger, the title given to anyone making and selling iron goods. Some of his customers were quite probably Cornish tin miners and he saw at first hand the challenge presented by flooding. He would probably have seen the crude pump produced by Thomas Savery, a fellow Devonian, which had been nicknamed the 'miner's friend'.
In 1712, Thomas Newcomen made the vital breakthrough of the invention of the atmospheric steam powered pump which meant that mines could go even deeper. The Newcomen engine did not rotate in the way we think of steam engines on railways for example; it was static and relied on the production of a vacuum, under a piston sliding in the cylinder, to raise the water using atmospheric pressure. We can visualise this by thinking of some of the massive beam engines that have been preserved. These engines were soon employed in many mines.
Newcomen's engine relied upon atmospheric pressure and the cooling of the piston between strokes. James Watt made the vital step forward by adding a separate condenser meaning that the piston had no need to cool, thereby saving fuel.
Richard Trevithick was born near Camborne in Cornwall in 1771 just two years after Watt's invention of the condenser. His father, also Richard, was a mine 'captain', that is the mine's manager whose responsibilities included pumps which would have comprised some Newcomen and an increasing number of the more efficient Watt versions. Either way they were all beam engines. The young Richard had attended the local school but excelled neither in ability or enthusiasm; Richard loved the mines and their machines. He was an engaging man and physically extremely strong. As I tell in my blog on Camborne, the Cornish mine owners resented the need to pay Watt royalties for his invention and so many sought ways round the use of the condenser. It was Richard who found it in the 'high pressure' engine.
At the age of only nineteen, Richard was working with pumps in Cornish mines and was discovering improvements. These led him to London and the patent office where he met Davies Gilbert, a scientist, who would become a lifelong friend and collaborator. It was to Gilbert he took his invention of the high pressure engine, but it was Gilbert who found that the engine could power a locomotive on land. The issue was whether wheels would slip; Gilbert believed that friction would largely prevent this. Consequently Trevithick built at Camborne a locomotive powered by his high pressure engine in 1801; it was the first such in the world. A successor engine was tried on iron rails at Penydaren in South Wales in 1804 and a further version was on public display in London in 1808.
For Trevithick this was but a part of his prodigious output. He was also boring brass cannon, crushing stone, powering the bellows of blast furnaces, rolling mills and forge hammers. He adapted his engine to power the paddle wheels of a barge. I wrote of the Thames Tunnel in relation to Brunel. Trevithick was one of those first attempted the project. Although he didn't succeed he left the legacy of the idea of tunnelling using iron cylinder sections. In relation to steam engines he invented the Cornish boiler and building on this the Cornish engine. In both cases he continued to pursue the goal of efficiency.
In 1816 Trevithick sailed for Peru where miners were finding that atmospheric engines didn't work at altitude. The time he spent in South America although eventful was not productive and in 1827 he returned to Cornwall a poor man. He was as inventive as ever but the world had moved on. Stephenson's Rocket was soon to set the standard for steam locomotives. Other engineers were becoming more businesslike. Trevithick's final project was the design of a 1,000 ft iron tower to mark the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. Sadly it was never built. Richard died at Dartford on 22 April 1833. His widow who had supported him through thick and thin survived him by therty years.
Further reading:
James Hodge, Richard Trevithick (Princess Risborough: Shire Publications, 1973)
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.
