Alastair Pilkington - Pilkington and Float Glass

 In Vehicles to Vaccines I named as my construction hero Alastair Pilkington, another Cambridge graduate of Mechanical Sciences. Readers may recall Kelvin Bray in the context of energy. This second graduate was a little older, having served during the Second World War and returned to complete his degree. His name was Pilkington, but he was only very distantly related to the family owning the glass manufacturer. He was discovered by a family member exploring family trees, was interviewed and employed. He rose quickly. His massive contribution was in the invention of the float glass process.

I need to take a step back to 1795 and the birth of Richard Pilkington and 1800 when his brother William was born. Their father William came from Horwich and had moved to become apprenticed to a St Helens doctor. After a spell at St George's Hospital in London he returned to set up in practice, but also as a purveyor of wines and spirits, then not uncommon for doctors.

Dr Pilkington retired in 1826 and his two young sons set up the St Helens Crown Glass Company. They knew nothing of glass making and so hired experienced glassmakers John and Thomas Bell. Peter Greenall of the brewing family and William's brother-in-law joined them as an investor. by 1837 the business was performing well enough to dispense with wines and spirits. The Bells had left some time before and Greenall withdrew in 1847.

The company was renamed Pilkington Brothers was switched from crown glass to sheet glass and by 1860, together with Chance Brothers and one other, made 75% of all the window glass in the country.

The next generation of Pilkington to run the company was Richard's son William, born 1839, who is regarded as responsible for making Pilkington one of the most technically advanced glass companies in the world. He was followed by his sons Austin and Cecil both educated at public school (Shrewsbury) and university (Oxford). Of these Cecil was very much hands on. They saw the company through the recession of the twenties and, true to their religious convictions, set up a displaced glass makers compensation fund and a staff superannuation scheme - very much ahead of its time.

Harry Pilkington, Austin's son, became the very visible fourth generation driving force of the company which he joined in 1927. Changes in management style had been introduced and I wrote about these in relation to Ronald Weeks. Harry worked alongside another family member, Douglas Phelps, who handled day to day business leaving Harry to engage with the wider world.

Alastair Pilkington joined the company in 1947 and is renowned for his invention of float glass. He became deputy chairman in 1971 and chairman from 1973 to 1980. Anthony Pilkington, great great grandson of the founder Richard took the chair and steered the company through challenging years taking the chair of the St Helens Trust which was among the first local enterprise agencies to create jobs for those losing jobs in the company. Pilkington had employed 32,000 people in 1973, reducing to 6,500 in 1986. Anthony retired in 1995 bringing to an end the family leadership. I write of the final years of the company in Vehicles to Vaccines.

You can explore my attempt to answer the question, Who Built Britain, in this link.

Further reading:

Leyland, Brian, St Helens the Great and the Good (Bowdon: Stellar Books, 2018)

Take a look at my Who Built Britain blog

My exploration into British manufacturing kept bumping into wonderful buildings and structures. I needed to discover Who Built Britain  

  Building is in my blood; my mother's family ran a Midlands building company for ninety-nine years having previously been itinerant craftsmen. I remember with huge affection childhood visits to the 'yard'.

My last employment before I retired was as Chief Executive of Lincoln Cathedral where I learnt something of stone masons and the way medieval cathedrals were built. Most recently, I have been exploring the history of British manufacturing and the places where it took place. This brought me close to the building of mills, factories and urban housing, over a period spanning three centuries or so.

I needed to try to understand how it was all built and indeed who built it. 

This research is about Britain and so the story of early English Building is relevant background and a good place to start. It will be my next post.

My next point of call is Rome. Roman architecture stands out because of the variety of materials used and structures built, but most of all because modern building from the Renaissance onward looked to Rome for both theoretical and practical ideas.

I go on from there to look at traditional building materials: wood, stone and brick. Glass comes next, linking the old to the new.

This is very much a work in progress. I hope you will join me in my quest. I plan to post further blogs in the coming weeks. 

I explore classes of building; churches and military buildings starting with castles; church building over ten centuries consumed more labour, money and materials than any other form of building.

The sixteenth century, the Tudor and Elizabethan eras, marked a change in attitude as the English become confident and developed a tendency to show off. So, I move on to the great Country Houses and Urban Houses for the Wealthy and Merchant and, later, Middle Classes. The individual blog pieces take urban building in particular further forward.

As the eighteenth century draws to a close I come to Industrial Buildings which run hand in hand with Urban Dwellings for the poor who fled to the towns from deplorable Rural Dwellings.

I then explore the contractors who first emerged in the nineteenth century. They run hand-in-hand with new building materials: Steel and Concrete and the exploration of non-traditional building methods and materials. In addition to houses, they did of course build hospitals, schools, civic buildings, places of entertainment and infrastructure for transporting the nation.

The image is of the interior of one of the oldest buildings in Britain, the Broch of Mousa on Shetland dating from 2,500 BCE.

The Weston family and Associated British Food

 Garfield Weston set his family company on course to become the anchor-man of British food manufacturing. The company is now called Associated British Food.

Canadian Willard Garfield Weston was born in 1898, his father had emigrated to Canada and created a baking business there. In 1934, Weston moved to England and founded Allied Bakeries which introduced sliced white bread to the English. He also bought the prestigious Fortnum and Mason. The business prospered and he gave generously to the war effort including £100,000 to built 16 Hurricane and Spitfire Aircraft.

He bought Ryvita in 1947 and appointed his second son Gary to run it. Gary left Ryvita for Australia in 1952 and set up Weston Biscuit Company which he grew into a successful business. He invented the Wagon Wheel.

In 1960, Allied Bakeries changed its name to Associated British Foods with the objective of diversifying. In 1963, it acquired the Fine Fair Supermarket chain and in 1967 set up Primark in Dublin. At this point Gary returned to take over from his father. He looked to refocus on food and sold Fine Fare, whilst retaining Primark.

The 1980s saw investment in bakery ingredients. In 1991, the company had built a sufficiently large war chest to buy British Sugar Corporation (BSC) from the family owned Beresfords, which in turn opened the opportunity to move into animal feed using the by-products of sugar. BSC produced sugar from home grown beat; Tate & Lyle used imported sugar cane.

Forever seeking opportunity, ABF moved into ingredients before adding Ovaltine to Twinings. Further acquisitions saw moves into world foods with Patak and Elephant Atta flour, and into health foods with Jordans and Dorset Cereals joining Ryvita.

Gary gave much of his wealth to the Garfield Weston Foundation with funds of £1 billion which supports the built heritage and much more.

In 1994 he reorganised his group creating Wittington Investments. In 1999 he stepped down on the grounds of illhealth. He died in 2002.

He was succeeded by Peter Jackson and then in 2005 by George Weston. ABF now operates in fifty six countries.

Wittington Investments bought the Boots chemists chain in 2026.