Inner London manufacturing history

 London does of course reach back into Roman times if not earlier. By 1700 it had a population estimated at 575,00 which grew to 900,000 a century later. It was by far the largest urban area in Britain having attracted migrants from neighbouring rural areas in search of work. In these early days inner London overlapped to the East and to the South.

Trade

London was wealthy largely as a result of international trade which flowed through the Port of London. I write in this link of the role of merchant adventurers. The types of imports and exports reveal an astonishing variety. Fine cotton garments and indigo dye from India, tea from China, ivory from Africa, gold and silver from south America, sugar from the Caribbean. Exports were needed to exchange for these goods, so London’s craftsmen made metal items of beauty and utility. The major export though was wool.

The Thames, from early times, was home to shipbuilders and I wrote of the companies and the ships they built in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. Ships were built both for trading and for warfare, and yards on the Thames built both.

In spite of a massive growth in the volume of trade, the 'legal docks' had remained largely as they had been in the time of Elizabeth I - a stretch of quays between London Bridge and the Tower of London, although a further area of river frontage on the south bank had been added and ships were often unloaded by lightermen whilst at anchor in the centre of the river. The congestion would not be relieved until 1790 and I write about this when looking at East London.

The huge variety of goods traded attracted manufacturing activity.

Spitalfields

In the sixteenth century and probably long before, wool had been the backbone of the English economy. It is estimated that mid century nearly one fifth of the working population was employed in the manufacture of woollen cloth. London was by far the largest centre of population and so attracted a good share of the industry. I write below of later division of labour, but cloth production had seen this from early days not least with the distinction between spinning and weaving, but also dyeing and fulling and other processes. Rural areas surrounding London played their part especially with spinning.

In the late sixteenth century Margaret of Anjou encouraged silk workers to come to Spitalfields from her native Lyon and so began the English silk trade of which I wrote in my blog on Braintree.

The introduction of the knitting frame transformed the manufacture of hosiery and this mattered in eighteenth century London which had a growing middle class which was both fashion conscious and keen to display conspicuous wealth. With hosiery, the colour had to be exactly right. Much framework knitting took place in the Midlands where wage costs were lower and I write about this in my blogs on Leicester and Nottingham, but London held on to the fashionable end.

Fashion attracted retail outlets from regional manufacturers. Josiah Wedgewood set a shop in in Grosvenor Square and another in Greek Street in Soho. Matthew Boulton chose Pall Mall to display his 'buttons, buckles, saucepans, candlesticks and snuff boxes'.

Jerry White in London in the 19^th Century highlights the degree of division of labour in London manufacturing. I have positively eulogised about Birmingham’s workshop system. White suggests that London took this a stage further with the skilled making of an item broken down into a great many simple steps in which an unskilled person could be trained. These people would often work in their own home for many hours to scrape a living from truly mindless work. I wonder whether it was this that John Ruskin was critiquing when he wrote of his concerns of industrialisation in his writings on political economy, such as Unto the Last. Textiles would seem to have been a prime but far from solitary example with silk spinning and weaving carried out in Spitalfields but also garment making with the process subdivided many times over. White suggests that there were 250,000 textile workers in inner London in 1901. I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World of the plight of textile workers in Spitalfields in the early nineteenth century. Stephen Inwood uses the term 'sweated system' to describe the division of a skill into a number of unskilled processes thereby exploiting the large number of unskilled people flocking to London in the nineteenth century. He quotes some people as suggesting that this system achieved greater productivity then the clothing industry in - say - Leeds which took advantage of machinery.

Clerkenwell and Finsbury

Richard Tames in Clerkenwell and Finsbury Past writes of the sheer diversity of manufacturers. There were book binders and makers of book binding machines, manufacturers of addressing machines and ever pointed pencils, printers who specialised in railway tickets, a gilder who specialised in book edges.

Clerkenwell had some 7,000 people working in watch making in 1790; the process becoming increasingly subdivided. Of particular interest to me, the skills of watch making developed into mathematical, optical and surgical instruments in the Strand and Fleet Street; my great grandfather made surgical instruments at No 62 The Strand for Weiss & Co. At the end of the nineteenth century, there were 1,000 employees making cartridges at the Eley factory in Clerkenwell. Eley later joined 29 other companies in Nobel Industries Limited.

Furniture making for the aristocracy and growing middle class received a boost with the arrival of Huguenot and Dutch crafts men in the 1680s. Exotic woods were being imported from America and the West Indies: Walnut, rosewood, deal, satinwood, and mahogany and London became Europe's top manufacturer of fine furniture. Clerkenwell was home to Hepplewhite's furniture workshop; Chippendale had been in St Martin's Lane. Less well known but still highly skilled makers produced furniture in Mayfair for the well to do.

The growing population needed feeding and here mechanisation found a foothold in milling and brewing. Feeding the brain mattered too; William Caxton established the first printing press in Westminster in 1476. Printing and book binding prospered in the environs of Fleet Street.

Further reading

• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)
• Richard Tames, Clerkenwell and Finsbury Past (London: Historical Publications, 1999)
• The Finsbury Story (London: Pyramid Press, 1960)
• John Richardson, A History of Camden (London: Historical Publications, 2000)

Yeovil manufacturing history

 Yeovil’s traditional industry was glove making from locally sourced hides. It was a substantial industry with the final glove factory closing only in 1989.

Continuing the agricultural theme, the St Ivel brand of cheese was produced by Western Counties Creameries.

Mechanisation did not pass the town by and at the end of the nineteenth century, James Petter set up as an iron monger and produced the acclaimed ‘Nautilus’ fire grate. From there he went on to install a one horse-power oil engine in a horseless carriage and produced well regarded stationary oil engines.

From this base his company went on to manufacture aircraft in the First World War. Short Type 166, Sopwith 1½ Strutters, de Havilland 4 and 9 two-seat bombers. de-Havilland planned to use the American Liberty engine in the DH-9 to produce the DH-9A and Westland were given the job.

Westland also built 25 Vickers Vimys making a total of 1,100 aircraft. The Yeovil site was transformed with hangers and workshop space.

During the interwar years, Westland survived but continued its drive for innovation.

One result of this quest was production of the Lysander transport aircraft ready to serve in the Second World War. It became known for its role in dropping agents into occupied France. Of more significance in terms of volume was Westland's role in building Spitfires following the bombing of the Southampton Supermarine factory.

Westland, which had built a large number of aircraft for other companies, in 1947 focused on rotor craft and built the Wyvern, the first Westland aircraft to enter service with Fleet Air Arm.

During the Second World War it had been agreed that the USA would take on the development of helicopters; Cierva, the UK pioneer of rotary aircraft was sold to flying boat manufacturer Saunders-Roe in 1951 and produced the Saro Skeeter. In 1959, Westland bought Saunders-Roe and developed the design into the Wasp for the Royal Navy. The decision to focus development work during the war in the USA gave Sikorsky a lead which it would retain for many years. Westland had produced the Sikorsky S-51 under licence and developed this into their own S51 Widgeon, followed by the Whirlwind, Wessex and Sea King.

The Times of 12 January 1960 reported that Westland had bought, in addition to Saunders-Roe, the Bristol Helicopter Division and the UK interests of Fairey Aviation. The enlarged company was now the biggest manufacturer of helicopters outside the USA, and it went on to produce further Sikorsky based craft under license from the Italian Agusta Company. The Sea King (shown in the image) was developed from the Agusta design and the other iconic name, the Lynx, from the 1968 Anglo-French Helicopter Agreement.

Notwithstanding the success of these craft, the company ran into financial difficulties in 1986 and eventually came under the control of GKN in 1994. The GKN Westland EH 101 Merlin was the child of this latter marriage and was regarded as the most advanced helicopter of its time going on to sell worldwide and in the early 2000s replacing Sikorsky as the craft used by US ‘Marine One’ Corps for the US President.

Westland later merged with Agusta a subsidiary of the Italian Finmeccania. In 2004, Finmeccania became the sole owner of AgustaWestland and in 2016 absorbed the business following which it changed its name to Leonardo in 2018.

Further reading:

• https://www.westland100.org.uk/content/history-of-westland/history-westland-1915-1998
• Leslie Brooke, Yeovil A Pictorial History (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)

Ardeer manufacturing history

Perhaps Alfred Nobel's greatest invention was dynamite, a combination of nitroglycerine and a soft, white, porous substance called kieselguhr. The demand for the new explosive was ‘overwhelming’ and Nobel built factories in some twelve countries. In England, the Nitroglycerine Act forbade ‘the manufacture, import, sale and transport of nitroglycerine and any substance containing it’. Nobel was not put off, but did clash with Frederick Abel who was trying to do at Woolwich Arsenal, with nitrocellulose, what Nobel was attempting with nitroglycerine. The net result was that Nobel failed to raise the money he needed for a factory in England.

Fortunately for him, Scotland, with its separate legal system, welcomed him and a factory, his first joint venture The British Dynamite Co. Ltd, was built at Ardeer on a desolate area of the Ayrshire coast in 1871.7 Nobel’s fellow investor in the British Dynamite Company was Sir Charles Tennant, the British champion, through his company Tennants of Glasgow, of the Leblanc process for producing soda ash.

Nobel is quoted as saying, ‘the real era of nitroglycerine opened with the year 1864 when a charge of pure nitroglycerine was first set off by means of a minute charge of gunpowder’. This was the first High Explosive, whereas rapid burning gun powder produces pressures of up to 6,000 atmospheres in a matter of milliseconds, the decomposition of nitroglycerine needs only microseconds and can give rise to pressures of up to 275,000 atmospheres. This was a ground breaking discovery that had the potential to make the life of the miner and civil engineer a great deal easier, but also to unleash weapons of previously unimagined ferocity.

It was not long before the next major development, the invention of cordite, again with Nobel and Abel vying for position. By the end of the nineteenth century, cordite was being manufactured by Kynoch & Co and by the National Explosives Company as well by Nobel’s factory at Ardeer.

The First World War witnessed the production of explosives on an unimaginable scale.

In the wake of the First World War, Harry McGowan headed up Explosive Trades Limited which brought together Britain's fifty-four explosives companies with ninety-three factories. In 1920 it changed its name to Nobel Industries Limited and proceeded to close and repurpose factories leaving it with explosive production at Ardeer, fuses in Cornwall and ammunition in Birmingham. It had substantial reserves which it sought to invest in promising industries. In 1926 it was a founder company of ICI.

W.J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries - Vol 1 the Forerunners 1870-1926 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)