West London manufacturing history

 The twenties and in some cases earlier saw the establishment of the new motor and electrical industries on the periphery of London and near to the river. Investment by foreign companies became more visible. The thirties in particular witnessed strong growth in manufacturing in London and its surroundings and I explore these and related population increases in an essay I wrote entitled Which urban areas did well in the interwar years and why. The companies employing the growing population were in the new industries.

Greenford and Northolt

London had an estimated 400,000 horses and the three parishes supplied hay and received in return the horse manure.The borough gained importance with the arrival of the Grand Junction canal and brickworks sent many thousands of bricks for the house building boom. The Paddington basin acted as distribution centre.

The beginning of factory production came with William Perkins aniline dye works where he produced purple, mauve and magenta which were much in demand. The business was succeeded by the Purex Lead company making paint and the Peerless Wire Fencing company. The Rockware Glass Syndicate was located by the canal and was joined by the British Bath Company and Lyons Tea. Sanderson produced fashionable wall paper including designs by William Morris. The Aladdin Factory made lights and heaters.

In the Second World War there was a vast Central Ordnance Depot handling armaments. It would play a key role in the invasion of northern France. I write about it in this link. In the First World War there had been a shell filling factory employing the latest techniques.

in 1947 Glaxo Laboratories, which had outgrown its parent company Joseph Nathan & Co, became a significant business in its own right. It had built a strong balance sheet with production facilities at Greenford but also Barnard Castle, Stratford and Aylesbury. It then built a factory for the production of penicillin at Ulverston near Morecombe.

By 1939 Lyons employed more than 42,000 people and made 3.5 million gallons of ice-cream a year. It supplied the forces, but it too maintained the morale of the nation as well as lending its management expertise to the Royal Ordnance Factories.

Brompton bicycles are made here

Brentford and the western approaches to London

Brentford had been an early industrial area benefitting from good communications. The Grand Union canal meets the Thames at Brentford and handled a huge amount of trade between the Midlands and London. So there were market gardens, tanners, soap works, brewers and distillers, jam makers, kilns and mills.

Much later, the Western approaches to London attracted inward investment including Hoover and Gillette, but also Firestone, Pyreen, Smiths Crisps, Alvis and Macleans at Brentford. The Firestone factory was considered the finest of the Art Deco buildings on the Great West Road. Western Avenue was also home to radio maker Ultra's art deco factory. The American car makers Packard had their vehicles assembled by Leonard Williams. Brentford Nylons was a late arrival in 1970 but closed six years later.

Chiswick was where John Thornycroft began his ship building business and built for the navy the first torpedo boat. He went on to manufacture steam and then petrol powered wagons. The shipbuilding business moved to Southampton and vehicles to Basingstoke.

Isleworth is home to the Unilever research laboratory for toiletries.

Hammersmith

Barbara Denny’s Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush Past reveals industries that were probably to be found in many of the outlying areas of London. To meet the demand for lighting before gas and electricity there were large candle factories. To feed a hungry population, there were rabbit sheds which provided a regular supply to Leadenhall Market. Textiles were made is so many places and there had to be dye houses. In Hammersmith there was A. McCullock and Sons. The building industry was of course huge. Hammersmith had had its brick works and George Wimpey founded his stone masons company in 1896. There were gas engineers, crucible manufacturers supplying the Royal Mint, chair makers and pharmacists.

Lyons, Salmon and Gluckstein's, bakery and restaurant chain, at Cadby Hall were aware of developments in the new world of computing. They struck up a positive relationship with Wilkes and Cambridge mathematicians working on early computers. However the needs of academics were not those of a business seeking to process a large number of small transactions. Lyons therefore went their own way and this resulted in the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) which proved effective but once more in this story failed to convince much of the commercial market. LEO was later bought by English Electric from which it would join with ICL.

Hammersmith also had an industrial alcohol distillery run by the Distillers Company. de Havilland began in Fulham before moving out to Hendon. Mullard radio components were at Hammersmith where also Osram light bulbs were made. In 1920 GEC had the Robertson Lamp Works, Hammersmith and the Osram-GEC Lamp Works, Hammersmith.

Paddington

A village at one end of the New Road which led into the northern part of central London where the Euston Road is now. It was also the link between the Grand Junction canal and the Regent Canal which follows a semi-circle north of London Zoo through to the East End where it meets the Thames. Paddington was also the terminus for the Great Western Railway. It followed that a large canal basin was built to handle the huge volume of trade.

Clement-Talbot were at nearby Ladbroke Grove (later the Rootes revolutionary service depot, Ladbroke Hall - see the post image)

The iconic Abbey Road studio, part of EMI, was further into London near Baker Street. EMI was also at Hayes. Bush set up their first television factory in Shepherds Bush.

Southwest London

To the southwest of London, the famous Brooklands race track near Weybridge, became the home of Vickers Armstrong Aircraft. It was there that Barnes Wallis designed the Wellesley bomber and then the iconic Wellington. I write more of this in this link.

Kingston upon Thames became home to Sopwith Aviation before the First World War and played a large part in the war effort in the air and on land in both world wars. It was later home to their successor Hawker Siddeley. I write more in this link.

Motor manufacturers included AEC at Southall and AC Cars at Thames Ditton where Willans & Robinson had made steam engines. The Associated Equipment Co Ltd had been registered on 13 June 1912 and took over the already busy bus chassis manufacturing business from its then owner, The London General Omnibus Company Ltd. In 1914, LGOC suffered the same fate as other vehicle manufacturers and operators, when 1,185 of its buses were pressed into use and soon could be seen transporting troops in France and Belgium. AEC began producing on its own account in June 1916 ,and, by the end of the war, had supplied 5,200 heavy duty 3 ton vehicles using the Tyler engine. In the Second World War AEC turned its production in wartime to Matador and Marshall heavy trucks which were used, amongst other things, for transporting pipes for the construction of oil pipelines.

Addlestone became home to Plessey Radar after its takeover of Decca in the mid sixties. The marine radar part of the Decca was taken over by Racal and they had a manufacturing presence in New Maldon. New Malden is also home to BAE Systems visualisation, experimentation, and design

Further reading:

• Barbara Denny, Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush Past (London: Historical Publications, 1995)
• Gillian Clegg, Brentford Past (London: Historical Publications, 2002)
• Frances Hounsell, Greenford, Northolt and Perivale (London: Historical Publications, 1999)

North London manufacturing history

 As Inner London turned its attention more and more to finance and service industries, manufacturing moved north, much of it into the Lea Valley which, hitherto, had market gardens working hard to feed a growing population. There was also brick making to house that population.

Enfield

Manufacturing came to Enfield in 1809 in the form of the Grout and Bayliss factory for dyeing and finishing black crepe for mourning wear.

Enfield became home in 1816 in the wake of the Napoleonic wars to the Royal Small Arms Factory of which I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Ordnance and which Jim Lewis explores in detail in his London's Lea Valley - Britain's best kept secret. The factory has recently been restored to 'its former glory'. Lewis highlights the shortcomings in small arms manufacture and how the Factory first sought to impose quality standards on the many manufacturers. I found it both interesting and disappointing that the Board of Ordnance looked to American machine tool makes when the factory took on its own production. I write about London's machine tool companies in this blog piece. Graham Dalling in Enfield Past adds that Joseph Whiteworth had a hand in planning the factory. The development of the rifle was key and was witnessed in action in Africa as the European nations struggled for supremacy and which I discuss in my blog on the Scramble for Africa.

Brimsdown, Enfield was the former home of the Edison Swan Laboratory. Joseph Swan moved from Newcastle where he developed the incandescent lamp and joined with the American Thomas Edison in exploiting their invention at Ponders End in 1886. They manufactured under the Mazda brand. I write of Edison in this blog. Working with him, Ambrose Fleming invented the first thermionic valve, a diode, from which the development of wireless grew. Also in Brimsdown was Cosmos, valve manufacturers.

In 1890 Frederick Walton bought the former black crepe factory to exploit a French invention of flexible metal tubing which was met with high demand from the railway manufacturers with their need for steam pipes and airbrakes.

Enfield was where Cornishman, Charles Belling, in 1922 set up to manufacturer domestic appliances and he also worked with Edgar Lee to produce one of the first wireless sets using Edison valves. In the Second World War this company switched to radar components and VHF aerials. Their successors, Thorn Industries, were at Enfield as was their television manufacturing subsidiary, Ferguson. They later became part of Thorn EMI of which I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Warburton have their massive crumpet factory in Enfield

Edmonton was home to CAV, part of Lucas and to MK the manufacturer of electrical fittings set up by Charles Belling's business partner.

Ponders End was home to Wright's Flour Mill which dated back to the seventeenth century. Its story is interesting for it took good advantage of developments. It used the Lea Navigation and then steam road vehicles. It moved from stone milling to electrically driven roller mills. It now offers speciality flours.

Coca Cola built a plant in Edmonton in 1975

Walthamstow

Walthamstow was home to Britains Toys. In 1914, William Britain had developed a technique for the hollow-casting of toy figures, which leant itself perfectly to all manner of toy soldier. Phillips Records and Ever Ready batteries were also in Walthamstow. It was where the Associated Equipment Company (AEC) began manufacturing buses before the company moved to Southall.

In the First World War, Peter Hooker Ltd in Walthamstow developed a speciality for forging components from a new alloy of aluminium 'Y alloy' which had been used for the pistons of aircraft engines. The business collapsed with the failure of the airship programmes and was succeeded by High Duty Alloys in Slough run by their former employee Wallace Devereux. The company would have a fundamental impact on aero engine manufacturing.

The Royal Gunpowder Factory was at Waltham Abbey and closed in 1967. I write about the factory and its place alongside Woolwich Arsenal in Ordnance. Matchbox Cars were originally made in Chingford.

Hackney was the place where the first British plastics were manufactured. The material, Parkesine was invented by Alexander Parkes and then exploited by British Xylonite which later became know as Halex. It was a challenger to the American Celluloid. Clarino in Hackney had 2,000 making sweets. Marconi had a factory at Dalston. Also at Dalston was one of the two Siemens English Electric Lamp factories.

Tottenham

Tottenham was where John A. Prestwich set up (JAP) motor cycles employing 'the very latest of machinery'. Prestwich was a gifted inventor and his engine was used by Avro in the first flight of a British aircraft piloted by a Britton. Colin Chapman set up his Lotus company in Hornsey in 1952 before moving to Cheshunt in 1959. The fifties and sixties had seen the focus on motor racing with victories with Stirling Moss and Jim Clark at the wheel. Tottenham was also where Lebus manufactured furniture after moving from the East End. The Thermos Flask was manufactured in Tottenham. It was said that whenever there was a thousand bomber raid in the Second World War there would also be some 12,000 thermos flasks in the air at the same time. Much later Amstrad’s head office was at Brentwood House, Tottenham, although it had started life in Hackney. I write of Amstrad in Vehicles to Vaccines.

In 1906 David Gestetner moved the manufacture of his duplicating machines to Tottenham. He was Hungarian and had lived in the USA but moved to Britain in 1881 where he registered a patent for 'Improvements in Cyclostyle pens'. He developed his ideas and eventually became the largest manufacturers of duplicators in the world.

R.W. Munro was a precision engineer with a business in Bounds Green where in 1892 he made an anemometer which was used to measure wind speed for the next century. He also manufactured presses for the Bank of England. His successors were commissioned by IBM to make a replica of the Babbage Difference Engine which Babbage had conceived whilst at school in the Lea Valley.

Hendon

Moving west from the Lea Valley we come to Standard Telephones which were at Hendon and Jim Lewis offers some history. It was the American Western Electric that bought a 2.7 acre site in Southgate in 1922. This company then manufactured telephone equipment under license from the Bell Telephone Company. It was from a hut next to the factory that the first trans-Atlantic telephone call was made. Western Electric was bought by ITT and the Southgate company changed its name to STC and became one of the main suppliers to the GPO. Hendon was also where Geoffrey de Havilland designed his first aircraft for Airco in 1912. Geoffrey de Havilland founded the de Havilland Aircraft Company at Edgware on 25 September 1920 with financial assistance from his old boss at Airco.

Stanmore attracted many industries including GEC Research Laboratories and Solex Carburettors (my first job!). Wealdstone was where Winsor & Newton artists paints were made.

Islington

George Bassett founded a sweet factory in Islington in 1848 but expanded into the former Allsopp piano factory in Wood Green in 1880. The company expanded further making its famous Liquorice Allsorts amongst much more. It merged with Trebor to become Trebor-Bassett in 1966. I wrote of another Trebor merger in my piece on Maidstone. The Wonder Baking Company began making Wonderloaf in 1937. In 1936 the first television broadcast was made from the nearby Alexandra Palace.

In nearby Highbury, Stephen’s ink was produced

Finchley, Willesden, Acton and Cricklewood

Finchley was home to F.R. Simms who obtained the rights to build Daimler cars in England and I wrote about this in How Britain Shaped the manufacturing World. Simms went on to invent armour plating for Vickers and Maxim and the first powered lawn mower for Ransoms, Sims and Jeffries. In 1907 he took the rights to manufacture magnetos to Bosch design and from there set up the company that would later merge with CAV and become part of Lucas as I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Rotax manufactured in Willesden shifting their focus to aerospace. They moved to Hemel Hampstead and became part of Lucas Aerospace.

New Southgate was the place to which Robert Paul moved from Hatten Garden to partner Cambridge Instruments which made measuring instruments and was bought by Brown Boveri in 1974 and at its peak employed 750 people. Paul also exploited the invention of the kinetoscope which Edison had failed to patent in the UK. It made very short films of sporting events. Cambridge Instruments which had been founded in Cambridge had a distinguished history in advanced instrument making. Paul was also known as a film industry pioneer.

The North Circular Road attracted a good number of factories. Jack Olding supplied earth moving vehicles and during the Second World War prepared and modified tanks in their art deco factory known as 'tank central'.

Willesden and Cricklewood were home to Staples whose owner John Heal designed Ladderax furniture which also made mattresses at Staples Corner.

Hadley Page at Cricklewood produced in the Second World War, first the Hampden bomber and then the more successful Halifax which were manufactured by a production group comprising: English Electric, Rootes at Speake (Liverpool), and Fairey in Stockport. At peak production there were some 660 subcontractors and 51,000 employees completing a new aircraft every working hour, some 6,177 aircraft in all.

David Napier motor company was at Acton and had re-emerged near the beginning of the era of the motor car, as manufacturers of high quality vehicles. By 1914, they were making seven hundred cars a year from their Acton factory and selling from their New Burlington Street Showroom, including many to the London Taxi trade. David Napier & Son continued to develop aero-engines culminating in the Napier twenty-four cylinder Sabre, which, at 3,500 hp., powered the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest. The company was bought by English Electric in 1942. Famously Napier developed the Deltic diesel engine which was used in railway locomotives and other applications including electricity generation in remote places. The Deltic had originally been designed for naval use.

Lucas Diesels and CAV were also in Acton.

Thomas Wall made sausages and came up with the idea of making ice cream in the summer months when sausage sales dipped. The idea took off and production began at the Acton factory soon after the end of the First World War. The company became part of Unilever in 1922 and expanded by building a factory in Gloucester in 1959..

Nearby Neasden had NCR and British Oxygen. In Willesden, Rotax had a factory and Rolls-Royce acquired Park Ward and H.J. Mulliner coachbuilders. In the 1920s British Thomson Houston built a large engineering works in Neasden which was later closed when it became part of GEC contributing to the run down of manufacturing in that part of London. In 1928 F.W. Hall built his factory for making the telephone equipment for the iconic red telephone box (buttons A and B!)

Harlesden was home to McVitie's biscuits, which became part of United Biscuits, the formation of which I write about in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Decca's recording studios were in West Hampstead.

Wembley was home to GEC Research laboratories set up in 1923, and Johnson Matthey. Wembley had a Marconi components factory and Cricklewood had Smiths Industries.

Dollis Hill was home to the General Post Office Research Establishment and Tommy Flowers, a senior engineer of the General Post Office which then had the monopoly of telecommunications in the UK and probably the greatest concentrating of electronic engineering expertise. Flowers brought into reality the concept behind the Colossus which was the successor to the BOMBE which Alan Turing designed to crack the Enigma code.

Park Royal

In the First World War this area had a huge munitions factory. In the twenties the site was cleared and a huge industrial estate built. In the years of depression elsewhere, the estate bucked the trend with a steady stream of new tenants to replace those who left. Park Royal had the English home of the Guinness brewery. Heinz had a factory there but more so smaller companies in the new industries.

Further reading:

• Jim Lewis, London's Lea Valley - Britain's best kept secret (Chichester: Phillimore, 1999)
• Len Snow, Willesden Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)
• John Heathfield, Finchley and Whetstone Past (London: Historical Publications, 2001)
• Albert Pinching, Wood Green Past (London: Historical Publications, 2000)
• Graham Dalling, Enfield Past (London: Historical Publications, 1999)
• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)

Inner London manufacturing history 19th and 20th century

 Inner London, having been for manufacturing a place where the many made things for the few, changed as technology advanced and became home to many young industries before they moved to more spacious pastures. Stephen Inwood in his masterly A History of London makes the point that in the interwar years it was not just London's new industries that prospered against the national trend but the old industries too. By this he doesn't mean the heavy industries, which were never really in London, but industries which met the needs and wants of a population that was growing not only in number but in prosperity. So, food and drink, tobacco, clothing, furniture and furnishings. The principle remained the same, London's focus was on the finishing trades in high value goods, so jewellery, musical instruments, printing, book binding, fine clothing and furniture, clocks and fur hats.

Camden

The principal product of Camden factories were pianos. The names of the factories read like a roll call of distinguished makers: John Brinsmead & Son, Collard & Collard, Gunther & Horwood and Chappells. There was also the organ maker Zewadski and the workshop of Henry Willis famous for organs such as that in Lincoln Cathedral.

Furniture making was a little further south on Tottenham Court Road with Heals and Maples. Goodalls and their rivals de la Rue made two thirds of the playing cards sold in Britain. The companies merged in 1922. The nation was also hungry for the things of literacy with De La Rue employing 1,300 in Finsbury and Waterlow 4,000 at London Wall. Wiggins Teape originated at Aldgate.

Mornington Crescent was home to the 'Black Cat' Carreras cigarettes factory built in an Egyptian style and later sold to Rothmans which manufactured in Darlington. Benson & Hedges were made in Oxford Street before production moved to Ballymena. Lambert and Butler were produced in Drury Lane.

There were bicycle makers in Holborn and jewellers around Fitzrovia. Holborn was also home to George Kent and his household equipment including his famous knife cleaner. Thrupp & Maberly built carriages in Oxford Street. They became part of the Rootes Group and moved to Cricklewood in 1924.

The Westinghouse Brake and Signal Company manufactured in York Road, Kings Cross before moving to Chippenham in Wiltshire in 1932. The conurbation was being built at a rate of knots and Cubitts employed 3,000 in their workshops in Grays Inn Road.

‘On 25 July 1837, William Fothergill Cooke, an English inventor, and Charles Wheatstone, an English scientist, made the first electric telegraph communication between the station rooms at Camden Town – where Cooke was stationed, together with Robert Stephenson, the engineer – and London Euston, where Wheatstone was situated. The directors of the London and Birmingham Railway were their audience, and their goal was to improve safety on the railways.’ Wheatstone subsequently developed his invention further to enable the transmission of text. Telegraph needed cables and the story moves Woolwich.

Clerkenwell and Finsbury

Clerkenwell became the home of scientific instruments and from there of electronics. Cossor made radio at Clerkenwell during the First World War before moving to larger premises at Highbury. Charterhouse Square was the original home of Ferranti Ltd. Hatton Garden, apart from being home to gold and silver and Johnson Matthey, was where Hiram Maxim perfected his machine gun before joining with Vickers and moving to Crayford. Elliott Automation originated near the Strand.

Of larger enterprises there was the United Electric Wire and Telegraph Company, the Albion Button Company, the Never Rust Plate Company, Bovril and Ingersoll watchmakers. There was also a significant American presence: the Grape Nuts Company, the Columbia Gramophone Company, Thomas Edison Phonograph Makers, the Singer Sewing Machine Company and the Glass Lined Syphon Company.

Finsbury, although London’s smallest Borough, had the greatest concentration of manufacturing among which were Colletts hatters, Ormond hairdryers, Whitbread brewers, Thomas De La Rue security printers, English Gin Distillers, Harella ladies coats, Coates Brothers printers, British Drug Houses, L.E.B. Engineering (Paper Tubes), Temple Press, Ferranti Radio and Television, Comoy’s Pipes, Alba Radio, and Union Glue.

Westminster

London's growing population needed feeding, so for example, in addition to flour mills, market gardens and countless small businesses, Crosse & Blackwell employed 2,000 people making pickles in the Charing Cross Road. The British Electric Telegraph Company exploited the patent of Cooke and Wheatstone in developing the telegraph. I wrote about this in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. Key to this was insulation provided by F. Wishaw near the Adelphi.

Electric lighting had arrived with Humphrey Davy's arc lamp, much improved by the incandescent lamp invented by the American Thomas Edison and Newcastle's Joseph Swan. Siemens Brothers provided the generators, wiring and lamps for the lighting of the Savoy Theatre. Other names, long associated with electricity, entered the field: Edison set up the Holborn Viaduct scheme in 1882, and, in 1886, Sebastian de Ferranti built the Grosvenor Gallery Station. Ferranti had worked for Siemens in their very new experimental department.

Humphreys & Glasgow of Victoria Street carried out major projects in petrochemicals and process engineering for ICI, BP, Beecham, Boots and British Steel, as well as plants in the USSR and other eastern block countries and India and Pakistan

There were still clothing factories in Soho and Westminster as well as Saville Row. The Royal Army Clothing Factory was in Pimlico employing 2,000. Pears Soap was made just off Oxford Street. Dunhill cigarettes are made in Westminster.

W and B Cowan made gas meters and appliances and later became part of Parkinson and Cowan.

The City

The massive improvements to communications with the railways and telephone and telegraph allowed manufacturing to move away from centre of the ever growing metropolis to make way for service industries and the growing importance of the City as the world’s financial centre. Crucial to this was the work of Joseph Bazalgette who master minded the London sewers to remove 'the great stink' at the same time creating the Thames Embankment and the extension of the Metropolitan Railway. There were businesses making everything that the growing number of offices in the city might require. I write elsewhere about finance for manufacturing in which London played a perhaps surprisingly small role. The Pharmaceutical Society was formed in London in 1841, one of its founding members was William Allen who was a partner in the Plough Court pharmacy, whose origins can be traced back to 1715. In 1856 Allen joined his nephews in Allen & Hanbury which grew particularly through it renowned cod liver oil. Scammell originated not far from Liverpool Street station in London where its vehicles served the local markets. It manufactured gun carriages and vehicle bodywork for the War Office in the First World War.

In his London in the Twentieth Century, a phrase from Jerry White stuck in my mind. ‘From the middle of the sixties London’s manufacturing industry virtually bled away, along with the port that fed it.’ He offers some telling figures: between 1959 and 1974 London lost 38% of its manufacturing jobs so by 1996 only 10% of the London workforce was employed in manufacturing.' A good deal of manufacturing moved to the north, east, west and south of London and in due course out to Metroland and into the South East.

Further reading:

• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)

South London manufacturing history 19th and 20th century

 In his book, London: A History, Francis Sheppard observes that ‘by the end of the eighteenth century, London had more steam engines than Lancashire’. London had also employed water power from the fast flowing river Wandle to mill flour and snuff and also to power the printing of calico.

Southwark, Lambeth and Vauxhall

Southwark and Lambeth were home to engineers Joseph Bramah, Henry Maudslay and Marc Isambard Brunel about each of whom I also wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. I explore further in a blog piece the huge influence of Henry Maudslay in particular on mechanical engineering and machine tools. Maudslay Sons and Field turned their hands to marine engines and ended the 19th century with 1,500 employees. Vauxhall began as marine engineers in Vauxhall but turned to motor cars and moved to Luton. Siebe Gorman moved to Lambeth from Denmark Street and made equipment for underwater exploration and later iron lungs for polio victims. Napier manufactured the 'perfect printing machine' (accordingly to the Great Exhibition catalogue).

Engineer, Bryan Donkin, manufactured tin cans from his premises in Bermondsey. J.C Field had candle factories in Bermondsey but also Battersea and Lambeth. Wright's coal tar soap was made in Southwark and Price's Patent Candle Company employed 2,000 people in Vauxhall and Battersea.

Peek Freans made biscuits in Bermondsey and Rowntree moved production of After Eights to the Bermondsey works of Shuttleworth in 1966.

In 1920, GEC had the Accessories Works in Southwark.

Battersea, Kennington and Wandsworth

in 1856 Morgan Brothers set up a factory in Battersea to make graphite crucibles for metals furnaces. In 1907 it progressed to make commutator brushes for electric motors and relocated to South Wales in the 1970s. In 2013 Morgan Crucible was renamed Morgan Advanced Materials with businesses across the world.

Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. set up the first office to be lit by electricity, and a factory in Wandsworth to manufacture compressed medicines. In the First World War, Burroughs Wellcome & Co supplied: ‘aspirin, chloroform (from alcohol), cholesterol, cocaine, emetine bismuthous iodide, flavine, hydroquinone, lanoline and phenacetin’.

Kennington remains home to the Beefeater Gin distillery. Airfix models were first made in Wandsworth.

Lewisham, Norwood and Deptford

Lewisham was an early home to Elliot Brothers instrument makers and George Harvey galvanisers. Catford had James Robertson preserves and Hither Green, King’s Biscuits.

Norwood was home to William Ford Robinson Stanley, a prolific inventor amongst whose devices was the Stanley Knife. He was a successful industrialist and benefactor giving the Borough the Stanley Halls and the Stanley Technical College.

The London Electric Supply Company was incorporated in 1887 with a capital of £1 million to build a power station at Deptford. Ferranti, at the age of twenty-three, was appointed chief engineer responsible for the whole project. He conceived a project of generators producing electricity which would be transmitted at 10,000 volts through cables and switchgear built to his own design. This was a massive project. Ferranti moved his works to Hollinwood, Oldham in Lancashire, and, in 1897, employed seven hundred people.

Merton, Morden and Mitcham

Of great significance was the arrival of a man of volcanic energy, William Morris. Morris had already run a decorative business at Red Lion Square and then Queen's Square but the demand for his products was such that more space was needed and the Abbey Works was founded in seven acres of 'lush meadows' interspersed with the remains of Huguenot buildings. Here Morris designed and his highly skilled employed made: painted glass windows, arras tapestry, carpets, embroidery, tiles, furniture, printed cottons, paper hangings and upholstery. Economic growth had put money in the hands of many more people who wanted to buy furnishings that were not mass produced. Morris did not eschew the factory system, he dye making was on a large scale as were bleaching and finishing. He had workshops of men and women weaving and painting, but all the designs were his or those of his best friend the artists Burns-Jones. The output was considerable. It was not surprising that Liberty & Co sourced their printed fabric from the same area.

The Lines Brothers factory at Merton was at one time the largest toy factory in the world. By the time it came to Merton it had been trading in one form or another for one hundred years, but it was rebranded Tri-ang. A workforce of 4,000 made Fairy Cycles, Frog model aircraft, Minic clockwork toys and much more. They went on to make model railways (as the image of the signal box bears witness) and I write of this in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Watliff was the largest manufacturer of commutators and slip rings for electric motors producing up to 20,000 a day. Customers included the coal and steel industries and power stations. In the industrial area on the Kingston Road was Pilchers which made ambulances and mobile radiographic units used worldwide.

Decca pressed records in New Malden and began work on radar in Brixton. The company was floated in 1929 by stockbroker Edward Lewis. It began with records but went on to radar. The radar business was bought by Racal in 1980 and the record business was sold to Polygram.

Mullard radio components were at Mitcham and Balham having set up in Hammersmith in 1920, founded by Captain Stanley Mullard who had previously made valves for the Admiralty. The move to Mitcham came in 1929 after the Dutch Phillips had taken control of the company. Phillips made radios in a neighbouring plant. Philips only just managed to ship over components and machinery for their vital EF50 valve just before the Germans invaded in May 1940 In 1960 Mullard held 75% of the transistor market in Britain.

Marconi made radio transmitters and receivers in Hackbridge.

Carshalton had an industrial alcohol plant of the Distillers Company.

Croydon

Home to Powers Samas accounting machines which was bought by Vickers in an attempt to diversify after the Second World War. Powers Samas later joined with the British Tabulating Machine Company of Letchworth to form the International Computers and Tabulators Company.

Southeast London

Beckenham had the Wellcome research laboratories. Caterham was home to motor sport engineers by the same name.

Further reading:

• John Coulter, Norwood Past (London: Historical Publications, 1996)
• John Coulter, Lewisham (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1994)
• An Illustrated History of Merton and Morden, Evelyn Jowett (ed.) (Merton and Morden Festival of Britain Local Committee)
• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)

East London manufacturing history 19th and 20th centuries

 

Docklands

The first decade of the nineteenth century saw an expansion in docks which would guarantee London's position as the world's trading city. The first was a West India Docks which had in addition to the docks themselves, warehouses all surrounded by a secure wall. The work was privately funded and financed by a 21 year monopoly of West Indies trade. They were located on the then marshy Isle of Dogs. Next came London Docks serving Europe and North America located in Wapping. Lastly the East India Company opened their walled and policed dock at Blackwall.

The East India docks speak of the vast international trade that poured through London and I am drawn to John Masefield’s poem Cargos which I quote at the start of How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. I also remember from childhood sailing from the docks on a banana boat bound for Tenerife.

We are still talking of ships made of wood and powered by sail for which London shipbuilders were rightly famous. Anthony Slaven in his book British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 suggests that eight major yards on the Thames were in the van in building iron hulled ships. These yards had the skills in shipbuilding but also engines. The 1860s were a boom time for London's yards with at one time as many as 27,000 people employed in shipbuilding. 1860 saw the first British ironclad, HMS Warrior, built by the Thames Ironworks, clad with armour by John Brown and armed with guns from Armstrongs. The boom came to a grinding halt as the Clyde, Tyne and Tees took over the lead largely because raw materials were close by and so vastly cheaper that those London shipbuilders had to buy in. I write in another blog piece of Henry Maudslay's influence on machine tools; his company Maudslay Son and Field were highly influential in steam power for ships. In Greenwich, John Penn owned the largest marine engine business in Britain.

In shipbuilding 1,700 worked in John Penn’s boiler works at Greenwich and many more at Wigham and Green’s yard at Blackwall.

Joseph Rank saw the vast quantity of grain imports coming through London docks and saw the opportunity for flour mills which he built by the river. These worked alongside huge warehouses and markets. London had cornered world trade, for example Australian wool was shipped to London for onward sale. The domination in trade was mirrored and amplified in banking and finance where London took an unassailable lead until 1914.

The docks needed expanding again, this time to fit the larger steam powered steel hulled ships and the Victoria and Albert docks were built.

The final expansion of the docks on the Thames can look to Tilbury docks in 1886 which provided a massive deep water dock east of the then docklands. Somewhat later Samuel Williams created a huge industrial development around Dagenham Dock. Tilbury would once again take the lead in 1967 in the move to containers which transformed the docks from a community ruled by dockers to an international business controlled by computers.

Woolwich

Woolwich was of course home to the Arsenal where some 75,000 worked in 1917 and I write of this and more in Ordnance and How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. At the start of the Crimean War an engineer, John Anderson, was appointed to undertake a major programme of modernisation and expansion. He introduced steam power into the Foundry and the Royal Carriage Factory. Similar building programmes and modernisation were undertaken at the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, which had been set up after the Napoleonic Wars following bad experience with commercial suppliers, and the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey. Another key appointment was made in 1854, when Frederick Abel took the office of Ordnance Chemist which had fallen into disuse in 1826. Under Abel, the technology of ammunition took major strides with Woolwich as a centre of excellence.

William Siemens was another major employer in Woolwich. As I write in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, William was the British end of the German family and took on the manufacture of cables for telegraph. In time cables crossed the globe with Siemens purpose built ship The Faraday laying them. Siemens worked in partnership with steel rope makers, Newall & Company of Newcastle. This latter company became part of British Ropes which later changed its name to Bridon. Siemens factory became part of GEC but was closed by Arnold Weinstock attracting acrimony from the community and unions. The factory had also produced telephone equipment. As well as hand-sets, they supplied their first public automatic telephone exchange in Grimsby in September 1918 handling 1,300 lines. This was followed by exchanges in Stockport, Southampton and Swansea; in all some forty-three out of one hundred exchanges brought into service by the Post Office up to 1927. They also set up exchanges in Canada and Australia. Such was the demand that they took new space in Hartlepool and Spennymoor.

In the Second World War in order to protect the Clyde, Siemens were commissioned to supply not only the five miles long loop cable through which high currents would be passed to explode such mines, but to commission and build all the necessary switch-gear and power plant. They also supplied cables equipment for radar and line communications. They were of course the perfect company to produce a submarine cable which could contain petrol at high pressure for the PLUTO project. For the HAIS pipeline (Hartley, Anglo-Iranian, Siemens) cable of seventy miles in length was required and a whole new building had to be constructed to contain it. Elsewhere, lamp production became even more specialised for the war effort, and the research laboratories were kept busy with demands by the British Aircraft Establishment for specialist bulbs for aircraft signalling.

Shoreditch and Bethnal Green

The furniture trade continued stongly into the nineteenth century. Timber would be provided from local saw mills such as Lathams which prospered and is now a leading UK timber supplier. One or two larger establishments emerged. In the lead was Lebus, but Hille and others would follow. Herrmann was said to have the largest furniture business in Europe; they were also in New York. The Lusty family made Lloyd Loom furniture.

It was a mixed economy with some warehouses making space for manufacturing. West End retailers, like Maples, began to source their products from East End makers. The large hire purchase companies like Times and Great Universal Stores dealt with the warehouses and the larger makers. Mechanisation came with electricity and, with the establishment of the National Grid, larger makers took advantage of cheap land in the Lea Valley, leaving little furniture making in the East End. When Lebus moved they had 1,000 employees. They now manufacture in Scunthorpe. Hille, which employed two of Britain's most talented designers in plastic injection moulding, moved to Watford and now manufacture in Ebbw Vale. Meredew moved to Letchworth.

Barking, Silvertown, Dagenham and Shadwell

Barking had an unhappy start to industrialisation. In How Britain Shaped The Manufacturing World I wrote in the context of communication of the great stink, the Thames doubling up as a massive open sewer. The river attracted all sorts of industry and processes often highly polluting especially outside the county boundary where by-laws restricting offensive trades did not apply. In Barking this meant chemical and related industries. Barking's other problem was that the sewerage from north London carried by Bazalgette's new sewer emptied to the west of Barking creek, creating, along with market gardens (where some of the sewerage was used raw as fertiliser) and polluting industries, a massive public health problem. In time local authorities were established which could enforce regulations and act together to improve the environment with sewers but also railways and means of communication. J.B.Lawes discovered a method of making fertiliser from treated sewerage, thus overcoming the health hazards.

The coming of the railways opened up east London and Essex for development. Barking attracted the largest gas works in Britain and much later a massive coal fired power station. Handley Page’s first aeroplane was made in Barking. After the First World War a number of new companies opened factories: P.C. Henderson doors (subsequently relocated to County Durham and now part of the Finish ASSA Alloy company), A.F. Bulgin radios and Dicky Birds crackers and ice-cream. Abbey Match works became part of the British Match Corporation.

In the Second World War, Barking creek was used for building Mulberry Harbours; companies in the borough also produced chemicals, life jackets, wood craft including Mosquito aircraft, and steel drums.

The local authority built the largest council house estate at Becontree which leads on to....

Dagenham which became home to Ford UK which moved manufacture from its plant in Manchester; many employees from Manchester moved into the Becontree estate. The Dagenham plant was vast with its own furnaces for casting engine blocks. One of their paint suppliers, Lewis Berger, was at nearby Shadwell Heath (I remember well working on their audit in the seventies). Dagenham also had an industrial alcohol distillery run by the Distillers Company, a May & Baker factory and pharmaceutical research facility drawing employees also from the Becontree estate.

Whilst most manufacturing still took place in the home or in small workshops, Jerry White highlights some of the other larger factories. Silvertown had a factory employing 3,000 making tyres and footballs, and insulation from rubber. The company The India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Company was bought by the American Goodrich who then sold it to British shareholders and it became the British Tyre and Rubber (BTR). The insulation was probably used by Siemens Brothers at Woolwich which employed 1,700 making cables. Rope making took place in Shadwell with Frost’s works being the largest in the world.

At the start of the twentieth century the Great Eastern Railway employed 3,100 at their Stratford works. The workshop was originally intended for repair, but went on to build locomotives. Their famous engineer James Holden built an early electric powered locomotive capable of reaching 30mph in 30 seconds. It never went into service for the rail infrastructure at the time was not up to the challenge.

Bryant &  May employed 1,400 in Bow making matches. Bow was also home to porcelain manufacturer Thomas Frye and Edward Lloyd's paper mill. The paper industry blossomed following the abolition of the newspaper stamp in 1855.

Plessey had their main factory was at Ilford and relocated during the war to Central Line Tube tunnels to escape enemy bombing. Ilford manufactured photographic film here. Britvic manufactured soft drinks in Beckton.

Further reading:

• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)

South London manufacturing history

 The south bank of the Thames and the rivers flowing into it, the Wandle and Neckinger, attracted industries needing ready transport for raw materials, water power and water itself.

Southwark, Lambeth and Bermondsey

Ceramics were made in Lambeth and also in Chelsea and Bow. Doulton & Co made rainwater goods and later fine pottery as Royal Doulton having moved to Stoke on Trent.

Glass was famously produced in Southwark and over the river at Whitefriars in the City of London. Around about one quarter of Britain's glass works were in London. I write of early British glass making in this link.

Tanning took place in Bermondsey. The river Neckinger provided the water for the tanning pits. Slaughter houses provided a constant supply of hides and there was ample oak bark for the tanning process. There were busy cobblers and cordwainers throughout; the Corwainers in particular were very protective of their craft. It was this trade that suffered as Northampton attracted London retailers by virtue of its lower pay rates.

Leading on from tanning were furriers and a trade in making fur hats which continued to thrive until machine made rabbit skin hats and felt hats from further north took over.

Londoners needed feeding and were thirsty people. The Albion Steam flour Mill was built in 1785 and had two of Watt's 50-horsepower steam engines driving eighty millstones and cranes, hoists, sifters and dressers. The largest of the London breweries was in Southwark. The great London breweries not only became very rich but were some of the pioneers of mass production. We can think of Samuel Whitbread, Richard Meux, Sir Benjamin Truman, Sampson Hanbury and John Perkins who brewed in Southwark. Four producers of vinegar added to everything else ensured a challenging smell for the uninitiated.

Merton and Morden

The presence of the river Wandle in Merton Abbey made the area attractive to Huguenots silk weavers. When they left, the attraction of the water for dyeing calicoes and linen with madder was recognised by Mr Leach who set up a dye works. William Morris and Liberties would follow.

Further reading:

• John Coulter, Norwood Past (London: Historical Publications, 1996)
• John Coulter, Lewisham (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1994)
• An Illustrated History of Merton and Morden, Evelyn Jowett (ed.) (Merton and Morden Festival of Britain Local Committee)

East London manufacturing history

 Writing of London in the Nineteenth Century, Jerry White remarks on the large proportion of the population – some 30% - who made things, countering a common belief that London was a place of commerce with local manufacturing restricted to small and niche workshops. This was largely the result of what had gone before. London as a port was fundamental.

Docklands

The Naval dockyard at Woolwich became the principal focus in the reign of Henry VIII and the building of Henri Grace a Dieu. Looking at the records of the Board of Ordnance, which supplied cannon, powder and cannon balls, there grew up substantial stores at Chatham, Tilbury and Sheerness and to a lesser extent Woolwich itself. I write below of the major role that Woolwich would take in the supply of the army. Significant naval stores were also held at Portsmouth and Plymouth. With the later expansion of empire, stores were located overseas at for example Gibraltar.

Alongside naval shipbuilding, commercial shipbuilding yards stretched east from Bermondsey. They provided the essential transport for adventurers and traders. East Indiamen made the long and challenging journey to the far east to bring back exotic cargoes. Nearer to home coal was brought by coastal ships from Newcastle. The yards were busy places and I wrote of them in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

At the end of the eighteenth century the pressure on the small area of 'legal' docks for commercial shipping was clearly grossly inadequate and expansion became urgent. I wrote of this in my page on Inner London for that was where the docks were.

As London grew, the banks of the Thames filled with manufacturing businesses attracted by the ease of receiving raw materials and dispatching finished goods. The docks would welcome ships arriving with cargoes from just about all over the world; ships too would leave with finished goods destined for lucrative overseas markets. The label ‘Made in London’ carried a cache the world over.

It had been and still was a busy and diversified place with saw-mills, lead-smelting, paint and varnish works, iron and brass foundries, chemicals works and ships stores, boiler makers works, chain and anchor works and sack, bag and canvas factories.

Woolwich

The Weald provided charcoal and iron ore for the production of all things metal, so guns in the environs of the Tower of London and at the Woolwich Arsenal, and cutlery before Sheffield bagged the lead in that trade. As to the manufacture of weapons, the casting of brass cannon had been carried out at Moorfields and before that on the Weald itself. In the first half of the eighteenth century there were built on the Woolwich site a foundry for casting guns, a Laboratory for making gunpowder and a workshop for gun carriages as well as extensive storage. Further development would follow in the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Shoreditch and Bethnal Green

Furniture making was to be found in Mayfair for the well-to-do and in the East End, using semi-skilled labour, for the rest of the market. Furniture skills were gathered together by companies like Gillow and Seddon. Once again, processes would be subdivided into different skill sets; in time mechanisation would make redundant much of the handicraft. The area around Shoreditch and the western end of Bethnal Green became in White’s words ‘something approaching one giant factory’.

A book titled Furnishing the World - The East London Furniture Trade 1830-1980 looks at this in more detail. The starting point was the growing population and house building, all of which drove demand for furniture. This was matched by an east end population which included Jewish immigrants skilled in carpentry and the availability of wood coming in through the growing docklands but also later along the Regents Canal which opened in 1820. The overwhelming majority of the furniture makers were small workshops selling mainly to wholesalers.

Further reading:

• Richard Tames, Barking Past (London: Historical Publications, 2002)
• Sue Curtis, Dagenham and Rainham Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 2000)
• Pat Kirkham, Rodney Mace and Julia Porter, Furnishing the World - The East London Furniture Trade 1830-1980 (London: Journeyman Press, 1987)

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)

 

Billingham and Wilton manufacturing history

 In 1917, the village of Billingham in County Durham suffered the agonies of the First World War as the rest of the country where young men joined up never to return - from Bellingham some 137 died; the population was 4,599. For Billingham, the war would result in massive physical change - A Brave New World.

The world war in which the country was engaged placed huge demands on industry. In particular the young chemical industry would undergo a revolution in order to manufacture the vast quantities of explosive which the shell filling factories were demanding. Brunner Mond of Northwich in Cheshire were asked to increase their production and in 1916 a new purpose built factory at Stratton in Swindon was dedicated to the production of nitrates.

It was a year later that the Ministry of Munitions commissioned the building of a yet larger plant at Billingham transforming the landscape. The plant was not in production by the end of the war, but in 1920 Brunner Mond formed Synthetic Ammonia and Nitrates Ltd to make ammonia for use in explosives but also ammonium sulphate fertiliser. The plant has access to a substantial bed of anhydrite a form of calcium sulphate which made it a suitable place for the production of ammonium sulphate. More significantly for the Ministry of Munitions, the plant had access to electricity from a soon to be commissioned station by the Newcastle Electricity Supply Co. With the coming of peace, there were severe doubts as to the market for nitrogen based chemicals and there was lengthy debate and negotiation with potential partners. But Brunner Mond did go ahead and set in stone the location of the heart of the soon to be born ICI .

The plant attracted chemists from around Britain including a young Aldous Huxley to whom Billingham represented an 'ordered universe in the midst of a wider world of planless incoherence'. It was ground breaking technology which, by the time Huxley arrived, was focused on the production of fertiliser to feed a hungry world. The world, though, had changed and other countries were equally able to produce the fertiliser they needed. Billingham had to look further afield.

In 1926 Brunner Mond became part of ICI and spurred Billingham to further growth. By 1932 it employed 5,000 out of the then population of 18,000. The Second World War renewed the demand for explosives. Billingham produced a high octane fuel from creosote which had added 25 mph to the top speed of a Spitfire in pursuit of German flying bombs.

A key invention was that of Perspex which proved ideal for the windscreens of Spitfires. Later other plants produced Perspex including Darwen in Blackburn, Lancashire.

In 1945, the company bought the site on which it would build its other major plant in the north east at Wilton. This was not only bigger, but would be home to Britain’s major chemicals manufacture for decades. It had its own power plant, with 33MW Metropolitan Vickers/AEI turbine-generator sets powered by Babcock and Wilcox boilers. It was vast then, but in 2013 boasted sixty miles of road, four hundred miles of electric cable and one hundred and fifty miles of pipework on the two thousand acre site. In the late forties and fifties, its production included nylon, terylene and perspex.

The postwar world saw the explosion of petrochemicals whereby a 'cracker' splits crude oil into its constituent chemicals. ICI’s cracker at Wilton was itself linked to Billingham by a ten-mile pipeline, making it the largest chemical plant then in the world. ICI Acrylics division would go on to produce the feedstocks for plastic manufacture and much more.

Further reading:

W.J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries - A History Vol II The First Quarter Century 1926-1952 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975)

Northwich manufacturing history

 The wich-es in Cheshire, Northwich, Middlewich and Nantwich have provided salt for centuries along paths known as salt ways, like the one by which I live in Leicestershire.

For two young chemists in the late nineteenth century they held rather more: the promise of soda ash for which the cotton manufacturers were screaming.

John Brunner and Ludwig Mond had met whilst working for Hutchinson’s alkali works in Widnes. They gained backing from wealthy engineer Charles Holland and bought Winnington Hall in the grounds of which in 1874 they built a plant producing soda ash by the then new ammonia soda process, The Solvay Process. Three further plants followed. The Solvay process gained acceptance over the former Leblanc process because it reduced the pollution of the latter and was altogether more efficient.

In 1926 Brunner Mond joined United Alkali, Nobel Industries and British Dyestuffs to become ICI and the enlarged company committed itself to research. They founded a laboratory on the site and it was there in 1933 that polythene was first produced. The Winnington works continued with polythene until production was transferred to ICI Hertfordshire.

Winnington was a significant part of the ICI Mond division and is now part of Tata Chemicals Europe and continues with soda ash manufacture. In 2022 Tata set up the first industrial scale carbon capture site in Europe.

Winnington Hall was previously a girls boarding school to which Victorian writer John Ruskin visited to lecture on one of his books on political economy.

Accrington manufacturing history

 The town’s brickworks were known for making the densest and hardest bricks in the world used for the 'construction of the Empire State Building and the foundations of the Blackpool Tower'.

Coal mining was carried on around the outskirts of the town which attracted foundries from which textile machinery manufacturing emerged. There was tinplating and calico printing machinery, dye and chemical works.

A cotton town with forty seven mills at one time and calico printing. It was home to machinery manufacturers for the textile and cotton industries. The largest machinery manufacturer, Howard & Bulloughs, were the largest employer in the town.

Courtaulds set up a plant for machine making after the Second World War but closed it in the fifties preferring to buy from third party manufacturers.

Entwisle & Kenyon founded in 1864 began with manual washing machine but later made the much loved Ewbank carpet sweeper.

In the Second World War a shadow factory produced Bristol aero engines; the factory was later sold to English Electric, later GEC, which manufactured steel fabrication and aircraft structures.

Lucas (Rists) manufactured their wiring systems.

Further reading:

• Michael Rothwell, A Guide to the Industrial Archeology of Accrington 1979
• Jack Nadia, Coal mines around Accrington and Blackburn

Oldham manufacturing history

 Oldham was one of the Lancashire cotton towns but the story of Oldham is perhaps a little different to that of Preston with the advantage the town took of the Joint Stock company following the passing of the Limited Liability Acts. These were intended to encourage third party investment in businesses, but in Oldham they were used to encourage the participation of the workforce in the company for which they worked. In his book Oldham Past and Present, James Middleton suggests that the idea ‘prevails more in books than in practice’, yet there were examples of mill companies being owned in this way, the Sun Mill of 1860 being just one.

For Oldham the ending of the American Civil War sparked what is termed the ‘floating mania’ as dozens of companies where formed with investment from all sections of their stakeholders. Writing in 1903, Middleton gives some figures: in the Oldham district 270 cotton mills containing twelve and a half million spindles and eighteen thousand looms. These mills absorbed about one quarter of all the cotton imported into the country. Oldham’s proficiency at spinning fine yarn was such that the cotton industry in Burnley focused on weaving, buying in yarn from Oldham.

Oldham had other skills. Iron founders, Platt Brothers moved their focus on to wool and cotton spinning and weaving machinery. They also produced machinery for the weaving of carpets.

In the 1920s, the cotton market contracted and with it the demand for textile machinery. There were six significant manufacturers, Platt Brothers and Asa Lees of Oldham, Brooks and Doxey and Hetherington of Manchester, Howard and Bullough of Accrington and Dobson Barlow of Bolton. These firms merged into Textile Machinery Makers which eventually became a division of the machinery company Stone-Platt. The company made shells during the Second World War also training some 8,000 people for employment elsewhere. This company was broken up in 1982.

Ferranti moved his electrical engineering works to Hollinwood in Oldham, and, in 1897, employed seven hundred people. The company produced all that was needed for the generation of electricity, facing competition from the two large American companies: Westinghouse which set up in Trafford Park in Manchester and British Thomson Houston which came to Rugby. In time, Ferranti found their focus on electricity meters which provided the backbone of the company's business for decades. The next focus was large transformers required by the national grid, but also switchgear where the company competed with Reyrolle of Newcastle. The spirit of Ferranti was the exploration of new areas of technology. Much of this was paid for by the profits from meters.

With the advent of radio, Ferranti needed more space and leased a factory at Stalybridge. Here the company researched the components of radio, Marconi having secured patents over most elements. Ferranti engaged engineers and scientists and importantly worked with academics, to begin with at Imperial College, London. In spite of losses, the company persevered, gaining all the time increased knowledge and skills. For Oldham this provided a remarkable cushion for the decline in its textile industry with ground breaking science taking its place. From radio, Ferranti moved to television and cathode ray tubes. They researched and produced complex valves and explored very short wave radio which led them to radar. They took a further factory at Moston.

By the time of the Second World War, the company employed 12,000 people making radio devices including a radio-marker buoy called a Jellyfish and importantly carrying on radar research in conjunction with Metro-Vock at Trafford Park. The Ministry of Supply had hitherto looked to manufacturers of valves close to London, so for example Mullard at Merton (but also at their Blackburn factory), EMI at Hayes and Cossor at Harlow. Ferranti took on a further factory at Chadderton increasing their visibility and place in Oldham's community.

Moston became home to the manufacture of guided missile systems including the Bloodhound. The Bloodhound research bore fruit in automation control systems for industry but also for BOAC’s seat reservation system.

Avro moved its production from Manchester to Woodford at the start of the Second World War. They built a new factory of one million square feet at Chadderton near Oldham. They also managed a new shadow factory at Yeadon in the outskirts of Leeds. They began with Ansons with Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah engines. Their first heavy bomber was the Manchester. Its successor was, of course, the Lancaster powered by Rolls-Royce Merlin engines; Merlins had been intended for fitment to the Supermarine Spitfire. In the event they powered both.

A total of 7,377 Lancasters were built during the war by the production group which comprised: Avro itself at Newton Heath (Manchester) and Yeadon; Armstrong Whitworth at Baginton (Coventry), Bitteswell (Lutterworth) and South Marston (Swindon); Austin Motors (Longbridge); Metropolitan-Vickers (Manchester); Vickers Armstrong (Chester and Castle Bromwich); and Victory Aircraft in Canada.

Oldham continues its engineering heritage in companies like Oldham Engineering which had offered precision engineering since 1861. There are also anumber of textile manufactures remaining in the town.

Further reading

Hartley Bateson, A Centenary History of Oldham (Oldham County Borough Council, 1949)

Belfast manufacturing history

 Ireland moved later than much of Britain away from a subsistence economy. The island as a whole was not rich in raw materials yet the climate was good for growing, spinning and weaving flax. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Belfast ranked alongside towns such as Lisburn, Lurgan, Portadown, and Dungannon. In size, the city was similar to Derry and Newry. Linen was a cottage industry with a great number of spinners and weavers in Ulster but also in Leinster and Munster (which would become part of the Republic).

Linen was also made in England, but it was over-shadowed by that imported from continental European countries. The focus of English textiles was very much on wool and cotton. Ireland's linen industry was cottage based with exports flowing via dyers through Dublin. At the end of the seventeenth century the needs of British government finance for war led to increased duties on imports and, since linen was one of the biggest imports, it was a prime target. The knock on from this was the need to increase home production and Ireland was drawn in and given preferential access to the English market, then the biggest and fastest growing in Europe. In Belfast flax spinning and weaving gathered round the rivers Forth, Farset and Blackstaff and the mills they powered taking the place of what previously had been a cottage industry in the province.

The late eighteenth century also saw in Belfast the birth of the mechanised cotton industry. Cotton was the stuff of Lancashire, but the Irish climate was similar and the island had both labour and skills. The industry developed in East Ulster and also in the south in Waterford and in Dublin. Belfast was known for its fine fabrics, whereas the south produced the courser calicos. In the later nineteenth century Belfast took advantage of growing mechanisation to produce cheap muslins. Cotton reached its peak in the 1820s and a number of Belfast men notably Thomas Mulholland and John Hind decided to venture into mechanised flax spinning. Others followed. Linen came into it own once more when the shipping of cotton was blockaded in the American Civil War. With a market starved of cotton, what better than linen. In Belfast, spinning mills were busy and more were built. Handloom weavers moved closer to the spinners and still held the market for fine linen with coarser fabric being produced on power looms. In time these looms were improved and power looms were adopted widely with yet more mills built.

With the end of the war, cotton shipments resumed and Lancashire, adopting further mechanisation, once more undercut linen. To make matters worse international customers began to produce their own linen. The result of all this was the closure of mills and the removal of the remainder closer together in Belfast. Linen and cotton began to be processed alongside each other. Linen Union became popular as the addition of cotton made the fabric softer. The First World War increased demand for linen and the industry revived only to fall into terminal decline after a brief respite following the war.

Along with Dublin and Cork, Belfast was one of Ireland's sea ports and as the linen and cotton trades expanded so too did Belfast. Belfast was becoming increasing prosperous with developments in the textile industry. William Durgan, known in Ireland as the King of the Railways, saw the potential for growth, not only in railways, but also shipping and he undertook the digging out of the harbour. This made the docks perfect for shipbuilding, something seen clearly by Edward Harland and Gustav Wolff. This transformed Belfast in to Ireland's primary port. With shipping came shipbuilding which was also transformed mid century by the coming together of Harland and Wolff. It is worth mentioning, because it is a name that keeps appearing, that contracts with the Bibby Line were the lifeblood of the new company.

Harland & Wolff is surely the iconic image of Belfast. Anthony Slaven in his British Shipbuilding 1500-2010, praises the shipyard for its ability in the late nineteenth century to 'produce any type of vessel', having previously noted the specialisms of the other British shipbuilding areas. He does concede that the Northern Ireland yard was particularly known for its cargo liners and passenger liners. Later it was of course known as the birthplace of the Titanic but also her sister ships Olympic and Britannic. Alongside Harlands was Workman and Clark's yard founded in 1879.

Scottish born John Boyd Dunlop who, whilst living in Belfast, developed the pneumatic tyre which both greatly improved the comfort of riding a bicycle but also its speed.

Belfast played its part in the war effort in both world wars with ships and munitions and in the Second World War. Shorts of Rochester joined with Harland & Wolff in 1936 in a company known as Short & Harland and produced the Sunderland flyboat, and, from this design, the massive Stirling bomber. Production at Rochester became too vulnerable to air attack and so move to Belfast, with Austin also producing a good number. Some 2,375 were produced in all. After the war, some yards took advantage of opportunities to re-equip. Harland & Wolff took over welding shops provided by the government. Part of Shorts was bought by the American Spirit Aerosystems which in turn became part of Boeing. Another part of Shorts, then owned by Bombardier, entered into a venture with Thompson-CSF to develop the Shorts Missile System. Thompson-CSF changed its name to Thales and bought out Bombardier. Thales now manufacture ammunition in the city.

The Festival of Britain in 1951 shed light on Belfast and Northern Ireland highlighting its agriculture and linen industries. At that time manufacturing was concentrated on Belfast with some 58% of those employed in manufacturing working in the capital. It was by far the largest centre of population, some eight times that of Derry which came second with 50,000. It was primarily a manufacturing city with half the working population so employed in engineering and shipbuilding, textiles and clothing, food and drink. The Belfast Ropework Company had the largest rope making factory in the world.

Soft drinks producer Cantrell and Cochrane was founded in a shop in Belfast in 1852.

Government sponsored industrial development is important with industries established in the decade after the Second World War including aircraft (Short Brothers), precision engineering, rayon weaving, toy making and food processing.

The city welcomed investment from overseas, particularly the USA with Dow Chemicals. The DeLorean motor company set up production in 1978 but lasted only four years.

Belfast and Northern Ireland suffered from the 'troubles' - sectarian violence - which lasted until the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998. Since then the province has prospered.

Further reading

• Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)
• Emily Boyle and Robin Sweetnam in Belfast the Making of the City 1800-1914 (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1983)