Ipswich was a major port in the time before Hull and Liverpool took up the strain of the industrial revolution. It was not, however, without industry, not least some shipbuilding. The east of England was wool country and both traded wool and manufactured from it.
Nearby Sutton Hoo revealed evidence of the Anglo Saxon world of which East Anglia was very much part with trading relationships with the Nordic national but also France and through to the Mediterranean and beyond.
The agricultural revolution was the turning point, especially in the latter part where farmers struggling to feed a hungry nation turned to mechanisation in their fields.
In Ipswich it was a man named Robert Ransome who was a Quaker and set up a foundry in an old malting in Ipswich in 1789. He was the son of Richard Ransome, a school master from Wells, and had served an apprenticeship with an iron monger in Norwich. It was a time when ideas were being explored for tools for the better use of land. The choice of Ispwich is interesting for the town had been suffering from the loss of the wool trade to other centres. Ipswich was, though, on the route taken by colliers and so had an ample supply of coal. Ransome's first major invention appeared in 1803 where he observed that molten iron coming into contact with a cold surface would quickly become very hard, something he adapted to the plough share making it in effect self sharpening. From this beginning he went on to develop a plough with separate interchangeable parts which gave it excellent adaptability for all kinds of land. The business prospered despite the ups and downs of the economy.
Robert took his two sons into partnership just as the agricultural depression of the early nineteenth century hit. Diversification was the order of the day and the partnership entered into a contract with the celebrated civil engineer William Cubit and extended their product range to cast bridge sections to replace Stokes bridge in Ipswich which had been destroyed. A further diversification with a much longer future for the company was grass cutting machinery.
In 1836 a young chemist, Charles May, joined the business and this accompanied a further major diversification into production for the railway boom and the work force grew to 1,000. Ipswich was now also linked by the railway to London and the north. The railway work was spilt into a new company, Ransome & Rapier, and the agricultural business continued with frequent diversifications not least into steam engines as Ransome & May. Charles May joined a London firm following the Great Exhibition at which they exhibited and the company became Ransome and Sims; Jeffries would follow later. The company developed a close relationship with the new agricultural regions of Russia and an export trade more generally. In the years up to the First World War the workforce seldom fell below 1,500.
The first half of the twentieth century saw the introduction of the internal combustion engine and the development of the grass cutting business. In the First World War the Stokes Mortar was invented by Sir Wilfred Scott-Stokes chairman of Ransome & Rapier and I write of this in Ordnance. Ransome Sims & Jefferies built aeroplanes and employed some 5,000 men and women. After the war RSJ switched its efforts to battery vehicles and trucks for factory use and fork lift trucks figured largely in its work in the Second World War. Ransome & Rapier diversified away from railways into cranes, water control gates and earth moving machinery. Grass cutting equipment is still produced under the Ransomes name.
Of course it wasn't just Ransomes. The Manganese Bronze & Brass Company built a foundry and extrusion plant in Ipswich producing high-duty brass and bronze alloys much for naval use.
Reavell & Company made compressors, one use of which was in conjunction with the engines made by Dr Diesel injecting fuel. Another use was in gas distribution and in experimental work with atomic energy. Reavells later became part of Compair of Slough.
E.R. & F. Turner manufactured portable steam engines and roller-mills for flour. Turners became part of Agricultural and General Engineers of which Bull Motors were also a part and which had moved its manufacturing to Ipswich. This comprised electric motors and generators, more specifically super-silent motors and battery powered motors for passenger vehicles. In the First World War, Turner’s expertise in rollers was put to good use in developing a lathe to manufacture shell cases. The same was used in the Second World War until American machine tools took over. Turners then focused on electric motors. With the advent of combine harvesters, Turners skills at seed cleaning came in. Turners acquired Christy Hunt of Scunthorpe and the enlarged company still manufactures in Ipswich under the name Christy Turner. The Bull Motors business eventually became part of Hawker Siddeley.
The chemical company Fisons exploited the development of super-phosphates as fertiliser from the invention by J.B. Lawes of Barking in 1839. Fisons as such only came into being a century later as the fragmented East Anglian fertiliser industry slowly gathered eventually focusing on a plant on Cliff Quay in Ipswich where it produced the sulphuric acid and superphosphate required for the fertiliser.
Cocksedge & Co was a company that combined construction (which continues to this day and here is a link) and mechanical engineering of which the most prodigious was production for two world wars. The company produced temporary bridges, Bailey Bridges and adapted tanks to carry massive bridge sections. In terms of tanks, they cast turrets weighing 3.5 tons and devised a method of carrying and laying temporary roadway for tanks following the invasion of Europe. They also carried out ship repairs. In peacetime that had produce heavy cutting machinery to process sugar beat.
Further reading:
- The History of Engineering in Ipswich (Ipswich: The Ipswich Engineering Society)
- D.R. Grace and D.C. Phillips, Ransomes of Ipswich A History of the firm and guide to its records (Institute of Agricultural History, 1975)
- Carol and Michael Weaver, Ransomes A Bicentennial Celebration, 1989
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