Runcorn and Widnes manufacturing history

 These towns facing each other over the Mersey share an industrial history of chemicals manufacturing. They were joined by a transporter bridge in 1905 which was replaced by the arched Jubilee Bridge in 1961.

The opening of the Bridgewater canal in 1776 kick started industry in Runcorn. Two large soap and alkali works (Hazlehurst and the Runcorn Soap and Alkali Company) were destined to grow throughout the nineteenth century, particularly with advances in science in mid century. Proximity to the sea and canals encouraged shipbuilding and the presence of minerals underground enabled lead and copper mining.

The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1895 further improved the connectivity of the town and the Castner-Kellner company (which later became part of ICI) began using the electrolytic process from which both caustic soda, bleaching powder, chlorine and hydrogen were extracted. The Hazlehurst soap business was bought by United Alkali, of which I say more below, who then sold to Lever Brothers (later Unilever) adding to their soap business. The town became home to British Dyestuffs also later part of ICI which located the headquarters of their Mond heavy chemicals division there.

ICI's Fluor produced fluorocarbons, used as refrigerants in air-conditioning systems in cars and homes, at sites in Runcorn, Japan and Louisiana. The company's Chlor's Runcorn site dated back to 1800s and the first industrial production of chlorine. Since then, regulations had tightened and the market had wilted, leaving a plant full of ageing and poorly maintained equipment. One comparison is quite eye opening. Its enormous cell room took as much electricity as the whole city of Liverpool. Both companies together with Crosfield of Warrington were bought by Ineos.

A river, a ford and a sunny south slope were the attractions of the place that became Widnes. What was a pretty village came to be a major chemical town through the initiative of John Hutchinson when the cost became prohibitive of taking raw materials (salt) from Northwich in Cheshire to St Helens where there was coal to produce soda and the potassium chlorate and bleaching powder. Widnes had local supplies of coal, easier access to the Cheshire salt fields abundant land and good communications by canal and railway. Hutchinson was joined by Gossage, making washing soda by the Leblanc process, and it was not long before huge amounts of sulphur infested chemical waste was being dumped on the Widnes wet lands. It was a German immigrant Ludwig Mond, a friend of John Brunner who worked with Hutchinson, who discovered a process capable of removing half of the waste sulphur. Soon this was widely adopted. Henry Deacon who had been working with Hutchinson formed a partnership with Gaskell to make sulphuric acid and ammonia soda used in the less polluting Solvay process with a bi-product of calcium chloride.

The pollution from the chemical works combined with inadequate sanitation led to Wides being called 'the dirtiest ugliest town in England'. The growth in population was boosted by immigration from Ireland of people fleeing the famine. The poor living conditions led to men seeking solace in alcohol and the town gained bad reputation which disappeared into memory as the town was improved.

United Alkali was formed by the merger of forty-eight alkali producers including fourteen from Widnes with the remainder based in St Helens, Tyneside, Scotland and Ireland. Old polluting plants were closed. United Alkali became part of ICI. Brunner and Mond joined together in 1873 but at Winnington near Northwich in Cheshire producing soda-ash for the cotton industry also using the ammonia soda process.

In Wides, John William Towers joined Hutchinson's laboratory in 1872. He then joined the Atlas Chemical Works set up by James Hargreaves and Thomas Robinson to exploit the salt-cake process and Towers went on to produce scientific apparatus for the chemical industry. Further chemical companies set up plants: Alumina Ltd, Peter Spence & Sons and Barium Chemicals. I write more about the consolidation of the chemical industry in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Andrew Poulson came from Wigan in 1869 to the Widnes foundry and took charge of the moulding department producing cast iron pillars which were used in pier construction amongst others, and segments for lining the London underground. The town, like others around, had copper foundries including Thomas Bolton's Mersey Copper Works producing copper rods and plates for locomotives and also rollers for calico printing; later it would supply the electrical industry. British Insulated and Helsby Cables was nearby and became part of BICC. High Speed Alloys was established in the town to produce special grades of steel, it was part of a merger of some eighteen similar businesses. Bell's Poilite and Everite Company manufactured asbestos cement of corrugated roofing.

The First World War made great demands on the chemical manufacturers and iron and steel works, the latter including for masts for Marconi Radio. The twenties saw consolidation of the chemical industry with the formation of ICI. Albright & Wilson set up on the site of the former Musgrave Works and Fisons took control of Vickers Fertiliser.

In the Second World War the Central Laboratory in Widnes carried out research into Uranium in support of the nuclear bomb project. The production of artificial rubber for insulation was undertaken and the metal works made Bailey Bridges.

In the post war world, Widnes industries focused on chemicals, asbestos and gelatine for sweets,

Runcorn was designated a New Town in 1964 and attracted General Motors which then closed in 1991, Sigmatex (carbon fibre textiles) Héroux-Devtek (aircraft landing gear), Whitford (speciality coatings), Teva (pharmaceuticals), and Fresenius Kabi (medical products). Diageo also maintains a packaging plant in Runcorn. Runcorn and Widnes became part of Halton Borough Council in 1974.

Further reading:

• https://www.millbank.com/blog/chemicals-north-west-past-present-future
• Charles Nickson, History of Runcorn (London: Mackie and Co, 1887)
• George E. Diggle, A History of Widnes (Corporation of Wides, 1961)

Welwyn Garden city Manufacturing History

 The founders of Welwyn had the experience of Letchworth Garden City, built some twenty years earlier, to fall back on. Work began in 1920 and the first manufacturing companies soon followed.

Of most enduring importance was Shredded Wheat, a Canadian company which had set up in Britain in 1908 in London's Aldwych. It was said that the company decided to take a considerable chance by moving to the new Garden City. Work started on the first three-storey block in 1924 and really very soon the factory was operating with great success. The business prospered and in 1928 was bought by Nabisco which added further products including Shreddies.

The next name that would become equally well known was Murphy which began in a garage making radios. As I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, demand for radios was strong and so the company grew and by the thirties had five hundred employees producing 33,000 radios a year. By 1939 it was one of the six biggest manufacturers of radios in the world. It was bought by the Rank Organisation in 1962 and in 1969 moved production to Ware and the premises was taken by Rank Xerox with a workforce of 1,400.

Nivea runs a close third. Beiersdorf took premises in Bessemer Road in 1931 and manufactured Nivea products. They then became Herts Pharmaceutical Company before becoming part of Smith + Nephew.

A big win for Welwyn was when they persuaded the American Norton Grinding Wheels to build what was then the largest factory in the town in 1931. Norton prospered in Welwyn until 1982 when manufacturing was moved abroad. Norton was another company bought by the French St Gobain, a former client of mine, and I recall a ceramics plant in Stoke on Trent.

Another American company, Lincoln Electric, began production in Welwyn in 1935. It later became part of GKN.

Under the New Towns Act of 1946, Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield were to be two distinct towns. In practice they are so close as to be a single conurbation. Sir Geoffrey de Havilland moved his aircraft company to Hatfield from Edgware in 1934. It became by a long way that town's largest employer. I tell its story in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. The company was famous for the Mosquito aircraft in the Second World War and the first commercial jet, The Comet, in the fifties.

Plastics came to Welwyn in 1938 when ICI created its Plastics Division and took a 10 acre site in Welwyn. In the next ten years it became the largest producer of plastics in the Commonwealth. In the fifites ICI relocated plastics to the north of England and the Welwyn site refocused on research.

Staying with chemicals, Hoffman La Roche manufactured Redoxin and then Librium and Valium. Smith Kline and French moved from Camberwell in 1939 and built the then tallest building in the town.

Other manufacturers include the Danish Bacon company, Allied Bakeries, Knorr soup and Suchard confectioners.

Further reading:

• Roger Filler, A History of Welwyn Garden City (Chichester: Phillimore, 1986)
• Hatfield and its people Pt 12 The Twentieth Century (The Hatfield WEA, 1964)

Huddersfield manufacturing history

 Huddersfield provided a commercial centre at its famous Cloth Hall for the many thousands of home working wool weavers in the surrounding district. 

The inventions of which I have written elsewhere slowly changed this settled and quite prosperous scene. In his book The Story of Huddersfield Roy Brook first points to  the error in assuming that wool and cotton were distinct industries. He makes the point that ‘Manchester Goods’ (which incidentally my father traded in East Africa in the early twentieth century and of which I wrote in my book Dunkirk to D Day. The image is of my father on Mombassa railway station in 1911) were a mix of cotton and wool. Similarly the weavers and spinners of Huddersfield almost certainly worked with cotton as well as wool. 

In terms of mechanisation, the first initiatives increased the speed of spinning and thus the weavers had somehow to keep up. I have read elsewhere that exports of thread to the Low Countries balanced the overproduction, but was not welcomed. Mechanisation of weaving had a more dramatic impact, for now factories filled with weaving machines could and did replaced the many thousands of hand weavers. The well known opposition of the Luddites was replicated across the wool weaving areas. Charlotte Bronte’s book Shirley offers a vivid account of what this might have been like. Mechanisation was in fact a gradual process with hand weavers providing cloth along side the much larger mills. 

Huddersfield did have its weaving machine manufacturers, but, for worsted cloth, manufacturers from the west of the Pennines were used, worsted having greater similarities with cotton cloth. In Huddersfield, Haighs were well known for carding engines. Whiteleys became famous for the manufacture of spinning mules and tentering machines. 

Huddersfield developed a chemical industry on the back of dye houses. Read Holliday began with dye but then moved into acids including picric acid which would become essential in the Great War as would lyddite. War also presented a challenge, for German produced materials were key in the supply chain. In time home production took the strain. The company became first part of British Dyestuffs and then of ICI. It is now run by Syngenta.

The introduction of the steam engine, about which Samuel Smiles wrote so engagingly in his Lives of Boulton and Watt, had a dramatic impact on Huddersfield as it had in other textile areas. Broadbents led the field in Huddersfield in steam powered heavy machinery. Hopkinson became well known for their ‘Indicator’ which could tell the operator how a steam engine was performing, highlighting hidden areas where problems may be arising. It was compared to stethoscope for a physician. 

Machinery manufacturers engendered skills applicable in other fields of mechanical engineering, an example being plant for the production of gas.

Karrier trucks were made here and later became part of the Rootes Group.

The introduction of electricity brought about further change and it was Ernest Brook Limited which manufactured electric motors for use in factories. In November 1950, the company produced its millionth engine.

David Brown Gears began in 1860 serving the wool industry and it grew to having fourteen factories with 10,000 employees. I write of its activity with tractors in the Second World War in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. It went on to lead Aston Martin Lagonda to great success. It continues to do great engineering as David Brown Defence.

Further reading 

Roy Brook, The Story of Huddersfield (London: MCGibbon & Kee, 1968)