Manufacturing in central southern England

 The central strip of southern England running south from Milton Keynes to the Isle of Wight has a surprisingly ancient manufacturing history as well as being home to much contemporary hi-tech innovation.

Milton Keynes

A new town designated in 1967 hosts the Red Bull motor sport team. You can read more about the Milton Keynes story by following this link.

Towcester

Plessey opened their R&D facility at Caswell House. Silverstone circuit with Aston Martin F1 and a host of small supporting hi-tech business are nearby. Silverstone is very much the heart of 'Motorsport Valley', stretching from south of Birmingham through Oxfordshire and which contains most of the British motorsport industry.

Banbury

Home to Haas F1 motor sport team. Follow this link to read more of what came before.

Bedford

At nearby Old Warden is Shuttleworth Hall which exhibits old aircraft and other production of the Lincoln firm of Clayton & Shuttleworth

Brackley

Historically a staple and then coaching down. Now home to Mercedes motor sport and supporting engineering business. Also food companies including Avara Foods formed in 2018 from a merger between Cargill Uk and Faccenda.

Kidlington

YASA, a subsidiary of Mercedes is developing electric motors for EVs.

Oxford

Just outside Oxford, at Cowley, William Morris set up Morris motors. It became a major car making centre, adding specialist Pressed Steel and a whole supply chain. The site is now occupied by BMW Mini. The University is a major collaborator with British industry. Read more in this link.

Harwell

Harwell is home to the Space Cluster a centre of research built on seventy-five years of research beginning with the Atomic Energy Research Establishment.

Didcot

Once home to a vast Ordnance Depot, It is also the caretaker of the Great Western Railway heritage.

Abingdon

The town was home to MG cars before manufacturing and ownership left for China. It is now home to Oxford Instruments who manufacture hi-tec research equipment.

Wantage

Birthplace of Alfred the Great. Now Williams motor sport F1 team is based at nearby Grove.

Leighton Buzzard

In the twenties the American foundation garment manufacturer, Gossard, set up in the town. It would later achieve independence as a British public company only to fall into the hands of Courtaulds some years later. In the late twentieth century Hone All Precision set up here to provide high specification parts for aerospace and related industries.

Aylesbury

Ecko relocated part of is manufacturing during the Second World War. Glaxo set up manufacturing here after the war.

Swindon

Famously a railway town. I tell much more in this link.

Reading

Home to Huntley and Palmers biscuit factory. I tell its story in this link.

Guildford

Home to Dennis Commercial vehicles famous for their patented worm-driven rear axle, introduced in 1904. . The successor company which manufactures electric buses has a new factory in Farnborough. Like Godalming and Kingston, it was a centre of tanning.

Godalming

In 1881, Siemens Brothers installed a small generating station at Godalming in Surrey powered by water from the river Wey.

Woking

In the nineteenth century a number of paper mills and print works were founded; one became part of the Staples Group. Ken Wood began his kitchen appliance business here before moving to Havant. The Maclaren Technology Centre is based here.

Weybridge

Home to Brooklands Race Track aircraft manufacture and testing. Read more in this link.

Kingston upon Thames

A Surrey town close to London. Historically home to tanners. In the twentieth century it was aircraft and support for the war effort that re-created the economy. Home to Hawker-Siddeley. Read more in this link.

Farnborough

Home to the British aircraft industry with the Royal Aircraft Factory and subsequently the Royal Aircraft Establishment. Vickers had their Balloon factory there for early airships. I write more in this link.

Farnham

In nearby Waverley Abbey Cistercian monks made their first settlement in the twelfth century. Their impact would be huge for they were skilled at agriculture particularly the breeding of sheep. Sheep had been brought from the Middle East at around 3,000 BC and were present in many parts of the country. As the Cistercians spread they cleared the land sometimes of whole villages to expand their flocks. They became the most significant woolgrowers in the land. In the fourteenth century there were estimated to be eight million sheep in England compared to five million people.

Bracknell

One of the new towns designated after the Second World War. ICI set up its agricultural research laboratory here, now owned by Syngenta. ICL had a presence in the town with a large office block, now the Fujitsu HQ. Now a technological hub and the home to Rowney Artist materials. Read more by following the link.

Basingstoke

Original home to Burberry raincoats. Thornycroft commercial vehicles were made here. Read more by following the link.

Winchester

The ancient capital of King Arthur and Alfred the Great was buried in the cathedral. Winchester, like many English towns, was a centre of the wool industry which drove the English economy in the Middle Ages. It was a staple town as indicated by the presence of wool weights dating from the 1350s. Nothing lasts and as elsewhere wool work moved from the city to the surrounding rural areas. In the fifteenth century there was a move away from narrow worsted cloth to much heavier woollen fulled broadcloth. This much larger cloth required more space and more people. It also attracted a higher price and was in demand in export markets as well as at home. This was good for the English economy but less so for the towns and cities which lost workers.

Salisbury

The city was a centre of the wool trade and at nearby Wilton carpets are still made.

Gosport

For centuries, home to support for the Royal Navy. The town’s shipbuilding skills were importantly directed also to the building of yachts. Related maritime electronics brought necessary skills to Ferguson television.

Havant

Kenwood kitchen appliances were made here, later bought by Thorn. They moved from Woking in 1962.

Fareham

A town supplying the shipyards of Portsmouth. Read more in this link.

Romsey

Plessey's Roke Manor Research opened in 1956 with a focus on military communications.

Southampton

A major port not least for the age of the great transatlantic liners. Read more by following the link.

Eastleigh

Railway workshops were built here at the end of the nineteenth century and found increased activity in the interwar years with the southern region electrification.

Portsmouth

The Royal dockyards were by the mid eighteenth century the 'greatest industrial power in the world'. Read more by following this link.

Chichester

Rolls-Royce Motors have a large manufacturing complex on the Goodwood Estate. Chichester itself was home to Shippams producer of meat and fish pastes.

Bournemouth and Christchurch

Plessey took over the site of the MOD Signals Research and Development Establishment.

Isle of Wight

Plessey Radar was manufactured here. Britten-Norman began manufacture of light aircraft in the sixties then moved overseas and have recently re-shored production. Saunders Roe manufactured seaplanes and hovercraft. Vestas manufacture wind turbine blades. Read more by following this link.

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)

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)