This area of Surrey is rich in sand, chalk, clay and rock all suitable as building materials. Some of the sand is very fine and so ideal for glass making. There is also evidence of some twelve windmills dating from early times. Geared water mills had been introduced by the Romans and some 6,000 are mentioned in the Domesday Book. It was long thought that these were only for grinding grain and a good many were. However, certainly by the early Middle Ages water mills were adapted to other uses including fulling cloth, hammering hot metal and sharpening tools.
The Reigate area had the disadvantage of a lack of constantly running water. I write elsewhere of the use of ponds to regulate water flow; the solution in Reigate was the windmill and a number of the twelve mills mentioned were powered by wind. Fullers earth was also found nearby and so the application of wind mills to fulling was entirely feasible; there was also no shortage of sheep.
The Surrey Iron Railway built in 1805 was planned to go all the way to Portsmouth to facilitate transport during the Napoleonic wars, but in fact ended at Merstham just short of Reigate. Nevertheless it did serve to assist in the transport of Merstham rock and other building materials in great demand as London expanded.
One of the watermills, Salford Mill, was extensively upgraded including the installation of steam power and this was said to have been used by Dr Kellogg for the flaking of wheat until he moved his breakfast cereal business to Manchester
In 1919, the Redland Tile Works began making concrete tiles using the local reserves of sand; local chalk and clay were also available to make the necessary cement. The business was successful, given the demand for building following the war; there was also ample labour in the shape of ex-servicemen.
Carter Wilkinson engineers invented a tile making machine that dramatically speeded up the process and it became a subsidiary of Redland which then exploited the invention through granting licences in many countries. The Redland Engineering business remained in Reigate, but tile making moved to the Moorhouse Tile Works in Kent. In time Redland opened tile works at Syston in Leicestershire and elsewhere across the country. It bought small local brick companies, and in 1984 bought the famous traditional tile manufacturer, Rosemary Roof Tiles. Redland expanded considerably in the seventies and eighties. A revolutionary flat roof system, Icopal invented by David Anderson, had followed the concrete roof tile in 1923 with a factory in Trafford Park in Manchester. Redland was acquired in 1997 by the French Lafarge. The Anglo-Irish company BMI now owns both Redland and Icopal.
A survivor from early times was the British Wax Refining Company of Redhill which purifies and bleaches beeswax. Beecham Research Laboratories were at nearby Brockham Park
The Monotype works at Salfords, near Redhill, was founded in 1899 to manufacture compositing machines for the rapidly expanding printing industry. Monotype Corporation originated in the USA and owner Tolbert Lanston invented a method of mechanical hot metal typeset whereby a typed script could be automatically converted into metal characters. As the twentieth century progressed, the style of type face became more and more important and different families of fonts were devised, for example the well known Times New Roman. Monotype Ltd was very much a partner with its US parent being as involved in developing technology and design. The UK company was floated on the London Stock Exchange with a British board of directors including Harold Macmillan of the publishing house of the same name. Monotype expanded and bought the rival system Linotype which worked with lines of text rather than individual characters.
Reigate, Redhill and the surrounding area are now predominantly residential.
Further reading:
- Derek Stidder, A Guide to the Industrial History of Reigate and Banstead (Reigate: Surrey Industrial History Group, 1996)
- Derek Stidder, A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of Reigate and Banstead District (Reigate: Surrey Industrial History Group, 1979)
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