Manufacturing history of Wales

Coal, iron ore, copper and tin were the raw materials that made Wales key to the British industrial revolution. Slate from North Wales covered many British roofs. Before all of this Wales was predominantly agricultural with an economy revolving around annual fairs and periodic local markets. Woollen cloth was woven from locally reared sheep in very much a cottage industry. There were big land owners but no great wealth.

There was a massive coal field bordered by Merthyr Tydfil in the north, Kidwelly in the west and Pontypool in the East reaching the coast in the south around Swansea bay and then heading inland eastward toward Caerphilly. Iron, copper and tin ore were also to be found. Landowners and occupiers would access coal and other minerals close to the surface essentially for their own use; there was simply not the transport to trade further afield. War changed this settled picture with increased demand particularly for iron. Technical developments were crucial: the blast furnace, Darby's discovery of how coal could be used to smelt ore and Cort's puddling method for wrought iron. In relation to coal, it was Newcomen and then Watt who enabled the sinking of ever deeper pits. The canals offered vital transport; the image is of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. A.H. John in his The Industrial Development of South Wales 1750-1850 highlights the remarkable fact that the capital to develop coal, tin and copper mining came from England as did the funding of most of the iron industry. One result of this was that the Welsh iron industry in particular was in much larger units that the contemporary businesses in industrial England.

Further reading: A.H. John, The Industrial Development of South Wales 1750-1850 (Cardiff: Merton Priory Press,1995, 1950)

Thomas Telford's Menai Bridge

Merthyr Tydfil

Once known as the Iron Capital of the World, Merthyr was home to the Dowlais Foundry and Engineering Company which made iron using the Northern Coal measures some twenty miles inland of Cardiff and Newport. It became part of GKN and I write about this in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. In the nearby village of Hirwaun, Radio and Allied had a manufacturing base in a former Royal Ordnance Factory; this would be the start of Arnold Weinstock's long relationship with GEC and I write of this in Vehicles to Vaccines. I write more on Merthyr in this link.

Ebbw Vale

Ebbw Vale Steelworks was at one time the largest in Europe. It had moved from using local ore for iron production to ore from Middlesbrough and Northampton to make steel, the local ore being unsuitable for steel making. In 1920, the steel works had employed 34,000 people but had then declined and closed in 1929. As a result of a government initiative, Richard Thomas & Co, the biggest tinplate manufacturer, took over the steel works and production of tinplate expanded not least for the growing canning industry. In the thirties it introduced a wide strip mill which revolutionised production. The production of 5,000 tons a week was used in the adjoining tinplate works but also to be galvanised and corrugated. It was at one time under the control of the Darby family and had fought Bessemer over patent rights.

Newport

At the mouth of the river Usk, Newport remains a general cargo port. It has one of the few remaining transporter bridges which crossed the river. Historically, it exported coal and tinplate. Richard Thomas and Baldwins of Spencer Works, Llanwern was set up to produce tinplate taking advantage of the proximity of the coast and hence the ease of imports. The Inmos semiconductor factory was built here and later became Newport Wafer Fab.

Cwmbran

A new town designated after the Second World War. Ferranti based their software development, naval and civil computer systems there. Lucas managed a shadow factory making aircraft turrets, and later Girling made shock absorbers. As a new town it provided home for some workers at the nearby Panteg steelworks.

Pontypool

British Nylon Spinners opened a factory in 1947 to produce nylon yarn. Pilkington Brothers had a glass works there.

Glascoed

BAE Systems' former Royal Ordnance munitions factory is the major manufacturing employer.

Cardiff

The capital city of Wales. In 1891, the Dowlais Company set up steel making at East Moors to have better access to imported ore, its reserves at Merthyr Tydfill being unsuitable for steel making. The company had acquired suitable iron ore reserves at Bilbao in Spain. A Royal Ordnance engineering armaments factory was based here in the Second World War and produced 21,200 guns including 7,250 tank guns and 1875 anti-tank guns. Matsushita TV factory was set up in the sixties. Robert Bosch set up a factory in nearby Pontyclun Miskin Business Park but left in 2011 when the space was taken by Renishaw for Healthcare product manufacturing. Also in healthacre, Amersham International had a presence here. The Royal Mint is at Llantrisant.

Bridgend

Sony set up a TV factory here. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines about the encouragement government gave to Japanese manufacturers. Ford set up a motor factory here in 1980 and a supply chain gathered including machine tools makers, mostly SMEs.

Swansea

The home of tinplating and related steel production largely because of its status as a major commercial centre. You can read much more by following this link

Port Talbot

The Steel Company of Wales's Abbey Works at Port Talbot was huge. It stemmed from the success of Siemens in steel making for tinplate at nearby Swansea. In 1831 William Llewellyn founded the Aberdulais tinplate works. The steel works now owned by Tata is in process of conversion to smelting with electric arc furnaces.

Llanelli

A centre for lead, copper (after 1804), and tinplate (after 1847). Llanelli also became a port for the anthracite coalfield. South Wales produced nearly all the anthracite mined in the UK. A large cold-reduction mill at Trostre, using steel strip from Port Talbot, made Llanelli again a centre of tinplate manufacture, primarily for packaging. The town also has a small steel fabrication industry. TNT was manufactured in the Second World War at the Royal Ordnance factory at Pembrey on the South Wales coast between Llanelly and Kidwelly. Covering five hundred acres of dunes, it was originally owned and run  by Nobel before being taken over by the War Office in the First World War. Pembrey also had a shell filling factory. The Japanese Calsonic Kansei (Marelli) set up a car components plant.

Pembroke

For over a century of active service, the Royal Dockyard saw the construction of five Royal Yachts and 263 other Royal Naval vessels. The last ship built there was launched in April 1922. The Valero Oil refinery was established by Chevron in 1964 and taken over by Valero in 2011.

Milford Haven

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the town was one of the main UK fishing ports employing some 4,000 people. The Suez crisis of the fifties led to the use of much larger oil tankers for which new terminals were required. Milford Haven fitted the bill and the Esso Oil Refinery opened in 1960 to be followed by BP in 1961, Regent (now Valero) in 1964, Gulf in 1968 and finally Elf in 1973.

Newtown

The wool industry had been significant in Wales since the time of the Cistercian monks in the twelfth century. Fulling mills began to appear wherever there was fast running water and by the late nineteenth century there were 250 mills in west Wales. Also in the nineteenth century Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones opened a large woollen mill in Newtown selling by mail order. I wrote of current wool manufacture in Melin Tregwynt in Vehicles to Vaccines. Foxford woollen mills founded in 1892 in county Mayo is one of the few remaining mills.

Flint

The first artificial silk mill, the Aber Works, was opened in Holywell by a German company in 1907. The First World War saw its German employees interned and the mill was taken over by Courtaulds to manufacture rayon as it became known. Further mills were added: the Castle Works and Deeside Mill. The mills employed thousands so much so that the Flint football team were known as the Silkmen. Production ceased in 1980.

Deeside

There was John Summers and Son’s Steelworks on Deeside which closed in 1980. Toyota engine plant built in the early 1990s to supply the Burnaston assembly plant.

Broughton (North Wales)

Vickers set up a factory at Broughton in 1940 producing Wellingtons and Lancasters. A Broughton built Lancaster now forms part of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. After the War, the factory was bought by de Havilland, producing the very successful Mosquito. In the 1960s, the company became part of Hawker-Siddeley Aviation, before becoming part of British Aerospace in 1977. Today, the Broughton facility is owned by the multi-nationally owned Airbus and is one of the biggest employers in the area, producing wing components

Wrexham

The town boasts the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal designed by Thomas Telford (shown in the image). The steel works at nearby Brymbo was founded in 1796 and was only closed in 1990. At one time it experimented with a method of making steel from high phosphorous ore. The Royal Ordnance factory producing cordite closed after the Second World War. Wrexham attracted new industries, including engineering, packaging, pharmaceuticals, electronics, optical fibres and chemicals. In 1978 Kellogg created a new manufacturing plant which was to take over production from Trafford Park in Manchester. JCB manufactures transmissions at a factory here.

Llandudno

Some of the first British copper mines were on the Great Orme, one of the hills bordering the seaside town. Inland was the great slate mining district.

Anglesea

Once the largest copper mine in the world. There is evidence of a Roman presence here for it was the place they defeated the Druids. Robert Stephenson built the bridge over the Menai Strait connecting London to Dublin by train and sea. He followed the wrought-iron and stone suspension bridge built by Thomas Telford in 1826 as part of the post road linking the two capitals.

Doncaster manufacturing history

Doncaster, in the early nineteenth century, was a town that had escaped the ravages of industrialisation. It had no iron or steel as had its neighbour Sheffield and had avoided the building of mills for cotton or wool. This was despite one of the town's clock makers, Benjamin Huntsman, inventing the crucible process for steel making and Thomas Cartwright the mechanical weaving machine; both men had taken their inventions elsewhere. The town was well laid out with fine houses and an acclaimed race course; it was a good place to live.

The town had long been a place through which travellers passed; it was on the Great North Road. When the railways came, no fewer than seven eventually linked to the town and its surroundings. One of these was the Great North Eastern which ran the route from London to Edinburgh. It seems to have been good fortune or skilled argument that persuaded the directors to adopt the route close to the Great North Road rather than it rival through Lincoln and Gainsborough. The process of merger had resulted in the Great North Eastern Railway having a route from Peterborough through Spalding and Boston and on to Lincoln, and its first main workshop was in Boston. The re-routing prompted the directors to move the workshops to Doncaster where they became a major employer.

I have written elsewhere about the railway workshops at Swindon and Crewe. At Doncaster, Ernest Phillips writes in The Story of Doncaster that there were 'forges, smithies, foundries, turning shops, erecting shops, joiners', cabinet makers', and wheelwrights' shops' manufacuring at the rate of a locomotive each week. In 1920, under the Chief Engineer, Mr H.N. Gresley, the workshop produced a giant engine weighing 71 tons capable of pulling 800 tons at 70 mph. Famously the workshop then built the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard. The Flying Scotsman was the first steam passenger locomotive to travel at over one hundred miles per hour and the Mallard holds the record of one hundred and thirteen miles on hour for the fastest steam locomotive in the world. This was engineering of the highest order.

In the twenties everything changed, for a rich coal seem had been discovered running far below the town and surrounding villages. The seem was deep but modern technology enabled pits to be sunk 900 yards or more. The sleepy villages around the town grew pit heads and gathered populations in their thousands, with trams linking the villages to the town. The once pristine streets became grimy with coal dust and the shops busy with miner's wives. The railways came into their own with pits each producing up to 4,000 tons of coal a day which needed transport.

Some years ago I explored population increases in the interwar years and Doncaster was in the list with 34% alongside towns which were all in the south. I attributed the Doncaster growth to boundary changes which were on reflection were clearly the result of the burgeoning of coal mining.

Ancillary industries developed such as Cementation for the construction of pit shafts and British Ropes (now Bridon). Other industries came to the town. Pilkington and Rockware set up glass making and a Lancashire firm established weaving. International Harvester began tractor production in 1934; the plant was closed in 2007.

The image is of contemporary Doncaster manufacturing is with thanks to Ben Harrison and Visit Doncaster

Further reading:

• Ernest Phillips, The Story of Doncaster (London: Pitman, 1921)

Sunderland manufacturing history

As a port on the Wear, Sunderland grew from handling exports of coal from the Northumberland coal field. Coal went to London and the southwest as well as over the North Sea.

Along with coal, two related industries can be traced back to before the industrial revolution: glass making and pottery. These industries were present elsewhere in the northeast and indeed elsewhere in the UK. Glass was for bottles, for windows and tableware and, as the urban areas grew and prosperity spread from the fruits of industry, so the demand for all three types of glass grew. Sunderland's Wear Glassworks became a producer of national importance. Pottery tended to be earthenware for general use and was some glass tableware. However, Wear Flint Glass could boast the Marquess of Londonderry among its customers.

Like many coastal towns, Sunderland had a long history in shipbuilding and, alongside this, rope making was significant in the town. Ropes were also needed for railways where trucks were pulled along by static steam engines. Webster's rope works at Depford boasted the first machine-made rope in the country.

For shipbuilding, we can look to Austin and Pickersgill, Doxfords, J.L. Thompson and Sir James Laing & Son. In early days it was wood and sail, in particular keels to bring coal from the mines to the waiting colliers. The use of iron and steel and the advent of the steam engine enabled Sunderland's shipbuilding to boom in the mid nineteenth century making it one of the prime shipbuilding ports on the world. Decline followed boom and, with the exception of busy wars and short periods of catch up after the wars, the days of large scale shipbuilding on the Wear were numbered. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines of the last gasp with the combination into North East Shipbuilders Limited.

Sunderland was very far from lost, for Nissan chose to build its British motor car factory near to the town and this continues to prosper.

Further reading:

• Glen Lyndon Dodds, A History of Sunderland (Sunderland: Albion Press, 1995)
• Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World
• Vehicles to Vaccines

The building blocks of manufacturing: coal and metals

 Coal had ‘tentacles in every part of this changing society’. Landowners loved it, for it lay under their land; farmers benefitted from its use in burning lime for fertiliser; textile manufacturers used its heat in bleaching and dyeing; houses were built from brick and glass both made by the heat of coal; many small workshops across the land, as we shall see, used it to enhance their productivity. Metal was not only needed for large machines, but also for small machines, clocks, guns, instruments and ‘toys’  - small decorative items to delight the growing middle class. Shipbuilders began to explore the use of metal for ships. 

Read more by following the link.

Key to the effective use of coal and metals were the canals.