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)

North London manufacturing history

 As Inner London turned its attention more and more to finance and service industries, manufacturing moved north, much of it into the Lea Valley which, hitherto, had market gardens working hard to feed a growing population. There was also brick making to house that population.

Enfield

Manufacturing came to Enfield in 1809 in the form of the Grout and Bayliss factory for dyeing and finishing black crepe for mourning wear.

Enfield became home in 1816 in the wake of the Napoleonic wars to the Royal Small Arms Factory of which I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Ordnance and which Jim Lewis explores in detail in his London's Lea Valley - Britain's best kept secret. The factory has recently been restored to 'its former glory'. Lewis highlights the shortcomings in small arms manufacture and how the Factory first sought to impose quality standards on the many manufacturers. I found it both interesting and disappointing that the Board of Ordnance looked to American machine tool makes when the factory took on its own production. I write about London's machine tool companies in this blog piece. Graham Dalling in Enfield Past adds that Joseph Whiteworth had a hand in planning the factory. The development of the rifle was key and was witnessed in action in Africa as the European nations struggled for supremacy and which I discuss in my blog on the Scramble for Africa.

Brimsdown, Enfield was the former home of the Edison Swan Laboratory. Joseph Swan moved from Newcastle where he developed the incandescent lamp and joined with the American Thomas Edison in exploiting their invention at Ponders End in 1886. They manufactured under the Mazda brand. I write of Edison in this blog. Working with him, Ambrose Fleming invented the first thermionic valve, a diode, from which the development of wireless grew. Also in Brimsdown was Cosmos, valve manufacturers.

In 1890 Frederick Walton bought the former black crepe factory to exploit a French invention of flexible metal tubing which was met with high demand from the railway manufacturers with their need for steam pipes and airbrakes.

Enfield was where Cornishman, Charles Belling, in 1922 set up to manufacturer domestic appliances and he also worked with Edgar Lee to produce one of the first wireless sets using Edison valves. In the Second World War this company switched to radar components and VHF aerials. Their successors, Thorn Industries, were at Enfield as was their television manufacturing subsidiary, Ferguson. They later became part of Thorn EMI of which I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Warburton have their massive crumpet factory in Enfield

Edmonton was home to CAV, part of Lucas and to MK the manufacturer of electrical fittings set up by Charles Belling's business partner.

Ponders End was home to Wright's Flour Mill which dated back to the seventeenth century. Its story is interesting for it took good advantage of developments. It used the Lea Navigation and then steam road vehicles. It moved from stone milling to electrically driven roller mills. It now offers speciality flours.

Coca Cola built a plant in Edmonton in 1975

Walthamstow

Walthamstow was home to Britains Toys. In 1914, William Britain had developed a technique for the hollow-casting of toy figures, which leant itself perfectly to all manner of toy soldier. Phillips Records and Ever Ready batteries were also in Walthamstow. It was where the Associated Equipment Company (AEC) began manufacturing buses before the company moved to Southall.

In the First World War, Peter Hooker Ltd in Walthamstow developed a speciality for forging components from a new alloy of aluminium 'Y alloy' which had been used for the pistons of aircraft engines. The business collapsed with the failure of the airship programmes and was succeeded by High Duty Alloys in Slough run by their former employee Wallace Devereux. The company would have a fundamental impact on aero engine manufacturing.

The Royal Gunpowder Factory was at Waltham Abbey and closed in 1967. I write about the factory and its place alongside Woolwich Arsenal in Ordnance. Matchbox Cars were originally made in Chingford.

Hackney was the place where the first British plastics were manufactured. The material, Parkesine was invented by Alexander Parkes and then exploited by British Xylonite which later became know as Halex. It was a challenger to the American Celluloid. Clarino in Hackney had 2,000 making sweets. Marconi had a factory at Dalston. Also at Dalston was one of the two Siemens English Electric Lamp factories.

Tottenham

Tottenham was where John A. Prestwich set up (JAP) motor cycles employing 'the very latest of machinery'. Prestwich was a gifted inventor and his engine was used by Avro in the first flight of a British aircraft piloted by a Britton. Colin Chapman set up his Lotus company in Hornsey in 1952 before moving to Cheshunt in 1959. The fifties and sixties had seen the focus on motor racing with victories with Stirling Moss and Jim Clark at the wheel. Tottenham was also where Lebus manufactured furniture after moving from the East End. The Thermos Flask was manufactured in Tottenham. It was said that whenever there was a thousand bomber raid in the Second World War there would also be some 12,000 thermos flasks in the air at the same time. Much later Amstrad’s head office was at Brentwood House, Tottenham, although it had started life in Hackney. I write of Amstrad in Vehicles to Vaccines.

In 1906 David Gestetner moved the manufacture of his duplicating machines to Tottenham. He was Hungarian and had lived in the USA but moved to Britain in 1881 where he registered a patent for 'Improvements in Cyclostyle pens'. He developed his ideas and eventually became the largest manufacturers of duplicators in the world.

R.W. Munro was a precision engineer with a business in Bounds Green where in 1892 he made an anemometer which was used to measure wind speed for the next century. He also manufactured presses for the Bank of England. His successors were commissioned by IBM to make a replica of the Babbage Difference Engine which Babbage had conceived whilst at school in the Lea Valley.

Hendon

Moving west from the Lea Valley we come to Standard Telephones which were at Hendon and Jim Lewis offers some history. It was the American Western Electric that bought a 2.7 acre site in Southgate in 1922. This company then manufactured telephone equipment under license from the Bell Telephone Company. It was from a hut next to the factory that the first trans-Atlantic telephone call was made. Western Electric was bought by ITT and the Southgate company changed its name to STC and became one of the main suppliers to the GPO. Hendon was also where Geoffrey de Havilland designed his first aircraft for Airco in 1912. Geoffrey de Havilland founded the de Havilland Aircraft Company at Edgware on 25 September 1920 with financial assistance from his old boss at Airco.

Stanmore attracted many industries including GEC Research Laboratories and Solex Carburettors (my first job!). Wealdstone was where Winsor & Newton artists paints were made.

Islington

George Bassett founded a sweet factory in Islington in 1848 but expanded into the former Allsopp piano factory in Wood Green in 1880. The company expanded further making its famous Liquorice Allsorts amongst much more. It merged with Trebor to become Trebor-Bassett in 1966. I wrote of another Trebor merger in my piece on Maidstone. The Wonder Baking Company began making Wonderloaf in 1937. In 1936 the first television broadcast was made from the nearby Alexandra Palace.

In nearby Highbury, Stephen’s ink was produced

Finchley, Willesden, Acton and Cricklewood

Finchley was home to F.R. Simms who obtained the rights to build Daimler cars in England and I wrote about this in How Britain Shaped the manufacturing World. Simms went on to invent armour plating for Vickers and Maxim and the first powered lawn mower for Ransoms, Sims and Jeffries. In 1907 he took the rights to manufacture magnetos to Bosch design and from there set up the company that would later merge with CAV and become part of Lucas as I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Rotax manufactured in Willesden shifting their focus to aerospace. They moved to Hemel Hampstead and became part of Lucas Aerospace.

New Southgate was the place to which Robert Paul moved from Hatten Garden to partner Cambridge Instruments which made measuring instruments and was bought by Brown Boveri in 1974 and at its peak employed 750 people. Paul also exploited the invention of the kinetoscope which Edison had failed to patent in the UK. It made very short films of sporting events. Cambridge Instruments which had been founded in Cambridge had a distinguished history in advanced instrument making. Paul was also known as a film industry pioneer.

The North Circular Road attracted a good number of factories. Jack Olding supplied earth moving vehicles and during the Second World War prepared and modified tanks in their art deco factory known as 'tank central'.

Willesden and Cricklewood were home to Staples whose owner John Heal designed Ladderax furniture which also made mattresses at Staples Corner.

Hadley Page at Cricklewood produced in the Second World War, first the Hampden bomber and then the more successful Halifax which were manufactured by a production group comprising: English Electric, Rootes at Speake (Liverpool), and Fairey in Stockport. At peak production there were some 660 subcontractors and 51,000 employees completing a new aircraft every working hour, some 6,177 aircraft in all.

David Napier motor company was at Acton and had re-emerged near the beginning of the era of the motor car, as manufacturers of high quality vehicles. By 1914, they were making seven hundred cars a year from their Acton factory and selling from their New Burlington Street Showroom, including many to the London Taxi trade. David Napier & Son continued to develop aero-engines culminating in the Napier twenty-four cylinder Sabre, which, at 3,500 hp., powered the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest. The company was bought by English Electric in 1942. Famously Napier developed the Deltic diesel engine which was used in railway locomotives and other applications including electricity generation in remote places. The Deltic had originally been designed for naval use.

Lucas Diesels and CAV were also in Acton.

Thomas Wall made sausages and came up with the idea of making ice cream in the summer months when sausage sales dipped. The idea took off and production began at the Acton factory soon after the end of the First World War. The company became part of Unilever in 1922 and expanded by building a factory in Gloucester in 1959..

Nearby Neasden had NCR and British Oxygen. In Willesden, Rotax had a factory and Rolls-Royce acquired Park Ward and H.J. Mulliner coachbuilders. In the 1920s British Thomson Houston built a large engineering works in Neasden which was later closed when it became part of GEC contributing to the run down of manufacturing in that part of London. In 1928 F.W. Hall built his factory for making the telephone equipment for the iconic red telephone box (buttons A and B!)

Harlesden was home to McVitie's biscuits, which became part of United Biscuits, the formation of which I write about in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Decca's recording studios were in West Hampstead.

Wembley was home to GEC Research laboratories set up in 1923, and Johnson Matthey. Wembley had a Marconi components factory and Cricklewood had Smiths Industries.

Dollis Hill was home to the General Post Office Research Establishment and Tommy Flowers, a senior engineer of the General Post Office which then had the monopoly of telecommunications in the UK and probably the greatest concentrating of electronic engineering expertise. Flowers brought into reality the concept behind the Colossus which was the successor to the BOMBE which Alan Turing designed to crack the Enigma code.

Park Royal

In the First World War this area had a huge munitions factory. In the twenties the site was cleared and a huge industrial estate built. In the years of depression elsewhere, the estate bucked the trend with a steady stream of new tenants to replace those who left. Park Royal had the English home of the Guinness brewery. Heinz had a factory there but more so smaller companies in the new industries.

Further reading:

• Jim Lewis, London's Lea Valley - Britain's best kept secret (Chichester: Phillimore, 1999)
• Len Snow, Willesden Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)
• John Heathfield, Finchley and Whetstone Past (London: Historical Publications, 2001)
• Albert Pinching, Wood Green Past (London: Historical Publications, 2000)
• Graham Dalling, Enfield Past (London: Historical Publications, 1999)
• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)

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)

South London manufacturing history 19th and 20th century

 In his book, London: A History, Francis Sheppard observes that ‘by the end of the eighteenth century, London had more steam engines than Lancashire’. London had also employed water power from the fast flowing river Wandle to mill flour and snuff and also to power the printing of calico.

Southwark, Lambeth and Vauxhall

Southwark and Lambeth were home to engineers Joseph Bramah, Henry Maudslay and Marc Isambard Brunel about each of whom I also wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. I explore further in a blog piece the huge influence of Henry Maudslay in particular on mechanical engineering and machine tools. Maudslay Sons and Field turned their hands to marine engines and ended the 19th century with 1,500 employees. Vauxhall began as marine engineers in Vauxhall but turned to motor cars and moved to Luton. Siebe Gorman moved to Lambeth from Denmark Street and made equipment for underwater exploration and later iron lungs for polio victims. Napier manufactured the 'perfect printing machine' (accordingly to the Great Exhibition catalogue).

Engineer, Bryan Donkin, manufactured tin cans from his premises in Bermondsey. J.C Field had candle factories in Bermondsey but also Battersea and Lambeth. Wright's coal tar soap was made in Southwark and Price's Patent Candle Company employed 2,000 people in Vauxhall and Battersea.

Peek Freans made biscuits in Bermondsey and Rowntree moved production of After Eights to the Bermondsey works of Shuttleworth in 1966.

In 1920, GEC had the Accessories Works in Southwark.

Battersea, Kennington and Wandsworth

in 1856 Morgan Brothers set up a factory in Battersea to make graphite crucibles for metals furnaces. In 1907 it progressed to make commutator brushes for electric motors and relocated to South Wales in the 1970s. In 2013 Morgan Crucible was renamed Morgan Advanced Materials with businesses across the world.

Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. set up the first office to be lit by electricity, and a factory in Wandsworth to manufacture compressed medicines. In the First World War, Burroughs Wellcome & Co supplied: ‘aspirin, chloroform (from alcohol), cholesterol, cocaine, emetine bismuthous iodide, flavine, hydroquinone, lanoline and phenacetin’.

Kennington remains home to the Beefeater Gin distillery. Airfix models were first made in Wandsworth.

Lewisham, Norwood and Deptford

Lewisham was an early home to Elliot Brothers instrument makers and George Harvey galvanisers. Catford had James Robertson preserves and Hither Green, King’s Biscuits.

Norwood was home to William Ford Robinson Stanley, a prolific inventor amongst whose devices was the Stanley Knife. He was a successful industrialist and benefactor giving the Borough the Stanley Halls and the Stanley Technical College.

The London Electric Supply Company was incorporated in 1887 with a capital of £1 million to build a power station at Deptford. Ferranti, at the age of twenty-three, was appointed chief engineer responsible for the whole project. He conceived a project of generators producing electricity which would be transmitted at 10,000 volts through cables and switchgear built to his own design. This was a massive project. Ferranti moved his works to Hollinwood, Oldham in Lancashire, and, in 1897, employed seven hundred people.

Merton, Morden and Mitcham

Of great significance was the arrival of a man of volcanic energy, William Morris. Morris had already run a decorative business at Red Lion Square and then Queen's Square but the demand for his products was such that more space was needed and the Abbey Works was founded in seven acres of 'lush meadows' interspersed with the remains of Huguenot buildings. Here Morris designed and his highly skilled employed made: painted glass windows, arras tapestry, carpets, embroidery, tiles, furniture, printed cottons, paper hangings and upholstery. Economic growth had put money in the hands of many more people who wanted to buy furnishings that were not mass produced. Morris did not eschew the factory system, he dye making was on a large scale as were bleaching and finishing. He had workshops of men and women weaving and painting, but all the designs were his or those of his best friend the artists Burns-Jones. The output was considerable. It was not surprising that Liberty & Co sourced their printed fabric from the same area.

The Lines Brothers factory at Merton was at one time the largest toy factory in the world. By the time it came to Merton it had been trading in one form or another for one hundred years, but it was rebranded Tri-ang. A workforce of 4,000 made Fairy Cycles, Frog model aircraft, Minic clockwork toys and much more. They went on to make model railways (as the image of the signal box bears witness) and I write of this in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Watliff was the largest manufacturer of commutators and slip rings for electric motors producing up to 20,000 a day. Customers included the coal and steel industries and power stations. In the industrial area on the Kingston Road was Pilchers which made ambulances and mobile radiographic units used worldwide.

Decca pressed records in New Malden and began work on radar in Brixton. The company was floated in 1929 by stockbroker Edward Lewis. It began with records but went on to radar. The radar business was bought by Racal in 1980 and the record business was sold to Polygram.

Mullard radio components were at Mitcham and Balham having set up in Hammersmith in 1920, founded by Captain Stanley Mullard who had previously made valves for the Admiralty. The move to Mitcham came in 1929 after the Dutch Phillips had taken control of the company. Phillips made radios in a neighbouring plant. Philips only just managed to ship over components and machinery for their vital EF50 valve just before the Germans invaded in May 1940 In 1960 Mullard held 75% of the transistor market in Britain.

Marconi made radio transmitters and receivers in Hackbridge.

Carshalton had an industrial alcohol plant of the Distillers Company.

Croydon

Home to Powers Samas accounting machines which was bought by Vickers in an attempt to diversify after the Second World War. Powers Samas later joined with the British Tabulating Machine Company of Letchworth to form the International Computers and Tabulators Company.

Southeast London

Beckenham had the Wellcome research laboratories. Caterham was home to motor sport engineers by the same name.

Further reading:

• John Coulter, Norwood Past (London: Historical Publications, 1996)
• John Coulter, Lewisham (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1994)
• An Illustrated History of Merton and Morden, Evelyn Jowett (ed.) (Merton and Morden Festival of Britain Local Committee)
• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)

Edinburgh manufacturing history

 The capital city of Scotland, with access to the sea at the port of Leith, had for centuries a closer relationship with the continent of Europe than with its land neighbour, England. This was particularly evident in Edinburgh’s principal manufacturing activity - the making of books. The first printing press came from France in 1507 when the Scottish king instructed his friend Walter Chepman and Andro Myllar, who had learnt the technique of printing in Rouen, to print the laws of Scotland. Previously Scots writers had been published and printed in Europe. Printing brought paper making and book binding as well as publishing.

The industrialisation of printing created a number of Edinburgh businesses. Oliver & Boyd were the first to combine publishing, printing and book binding in one building. T & A Constable also combined publishing and printing as did James Ballantyne which had a close relationship with Sir Walter Scott. Thomas Nelson at their Parkside Works both made paper and printed. They are now part of Harper-Collins based at Walton on Thames. R & R Clark at Brandon Street printed Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling and George Bernard Shaw. They are now part of William Thyne whose principal business is packaging.

The Port of Leith was busy and had shipbuilders including Henry Robb, but, in contrast to the Clyde, focussed more on smaller vessels for trawling and whaling. Robbs became part of British Shipbuilders and closed in 1984. Robb became a shareholder in Ringsend Dockyard of Dublin which made similar vessels.

In the mid nineteenth century Lachlan Rose, a ships chandler from Leith, discovered a way to preserve lime juice. He bought a former sugar plantation in Dominica to grow limes and Rose’s Lime Juice reached the world, not least India. Factories were built in St Albans and on Merseyside and further estates were acquired in the Gold Coast. The company was bought by Schweppes in 1955.

Paper making from linen waste picks up Scotland’s largest export much of which was produced in Edinburgh but a good deal more further north in Dundee. Penicuik near Edinburgh was known as the paper making town with its first mill founded in the eighteenth century. An Edinburgh engineer, Bertrams of Sciennes, manufactured paper making machinery. Other engineering companies supported shipbuilding focused on Leith and more general engineering.

Cotton, which had started in the country with Scotland's first mill also at Penicuik, was important for Edinburgh but it spread throughout Scotland so to Dumfriesshire, Stirlingshire, Aberdeenshire and Perthshire using water power. The steam engine changed all this, with a migration to the coal rich areas around Glasgow and Paisley.

The wool industry in Scotland was truly a cottage industry with knitters, spinners and weavers in many counties. Edinburgh played a large part in fine cloth and also carpets. New Mills at nearby Haddington was formed in the late seventeenth century to boost Scotland's cloth production. At one time it employed 700 people carry on all the constituent tasks in woollen cloth manufacture, but all were done by hand except for fulling where a mill was driven by the local river. Gradually the mechanised industry spread to the the towns and villages to the south, so Galashiels and Hawick whose framework knitting production accounted for one eighth of British knitted hosiery. Edinburgh does lay claim to the first Paisley shawls.

The production of tartan became a serious industry following the visit of George IV to Edinburgh in 1822 when Sir Walter Scott made much of Highland tradition. A number of Edinburgh mills joined in production but now the main producers of tartan cloth are Lochcarron Mills and Harris Tweed Hebrides. Marton Mills of Wharfdale in Yorkshire also include tartan in their range. For the other famous Scots cloth, tweed, it is necessary to visit the isles of Harris and Lewis.

Edinburgh was also near to coal reserves and so coal mines were sunk near to the city. Coal was used to produce glass which became another Edinburgh industry. It began with green bottle glass, but then advanced into crown glass for windows and fine glass for cutting - the famous Edinburgh Crystal. The company, Edinburgh and Leith Flint Glass was bought by Webb Corbett of Stourbridge in 1921. The company turned its production to the war effort in both world wars, and in the Second produced cathode ray tubes for radar.

Coal was also used to smelt iron ore, for example at the Cramond Iron works run by the Cadell family which had been joint founders the Carron works in Falkirk. Thomas Edington became manager of the Cramond works in 1765 and married Christian Cadell seven years later. Edington and the Cadells then looked to Glasgow for supplies of pig iron to replaced the existing imported supplies.

The mid nineteenth century saw the foundation of the Scottish Vulcanite Company. Vulcanite was a hard form of rubber invented by Charles Goodyear in 1839 but patented in England in 1844 by Thomas Hancock of Charles Mackintosh of Manchester. Goodyear obtained his Scottish patent in 1843 and a licence was taken by the American Norris & Co to begin manufacture in Edinburgh. This started with four Norris employees from New York coming to Edinburgh to teach the necessary skills to the local workforce. They went on to boot and shoe production and then tyres for steam traction engines. The company became the North British Rubber Company and went on to produce car tyres (renamed Uniroyal) and boots (renamed Hunter Boots). The original Fountainbridge plant closed in the sixties with the opening of a Uniroyal plant at Newbridge. Boot and shoe manufacture moved to Dumfries and production was transferred abroad in 2008.

During the Second World War, Ferranti viewed their manufacturing base in Manchester as vulnerable to air attack and so moved some activities to Scotland. Ferranti made military electronic systems at Crewe Toll, inertial systems and cockpit displays at Silverknowes and Electro-optic systems at Robertson Avenue. The company was employing 5,000 people in Edinburgh by 1963 as the city's largest employer. Electronics probably transformed Edinburgh; other electronics companies followed Ferranti's lead. Much later, Amazon set up their only software development centre outside the USA and Rock Star computer games are created here. I write about Ferranti's latter days in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Glaxo had a presence in the city through their purchase of Edinburgh Pharmaceutical Industries.

Further reading:

• Christopher A. Whatley, The Industrial Revolution in Scotland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
• Albert Mackie, An Industrial History of Edinburgh (Glasgow: McKenzie, Vincent & Co, 1963)

You can read more in Vehicles to Vaccines and in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World