Long Eaton manufacturing history

This midlands town was home to my mother's family who had been builders in the town since 1883. The company was called F.Perks & Son and played a large role in the main industry of the town in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century - lace making. I wrote of the industry in my blog on Nottingham which was the major area of manufacture. Long Eaton though had three large lace mills:

Bridge Mill built by my great grandfather's building firm, F. Perks & Son, in 1902 for the Long Eaton Bridge Mills Company of which members of the Attenborough family were directors.

Springfield Mills in Sandiacre built by the notorious financier Terah Hooley in 1888 designed by John Sheldon. I write of Hooley elsewhere in the context of Dunlop, Coventry and Trafford Park, Manchester. I noted in the Derbyshire archive that F. Perks & Son, had carried out a major improvement project on his house in the town.

Harrington Mill built in 1885-7 designed by John Sheldon

These were tenement mills occupied by a number of businesses and at the turn of the century some 4,000 people worked in them. The lace industry declined after the First World War.

Another Long Eaton industry was furniture and Wades stand out as the survivor

F. Perks & Son carried out much of the building work for the Army Centre of Mechanisation at the former shell filling factory at Chilwell.

Carters Gold Medal Soft Drinks were are nearby Sawley.

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

Scunthorpe manufacturing history

 The iron ore fields of north Lincolnshire attracted iron smelting to Frodingham and Appleby, two villages within what became Scunthorpe. Both companies added steel making, but Frodingham's pig iron production from the north Lincolnshire ore greatly exceeded its steel making capacity. This attracted Harry Steel, managing director of the Sheffield firm, Steel, Peech and Tozer, who, in the aftermath of the First World War, anticipated some consolidation in the industry. The two works and others were brought together in what became the United Steel Company. In the thirties both of these Scunthorpe plants were further expanded.

Lincolnshire ore was also exploited by Richard Thomas of South Wales at the Redbourn works. However, a plan to extend this into a major tinplating plant was shelved in preference for renewed investment in South Wales. Scunthorpe received further investment from John Lysaght at its Normanby Park steelworks in order to provide steel supplies for their other metal activities. John Brown of Sheffield had bought the Trent Ironworks in Scunthorpe and after the First World War moved their steel foundry to the town.

The nationalisation of the steel industry brought the Scunthorpe plants under a single umbrella. In 1972 the British Steel Corporation embarked on a ten year plan of modernisation and Scunthorpe was one of the centres identified for further investment.

In 1999 British Steel merged with the Dutch steel maker Koninklijke Hoogovens to form Corus. In 2007 Corus was bought by Tata Steel of India creating one of the world’s largest steel makers. British Steel Scunthorpe was bought from Tata Steel in 2016 and sold on to the Chinese Jingye Group in 2020.

Away from steel, Lebus Furniture built a 250,000 square foot factory in the town. I write about British furniture manufacturers in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Further reading:

J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)