East London manufacturing history 19th and 20th centuries

 

Docklands

The first decade of the nineteenth century saw an expansion in docks which would guarantee London's position as the world's trading city. The first was a West India Docks which had in addition to the docks themselves, warehouses all surrounded by a secure wall. The work was privately funded and financed by a 21 year monopoly of West Indies trade. They were located on the then marshy Isle of Dogs. Next came London Docks serving Europe and North America located in Wapping. Lastly the East India Company opened their walled and policed dock at Blackwall.

The East India docks speak of the vast international trade that poured through London and I am drawn to John Masefield’s poem Cargos which I quote at the start of How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. I also remember from childhood sailing from the docks on a banana boat bound for Tenerife.

We are still talking of ships made of wood and powered by sail for which London shipbuilders were rightly famous. Anthony Slaven in his book British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 suggests that eight major yards on the Thames were in the van in building iron hulled ships. These yards had the skills in shipbuilding but also engines. The 1860s were a boom time for London's yards with at one time as many as 27,000 people employed in shipbuilding. 1860 saw the first British ironclad, HMS Warrior, built by the Thames Ironworks, clad with armour by John Brown and armed with guns from Armstrongs. The boom came to a grinding halt as the Clyde, Tyne and Tees took over the lead largely because raw materials were close by and so vastly cheaper that those London shipbuilders had to buy in. I write in another blog piece of Henry Maudslay's influence on machine tools; his company Maudslay Son and Field were highly influential in steam power for ships. In Greenwich, John Penn owned the largest marine engine business in Britain.

In shipbuilding 1,700 worked in John Penn’s boiler works at Greenwich and many more at Wigham and Green’s yard at Blackwall.

Joseph Rank saw the vast quantity of grain imports coming through London docks and saw the opportunity for flour mills which he built by the river. These worked alongside huge warehouses and markets. London had cornered world trade, for example Australian wool was shipped to London for onward sale. The domination in trade was mirrored and amplified in banking and finance where London took an unassailable lead until 1914.

The docks needed expanding again, this time to fit the larger steam powered steel hulled ships and the Victoria and Albert docks were built.

The final expansion of the docks on the Thames can look to Tilbury docks in 1886 which provided a massive deep water dock east of the then docklands. Somewhat later Samuel Williams created a huge industrial development around Dagenham Dock. Tilbury would once again take the lead in 1967 in the move to containers which transformed the docks from a community ruled by dockers to an international business controlled by computers.

Woolwich

Woolwich was of course home to the Arsenal where some 75,000 worked in 1917 and I write of this and more in Ordnance and How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. At the start of the Crimean War an engineer, John Anderson, was appointed to undertake a major programme of modernisation and expansion. He introduced steam power into the Foundry and the Royal Carriage Factory. Similar building programmes and modernisation were undertaken at the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, which had been set up after the Napoleonic Wars following bad experience with commercial suppliers, and the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey. Another key appointment was made in 1854, when Frederick Abel took the office of Ordnance Chemist which had fallen into disuse in 1826. Under Abel, the technology of ammunition took major strides with Woolwich as a centre of excellence.

William Siemens was another major employer in Woolwich. As I write in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, William was the British end of the German family and took on the manufacture of cables for telegraph. In time cables crossed the globe with Siemens purpose built ship The Faraday laying them. Siemens worked in partnership with steel rope makers, Newall & Company of Newcastle. This latter company became part of British Ropes which later changed its name to Bridon. Siemens factory became part of GEC but was closed by Arnold Weinstock attracting acrimony from the community and unions. The factory had also produced telephone equipment. As well as hand-sets, they supplied their first public automatic telephone exchange in Grimsby in September 1918 handling 1,300 lines. This was followed by exchanges in Stockport, Southampton and Swansea; in all some forty-three out of one hundred exchanges brought into service by the Post Office up to 1927. They also set up exchanges in Canada and Australia. Such was the demand that they took new space in Hartlepool and Spennymoor.

In the Second World War in order to protect the Clyde, Siemens were commissioned to supply not only the five miles long loop cable through which high currents would be passed to explode such mines, but to commission and build all the necessary switch-gear and power plant. They also supplied cables equipment for radar and line communications. They were of course the perfect company to produce a submarine cable which could contain petrol at high pressure for the PLUTO project. For the HAIS pipeline (Hartley, Anglo-Iranian, Siemens) cable of seventy miles in length was required and a whole new building had to be constructed to contain it. Elsewhere, lamp production became even more specialised for the war effort, and the research laboratories were kept busy with demands by the British Aircraft Establishment for specialist bulbs for aircraft signalling.

Shoreditch and Bethnal Green

The furniture trade continued stongly into the nineteenth century. Timber would be provided from local saw mills such as Lathams which prospered and is now a leading UK timber supplier. One or two larger establishments emerged. In the lead was Lebus, but Hille and others would follow. Herrmann was said to have the largest furniture business in Europe; they were also in New York. The Lusty family made Lloyd Loom furniture.

It was a mixed economy with some warehouses making space for manufacturing. West End retailers, like Maples, began to source their products from East End makers. The large hire purchase companies like Times and Great Universal Stores dealt with the warehouses and the larger makers. Mechanisation came with electricity and, with the establishment of the National Grid, larger makers took advantage of cheap land in the Lea Valley, leaving little furniture making in the East End. When Lebus moved they had 1,000 employees. They now manufacture in Scunthorpe. Hille, which employed two of Britain's most talented designers in plastic injection moulding, moved to Watford and now manufacture in Ebbw Vale. Meredew moved to Letchworth.

Barking, Silvertown, Dagenham and Shadwell

Barking had an unhappy start to industrialisation. In How Britain Shaped The Manufacturing World I wrote in the context of communication of the great stink, the Thames doubling up as a massive open sewer. The river attracted all sorts of industry and processes often highly polluting especially outside the county boundary where by-laws restricting offensive trades did not apply. In Barking this meant chemical and related industries. Barking's other problem was that the sewerage from north London carried by Bazalgette's new sewer emptied to the west of Barking creek, creating, along with market gardens (where some of the sewerage was used raw as fertiliser) and polluting industries, a massive public health problem. In time local authorities were established which could enforce regulations and act together to improve the environment with sewers but also railways and means of communication. J.B.Lawes discovered a method of making fertiliser from treated sewerage, thus overcoming the health hazards.

The coming of the railways opened up east London and Essex for development. Barking attracted the largest gas works in Britain and much later a massive coal fired power station. Handley Page’s first aeroplane was made in Barking. After the First World War a number of new companies opened factories: P.C. Henderson doors (subsequently relocated to County Durham and now part of the Finish ASSA Alloy company), A.F. Bulgin radios and Dicky Birds crackers and ice-cream. Abbey Match works became part of the British Match Corporation.

In the Second World War, Barking creek was used for building Mulberry Harbours; companies in the borough also produced chemicals, life jackets, wood craft including Mosquito aircraft, and steel drums.

The local authority built the largest council house estate at Becontree which leads on to....

Dagenham which became home to Ford UK which moved manufacture from its plant in Manchester; many employees from Manchester moved into the Becontree estate. The Dagenham plant was vast with its own furnaces for casting engine blocks. One of their paint suppliers, Lewis Berger, was at nearby Shadwell Heath (I remember well working on their audit in the seventies). Dagenham also had an industrial alcohol distillery run by the Distillers Company, a May & Baker factory and pharmaceutical research facility drawing employees also from the Becontree estate.

Whilst most manufacturing still took place in the home or in small workshops, Jerry White highlights some of the other larger factories. Silvertown had a factory employing 3,000 making tyres and footballs, and insulation from rubber. The company The India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Company was bought by the American Goodrich who then sold it to British shareholders and it became the British Tyre and Rubber (BTR). The insulation was probably used by Siemens Brothers at Woolwich which employed 1,700 making cables. Rope making took place in Shadwell with Frost’s works being the largest in the world.

At the start of the twentieth century the Great Eastern Railway employed 3,100 at their Stratford works. The workshop was originally intended for repair, but went on to build locomotives. Their famous engineer James Holden built an early electric powered locomotive capable of reaching 30mph in 30 seconds. It never went into service for the rail infrastructure at the time was not up to the challenge.

Bryant &  May employed 1,400 in Bow making matches. Bow was also home to porcelain manufacturer Thomas Frye and Edward Lloyd's paper mill. The paper industry blossomed following the abolition of the newspaper stamp in 1855.

Plessey had their main factory was at Ilford and relocated during the war to Central Line Tube tunnels to escape enemy bombing. Ilford manufactured photographic film here. Britvic manufactured soft drinks in Beckton.

Further reading:

• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)

South London manufacturing history

 The south bank of the Thames and the rivers flowing into it, the Wandle and Neckinger, attracted industries needing ready transport for raw materials, water power and water itself.

Southwark, Lambeth and Bermondsey

Ceramics were made in Lambeth and also in Chelsea and Bow. Doulton & Co made rainwater goods and later fine pottery as Royal Doulton having moved to Stoke on Trent.

Glass was famously produced in Southwark and over the river at Whitefriars in the City of London. Around about one quarter of Britain's glass works were in London. I write of early British glass making in this link.

Tanning took place in Bermondsey. The river Neckinger provided the water for the tanning pits. Slaughter houses provided a constant supply of hides and there was ample oak bark for the tanning process. There were busy cobblers and cordwainers throughout; the Corwainers in particular were very protective of their craft. It was this trade that suffered as Northampton attracted London retailers by virtue of its lower pay rates.

Leading on from tanning were furriers and a trade in making fur hats which continued to thrive until machine made rabbit skin hats and felt hats from further north took over.

Londoners needed feeding and were thirsty people. The Albion Steam flour Mill was built in 1785 and had two of Watt's 50-horsepower steam engines driving eighty millstones and cranes, hoists, sifters and dressers. The largest of the London breweries was in Southwark. The great London breweries not only became very rich but were some of the pioneers of mass production. We can think of Samuel Whitbread, Richard Meux, Sir Benjamin Truman, Sampson Hanbury and John Perkins who brewed in Southwark. Four producers of vinegar added to everything else ensured a challenging smell for the uninitiated.

Merton and Morden

The presence of the river Wandle in Merton Abbey made the area attractive to Huguenots silk weavers. When they left, the attraction of the water for dyeing calicoes and linen with madder was recognised by Mr Leach who set up a dye works. William Morris and Liberties would follow.

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)

East London manufacturing history

 Writing of London in the Nineteenth Century, Jerry White remarks on the large proportion of the population – some 30% - who made things, countering a common belief that London was a place of commerce with local manufacturing restricted to small and niche workshops. This was largely the result of what had gone before. London as a port was fundamental.

Docklands

The Naval dockyard at Woolwich became the principal focus in the reign of Henry VIII and the building of Henri Grace a Dieu. Looking at the records of the Board of Ordnance, which supplied cannon, powder and cannon balls, there grew up substantial stores at Chatham, Tilbury and Sheerness and to a lesser extent Woolwich itself. I write below of the major role that Woolwich would take in the supply of the army. Significant naval stores were also held at Portsmouth and Plymouth. With the later expansion of empire, stores were located overseas at for example Gibraltar.

Alongside naval shipbuilding, commercial shipbuilding yards stretched east from Bermondsey. They provided the essential transport for adventurers and traders. East Indiamen made the long and challenging journey to the far east to bring back exotic cargoes. Nearer to home coal was brought by coastal ships from Newcastle. The yards were busy places and I wrote of them in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

At the end of the eighteenth century the pressure on the small area of 'legal' docks for commercial shipping was clearly grossly inadequate and expansion became urgent. I wrote of this in my page on Inner London for that was where the docks were.

As London grew, the banks of the Thames filled with manufacturing businesses attracted by the ease of receiving raw materials and dispatching finished goods. The docks would welcome ships arriving with cargoes from just about all over the world; ships too would leave with finished goods destined for lucrative overseas markets. The label ‘Made in London’ carried a cache the world over.

It had been and still was a busy and diversified place with saw-mills, lead-smelting, paint and varnish works, iron and brass foundries, chemicals works and ships stores, boiler makers works, chain and anchor works and sack, bag and canvas factories.

Woolwich

The Weald provided charcoal and iron ore for the production of all things metal, so guns in the environs of the Tower of London and at the Woolwich Arsenal, and cutlery before Sheffield bagged the lead in that trade. As to the manufacture of weapons, the casting of brass cannon had been carried out at Moorfields and before that on the Weald itself. In the first half of the eighteenth century there were built on the Woolwich site a foundry for casting guns, a Laboratory for making gunpowder and a workshop for gun carriages as well as extensive storage. Further development would follow in the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Shoreditch and Bethnal Green

Furniture making was to be found in Mayfair for the well-to-do and in the East End, using semi-skilled labour, for the rest of the market. Furniture skills were gathered together by companies like Gillow and Seddon. Once again, processes would be subdivided into different skill sets; in time mechanisation would make redundant much of the handicraft. The area around Shoreditch and the western end of Bethnal Green became in White’s words ‘something approaching one giant factory’.

A book titled Furnishing the World - The East London Furniture Trade 1830-1980 looks at this in more detail. The starting point was the growing population and house building, all of which drove demand for furniture. This was matched by an east end population which included Jewish immigrants skilled in carpentry and the availability of wood coming in through the growing docklands but also later along the Regents Canal which opened in 1820. The overwhelming majority of the furniture makers were small workshops selling mainly to wholesalers.

Further reading:

• Richard Tames, Barking Past (London: Historical Publications, 2002)
• Sue Curtis, Dagenham and Rainham Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 2000)
• Pat Kirkham, Rodney Mace and Julia Porter, Furnishing the World - The East London Furniture Trade 1830-1980 (London: Journeyman Press, 1987)