Swindon manufacturing history

Swindon would become one of the great 19th century railway towns, but at the end of the 18th century it was a place largely passed by.

Kennett and Avon canal 

The canals changed this as the ambitious link between the Thames and the Avon was debated. What became the Kennet and Avon canal was the southern link through the Vale of Pewsey. A northern route branched north near Melksham and made its way between Calne and Chippenham to pass close to Swindon on its way up to Abingdon on the Thames. Later. the north Wiltshire canal would link from Swindon to the Thames and Severn canal at Cirencester.

From next to nothing, Swindon had become an ‘epicentre’, well nearly. The impact though was real with a big drop in the price of coal from the Somerset coal fields and access to hungry urban areas for the agricultural produce of north Wiltshire farmers.

No sooner was all of this in place than Isambard Kingdom Brunel was appointed chief engineer of the yet to be built Great Western Railway. Debate followed but the route adopted would pass through Swindon after Didcot and before Chippenham and the Box tunnel through to Bath and Bristol. A little later a line would snake north west from Swindon through to Cheltenham.

A few lines of text belie the task. 1840 was in the middle of one of the 19th century’s downward economic cycles. Many railways were being built, but they were mostly short runs linking towns and neighbouring coalfields. The longer routes (The Grand Junction and the London Birmingham) were massive undertakings involving great financial risk. The GWR was no different, especially with the cost and complexity of the Box tunnel. Nevertheless it was built and opened to traffic.

The new line would need a repair workshop. John Chandler, in his Swindon - History and Guide, tells the story. Swindon was simply not suitable: it had an inadequate water supply and really no skilled labour. Surely Bristol would be better, closer to coal and with an already large population. Daniel Gooch had been appointed to create the workshops and he argued for Swindon. There were those who suggested that local landowners may have sought to influence him. Other factors also came into play. Land was available at Swindon by merging with Cheltenham railway. Swindon was also at that point along the route where a change of engine would be needed to take on the challenge of the route through the Box tunnel.

There was still no money until the idea emerged of a station at Swindon offering refreshment to passengers as the engines were changed. This resulted in grand three storey station buildings constructed along with a village of railway houses all at the builder’s expense in return for the profits from the station. Anecdotes suggest that the quality of refreshment was not great and that prices were on the steep side - perhaps nothing changes.

The building of the workshops began during the economic downturn, but by the time of the railway mania that followed, locomotives were not only being repaired but new ones were being built. The GWR had opted for a broad gauge railway in contrast to the narrow gauge adopted elsewhere. This had the advantage that locomotives could be bigger and more powerful - in 1846 a locomotive, the Great Western, could pull a full passenger train at 60 mph over a long distance. The emphasis on power and speed is born out by the contrasting comments on the Crewe works.

In terms of employee numbers, Chandler quotes 400 for 1843 growing to 1800 by 1847, but then shrinking back to 600. Towards the end of the century, tough economic conditions gave way to better times and employee numbers climbed to 11,500. Alongside a better economy, the GWR had diversified and expanded its routes. Crucially it had moved over to the new standard gauge in 1892. Possibly more important it had added a large carriage works in 1865 and was producing rolling stock built to the highest standards of luxury. Magnificent locomotives were built including the legendary Castles, Kings, Granges, Manors and Halls classes. The works expanded in area eventually covering 326 acres including 79 acres roofed over. Even in 1846 the engine shop could accommodate 36 locomotives in a building in the shape of a stable with separate stalls.

Swindon was ever more dependent on the railway with some 80% of adults males employed there. Clothing factories were attracted by the corresponding availability of female labour: Compton employed 1,000 including the manufacture of GWR uniforms.

Employment at the GWR works grew to 14,369 in 1925 but then begun its decline to 10,000 until 1960, 5000 in 1967 and just over 1,000 before it closed in 1986. I write about the massive changes in the post war railways in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Swindon attracted other industries. It became home to a Pressed Steel factory which continues to supply bodies for the Mini. The Vickers site in Swindon first produced Spitfires in the Second World War and then was used for experimental projects. The site was then taken by Honda for their UK production base. It is currently being redeveloped once more. Plessey opened a factory in Swindon during the Second World War to meet demand from the MOD. The company also managed a number of shadow factories. The Swindon factory later specialised in hydraulics and a further factory was built at Cheney Manor in 1957 to manufacture transistors. RA Lister built a factory to manufacture farm equipment and diesel engines to add capacity to its main base at Dursley.

Further reading:

• John Chandler, Swindon - History and Guide (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992)
• Michael A. Howell, Bygone Swindon (Chichester: Phillimore)
• You can read more in my books How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines

A town created by the railways - Crewe

 Crewe is the third town cited by Asa Briggs as created in the 19th century. It was created by the railways for the railways and Diane Drummond, in her book Crewe: Railway Town , Company and People 1840-1914, offers a precise date, 10 March 1843, when the first employees and their families were settled there.

It later became home to Rolls-Royce Motors. The image is of General Montgomery's Rolls-Royce probably manufactured in Derby (see below).

It was the Grand Junction Railway that decided Crewe was the place for its main works. It had become the place where a number of separate railway lines met what would become the west coast mainline and so it was a logical location for the factory that would maintain and manufacture locomotives and rolling stock but also rails.

Drummond offers a glimpse of the scale of railway manufacture by comparing Crewe with Swindon which was home to the works of the Great Western Railway. Crewe's initial workforce in 1843 numbered 1,150 compared to Swindon's 423. However by 1847 as a result of economic downturn, Crewe's workforce had reduced to 1,000 whereas Swindon's had increased to 1,800. Looking further ahead to 1900, Crewe employed 7,500 and Swindon 11,500.

Crewe might not have been the biggest, but it laid claim to be the most technologically advanced. Drummond suggests that, having a single customer, the works followed a path of vertical integration. At one time it made everything used in locomotive manufacture except copper piping. Famously it built its own iron and steel works being one of the first to embrace the Bessemer and then the Siemens-Martin processes. Carr and Taplin, in their History of the British Steel Industry, tell how the Chief Mechanical Engineer, John Ramsbottom was persuaded by William Siemens to instal open hearth furnaces for the conversion of old iron into new steel rails. In addition to furnaces, Ramsbotton installed a new rail-rolling mill to be added to ten years later by a second mill with an updated design by the next Chief Mechanical Engineer, Francis Webb. These two respected engineers followed in the footsteps of Francis Trevethick, son of Richard Trevethick, who set up the Crewe works.

It was said that Crewe built locomotives for economy, leaving GWR to win plaudits for power and speed. Nevertheless, Crewe earned respect for their training of young engineers among whom was Nigel Gresley. From the start, Crewe operated a division of labour with as many as nineteen different trades including: 'smiths and their strikers; moulders and their assistant dressers and casters; pattern makers and coppersmiths; boilermaking trades of platers, riveters and 'holders-up'; turners; coachbuilders and engine fitters'. Basic machine tools were employed such as lathes, 'slotting, shaping and planing machines'. Under Ramsbottom new machine tools were introduced in the 1860s and 1870s resulting in increasing standardisation using interchangeable parts. In this Crewe was perhaps twenty years ahead of the so called Machine Tool Revolution which transformed other engineering companies in the 1890s. One consequence of the increase in mechanisation was a change in the composition of the workforce with a higher proportion of general labourers and fewer skilled men.

Drummond takes her reader through the essential elements of the process of constructing a railway locomotive which I simplify in the interests of highlighting the growing role of machine tools. The starting point is the foundry where the iron is made which can then be cast, or puddled to become more malleable wrought iron. The invention of steel eventually took the place of wrought iron. In the railway workshop, parts would first be moulded, that is a mould would be created and the molten metal introduced. Moulds varied massively in complexity and so the skill required in their making. Should parts need to be joined, this was then undertaken by the smithy. Welding, as we know it, came very much later. A locomotive could comprise some 5,000 parts each of which would require a degree of finishing using perhaps a lathe. This was the job of the turner. As time progressed the number of machine tools increased and so a larger proportion of the work was carried out by semi-skilled machinists. For a locomotive, the construction of the boiler was central. Again, this was a combination of skill, machine power and stamina - it was hard work. The final part of the process was down to teams of fitter-erectors who would put all the parts together; this was one of the last stages of the process to employ machine tools. (I can't help having in my minds eye, as a contrast, the robots on the production line at today's Derby works)

This was surely a complex process and one that had to be married with work in repairing locomotives. The whole was carried out in a cyclical economy presenting management with massive challenges in balancing the books. At Crewe a device of compulsory unpaid holiday was used to match the workforce with the hours needed for the work. This unsatisfactory arrangement was eventually superseded by lay-offs, inevitably met with resistance.

All this happened in a town where employment in the railway works was life for a large proportion of the population. Towns with a wider spread of employment were far less vulnerable to the foibles of the economy.

For Crewe, the years immediately preceding the Second World War brought Rolls-Royce and a factory to manufacture aero engines. (The image is of General Montgomery's Rolls-Royce probably made in the Derby factory.) After the war the factory took over the manufacture of both Rolls-Royce and Bentley motor cars, with the Derby factory giving its focus to jet aero engines. As I tell in Vehicles to Vaccines, Rolls-Royce Motors split off from the aero-engine company and continued manufacturing in Crewe. At the turn of the twentieth century the German BMW bought Rolls-Royce and built a new factory at Goodwood in Sussex, VW took the Bentley brand and upgraded the Crewe factory. Both companies continue to trade successfully under their new ownership. Bentley is now the largest private sector employer in Crewe.

Further reading:

• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962)
• Diane K. Drummond, Crewe: Railway Town, Company and People 1840-1914 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995)

The towns industry created - Barrow in Furness

 Barrow is the second town which Asa Briggs mentions as a 19th century creation by the railways. F. Barnes, in his book Barrow and District, may take issue.

Barnes takes his reader through the long history of iron production in Furness dating back to the 13th century and earlier where the local population fashioned iron objects from the readily available iron ore smelted with charcoal. These were very much for their own use, with ore lying on or near the surface and with temperature high enough only to make the iron soft but not molten and filled with impurities which had to be hammered out.

Iron ore was plentiful on the Furness peninsula but wood for charcoal came to be rationed in the reign of Elizabeth I as I discussed in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. In Furness there was little option but to ship ore from Barrow to be smelted at Blackbarrow in the Lake District where wood and hence charcoal was more plentiful. Production continued on a relatively small scale without the use of blast furnaces until 1711.

The new Blackbarrow furnace was first blown in 1711/12 and was followed by other 'blown' furnaces in the area. The famous Furness name of Wilkinson (Isaac the father of John known as the 'father of the English iron trade') first appears in the building of the Low Wood Furnace near Blackbarrow. The supply of charcoal once again became an issue. This time ore was shipped to Scotland for smelting.

A dramatic change came in 1839 when H.W. Schneider and his brother purchased Whitriggs mine and began to export ore from Barrow to South Wales and Staffordshire. The building of the Furness railway in 1846 from Barrow to Kirby enabled movement but it was the Ulverston and Lancaster Railway which opened up the whole country and enabled the import of coke from Durham for use with the Furness ore and limestone. Blast furnaces were built. The iron ore was well suited to the Bessemer process for steel production and James Ramsden formed a company which merged with Schneider resulting in the Barrow Haematite and Steel Company. The plant was then the largest iron works and Bessemer plant in the world. Furnaces were opened at neighbouring Askam, Ulverston and Carnforth with production reaching its peak in 1870.

Barnes offers some figures which demonstrate the shift from shipping ore to local smelting. The peak of ore exporting came in 1857 when out of 592,390 tons mined, 562,095 were exported. In 1863, one third of ore mined was smelted locally and in 1877 out of 993,912 tons mined only 42,683 was exported. The peak year was 1882 with 1,408,693 mined; this declined to 116,393 in 1938.

Fundamental to the development of Barrow were two aristocrats who invested substantially in the docks and infrastructure: the Dukes of Devonshire and Buccleuch. Much of the early iron production had focused on Furness Abbey which passed down through a number of ownerships before ending up with the Devonshire family. The Duke of Buccleugh inherited the Manors of Furness and Hawkshead and so too had a landed interest.

I came across a fascinating blog describing the housing history of Barrow. As with Middlesborough, another 19th creation mentioned by Asa Briggs, the development of the iron industry led to a dramatic increase in population which needed housing. The blog traces the housing built in the different stages of development of Barrow starting with the 28 houses existing in 1843. Clearly this was insufficient and first of all huts were built for the workers coming in. This was then followed by more substantial 'Scotch Buildings', essentially five story tenement blocks which would have been familiar to the workers coming from Scotland. These were followed by Devonshire Buildings, Maritime Gardens and then terraced Roose housing and the mock Tudor terraces of Vickerstown: the Vickers name stemming from the next chapter in Barrow's life.

Barrow did seek to diversify its manufacturing. One issue that concerned the iron masters was the fluidity of their workforce and it was thought that finding jobs for women would add stability. The route taken was jute and the Barrow and Calcutta Jute company at one time employed 2,000 women; competition from overseas and Dundee forced its closure in 1930. Barrow Paper Mills faired better staying in business until the seventies. It became part of Bowater Scott. Other later additions were British Cellophane and K Shoes.

Manufacturing in Barrow had a second focus on shipbuilding resulting from both the production of iron and the earlier export of ore. Neighbouring Ulverston was a much bigger place and attracted the earlier shipbuilders. James Fisher was established in 1847 and built a number of ships. In 1870 the Barrow Iron and Shipbuilding Company was founded, again under the direction of James Ramsden and built a good number of ships including naval craft and importantly the first submarine in 1886 designed by the Swedish T. Nordenfeldt. In 1888 the Naval Construction and Armaments Company took over the yard and eight years later Vickers bought that company and production continued under the name Vickers Sons and Maxim. I write about the development of Vickers in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. There began a long history of naval construction especially submarines. Vickers claimed a unique position of supplying naval ships complete with armaments. Vickers added the manufacture of the early airships with designs by a young Barnes Wallis and then railway wagons.

The presence of Vickers in Barrow attracted Ferranti with semi conductor manufacturing and Marconi with radar and which eventually became part of BAE Systems along with Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Limited. With a major order book of work with submarines, Barrow's future looks healthy.

Further reading:

• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962)
• F. Barnes, Barrow and District (Barrow in Furness, 1968)
• J.D. Scott, Vickers - A History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962)
• John F. Wilson, Ferranti - A History (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing, 1999)