Hull manufacturing history

 ‘It presents the eye an interesting spectacle of numerous vessels floating to and from the port of Hull: while that opulent and commercial town in its low situation close to the banks and surrounded by the masts of the shipping in the docks seems to rise like Venice from amidst the sea, the whole comprising a scene which for beauty and grandeur can scarcely be exceeded.’

This quotation from Bradshaw’s Guide had, behind it, a profound change in the lot of the British home. The railway had opened the inland but had also made accessible the shore to inland dwellers, and, in particular, had brought to the tables of ordinary people food never previously dreamed of. Hull, which had been a home of whaling, became the home of the British fishing fleet landing vast quantities of cod and haddock which would be whisked away by railway train to all parts of the country. That though is for later in the story.

Hull was first and foremost a port. In his book History of Kingston upon Hull, Hugh Calvert writes that Hull along with Liverpool were the major ports serving the Industrial Revolution and so were busy with both imports and exports. Hull at the mouth of the Humber was by the eighteenth century linked by rivers to Sheffield, Leeds, Huddersfield, Wakefield and Halifax. Soon canals would also link to Birmingham, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Leicestershire and East Lancashire. Exports comprised iron, lead and metal goods but also pottery, hosiery and beer. Imports were of Swedish and Russian iron, timber, corn, linseed, flax, turpentine and tar. The Continent of Europe was the major destination but Hull also competed with Liverpool for the trade with America. With trade grew banking and the Smith's Bank also in Nottingham and Lincoln was just one of the progeny.

Shipbuilding had flourished in Hull since the fourteenth century or even earlier. Ships built included whalers, ships for the carriage of wine and naval vessels. The most important shipbuilder by the eighteenth century was the Blaydes family. Notoriously, a Hull shipyard built the Bounty later known for the mutiny against Captain Bligh. Steam and iron came successfully to Hull at the hands of the Earle family. In terms of shipping companies, it was the Wilson family that took pride of place.

The Earle family was also responsible for bringing the making of Roman Cement to Hull just three years before the invention of modern Portland Cement in 1824. The company would become part of the Blue Circle Group.

Manufacturing was the order of the day and Hull was not to be left out. It tried mills for both flax and cotton, but neither took off. Seeds for the oil they contained were more promising and factories for rolling and crushing seeds began to be built alongside businesses manufacturing the machinery required. In terms oil for margarine and soap, much later Unilever bought into the local industry. Oil was also used for paint, especially when combined with lead, and a paint industry emerged with Blundells, but also Reckitts which would become Reckitt and Colman manufacturing laundry starch, black lead and household polish.

The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in the number of ships fishing from Hull. A rich area of fish had been discovered, growing urban areas were seeking sources of food and the technique of trawling for fish had been adopted. Ships powered by steam and then diesel added to the activity as did the invention of a means of making ice. Fish had to be kept cold from the point of being caught up to the point of sale at the fish market, and ice had been imported from Norway to achieve this. The Hull Ice Manufacturing Company began making its own ice in 1891. The Fylde Ice Company may take issue and suggest that its founder Joseph Marr, a Hull trawler man, had begun importing ice in 1860 and his son James set up the Ice Company in Fylde in 1908. That company expanded in to cold storage and still makes ice. One spin off from deep water fishing was the processing of cod liver oil, much 'loved' by those of us of a certain age.

The twentieth century saw Distillers set up plant to produce industrial alcohol and other chemical products of which I write in Vehicles to Vaccines. Smith + Nephew started out in Hull and still manufacture in the town. Hull is also still home to Ideal Heating formed in 1906. In nearby Brough, BAE Systems run the engineering centre for the Hawk trainer. This builds on the legacy of Hawker Siddeley and before then Robert Blackburn who set up the Brough factory at the start of the First World War.

Further reading:

Hugh Calvert History of Kingston upon Hull (Chichester: Phillimore, 1978)

Hartlepool manufacturing history

Hartlepool on the north east coast was a quiet market town, its heart beating in time with the agricultural community it served. A little further up the coast, the Tyne and Wear was exporting thousands of tons of coal to the hungry growing urban areas of early 19th century Britain and the Continent.

Robert Wood, in his book West Hartlepool – The Rise and Development of a Victorian New Town, in effect places at the feet of the Quakers of Darlington the sequence of railway developments that led to West Hartlepool becoming one of the great ports of the east coast. The challenge was how to bring coal from the Durham coalfields to waiting ships at the lowest cost. In the early days, transport was by packhorse, but, without the benefit of turnpike roads, at a cost that would double the price of coal every two miles travelled (p6). The alternative of a rail track along which coal wagons could be pulled by horses dramatically reduced the cost of carriage. It is hardly surprising that this incentive created stiff competition and thus a number of competing railway lines were built, the Stockton and Darlington being the best known and I write about this in my blog on Middlesbrough. In time, horses were replaced by steam locomotives and the commercial imperative to rationalise led to amalgamations of railway companies; the name George Hudson entered the picture with his North Eastern Railway.

For West Hartlepool manufacturing, the massive growth in its port business led to shipbuilding with the major player being Pile, Spence and Co, and ironworks run by West Hartlepool Rolling Mills. Much of the development of West Hartlepool had been financed by banks and the collapse of Overend and Gurney in 1866 resulted also in the closure of Pile.

The resilience of Victorian shipbuilders was such that the Pile yard was taken over and enlarged, and two well known names enter the story. Samuel Plimsoll, a Bristol man, was travelling round the shipbuilding areas of the country arguing for regulations to govern the loading of merchant vessels, something that resulted in the Plimsoll line. It was a Hartlepool builder Denton, Gray which devised the well-deck design which improved the stability of the ship. These ships were screw-steamers built of iron. In time steel would take the place of iron and engines would increase in both power and efficiency. The other name was Marcus Samuel who wanted ships to transport the oil he discovered and which would be traded under the Shell name. The Denton, Gray yard was pipped at the post by Armstrongs in Newcastle for the accolade of building the world’s first oil tanker. Denton, Gray continued to build to the specification laid down by the newly opened Suez Canal. Shipbuilding at Hartlepool reached its height just before the First World War. Gray continued in business until the sixties.

Iron and Steel was the other industry to take root in Hartlepool. The source was the same as Middlesbrough and Consett: the Cleveland Hills. Thomas Richardson, an iron master and engineer, moved to the Hartlepool Iron Works in 1847 and built a substantial business. The Furness shipping company combined with the Hartlepool shipbuilder Edward Withy to form Furness Withy and this in turn in 1898 formed the South Durham Steel Company to buy Stockton Malleable Ironworks and West Hartlepool Steel and Iron. The ensuing story is one of the rule of the economic cycle combined with the need constantly to upgrade and improve. Steel making in West Hartlepool survived and received much need investment after the Second World War to become a major player in steel plate production. After the sixties, the world of steel began to change with the British industry suffering greatly. The South Durham Steel and Iron Co closed in 1977.

Furness Withy later focused on transport and containerisation.

Further reading:

• Robert Wood, West Hartlepool – the Rise and Development of a Victorian New Town (West Hartlepool Corporation, 1967)
• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.

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)