Hemel Hempstead manufacturing history

 The site of Hemel Hempstead has revealed Roman remains and the town not only was prosperous but had a proud heritage. So to be identified as a potential new town was not particularly welcome. The town enjoyed the employment of its large and long standing paper manufacturing business, John Dickinson, at Apsley Mill. I wrote about this in the context of nineteenth century publishing in my book Charlotte Bronte's Devotee about the man who discovered her genius. John Dickinson would go from strength to strength and was not alone in local manufacturing although much larger probably than the others taken together.

The designation as a new town was proposed in 1947 along with a first plan. Argument raged for five years until a final plan was agreed in 1952. Scott Hastie's and Lynne Fletcher's book Hemel Hempstead The story of New Town Development 1947-1997 is particularly helpful since it covers not only the first waive of industry but also the transition from manufacturing to high tech and service industries.

The long term prosperity of the town had a good deal to do with communications. The canal arrived in 1797 following by the railway in 1837. Now the M1 motorway passes nearby and has an exit direct to the industrial area. The M25 is also close and provides vital connectivity to London's airports but also the seaports of the southeast. Anyone driving through Hemel and unfamiliar with it may well be bemused by the Plough (or Magic) roundabout shown in the image.

New industry began to take units in the first designated area on Maylands Avenue and first off the block was the Central Tool and Equipment Company, a manufacturer of milling machines. There followed another engineering company, Alford and Alder, which supplied the motor industry. It seems that neither company survived after the sixties. Rolls Razor, another early arrival, had a colourful end to its production of razors when it went into the direct selling of washing machines and I write of this in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Addressograph Multigraph, an American company, moved from Cricklewood and employed 800 people. The largest of the early factories was for Rotax which later became part of Lucas Aerospace and of which I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines. Multicore Solders moved from Slough in 1952; I certainly remember using their product.

Following a further number of smaller companies, the big move was the arrival of Kodak in 1957 with their colour film processing plant. Kodak increased its presence in the town over the years until the move of colour wprocessing to France and Germany in 1985. Another large arrival was Dexion with storage systems. Hastie and Fletcher pause in 1961 to list the industries then represented in the town:

• office machinery
• photographic equipment and materials
• clothing
• paper moulding
• scientific laboratory apparatus
• electronic equipment
• rubberised goods including hot water bottles
• surgical appliances
• accumulators
• printing equipment

1962 witnessed the arrival of a big employer, although not wholly a manufacturer, BP Oil. The American Du Pont company followed as did the Swedish Atlas Copco.

The gradual move to services is evidenced by the arrival of BOC Transhield for the transport of Marks & Spencer food products and the move to higher tech by Honeywell Ltd, Epson, Apple, ACT, Crosfield Electronics and McDonnell Douglas. Crosfield made electronic equipment for the graphic arts industry.

Hastie and Fletcher again pause this time to look at the 1991 census which reveals a total workforce of approximately 65,000 comprising 58% classified as professional, managerial or office based and only 17% working in manufacturing.

A third stage in Hemel's Development followed the closure of Kodak's film processing and also Lucas Aerospace providing sites for Dixons Head Office (then the high street retailer) and the Rank Organisation's leisure business.

Further reading:

• Scott Hastie and Lynne Fletcher, Hemel Hempstead: The story of New Town Development 1947-1997 (Hemel Hempstead: Dacorum Borough Council, 1997)

Welwyn Garden city Manufacturing History

 The founders of Welwyn had the experience of Letchworth Garden City, built some twenty years earlier, to fall back on. Work began in 1920 and the first manufacturing companies soon followed.

Of most enduring importance was Shredded Wheat, a Canadian company which had set up in Britain in 1908 in London's Aldwych. It was said that the company decided to take a considerable chance by moving to the new Garden City. Work started on the first three-storey block in 1924 and really very soon the factory was operating with great success. The business prospered and in 1928 was bought by Nabisco which added further products including Shreddies.

The next name that would become equally well known was Murphy which began in a garage making radios. As I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, demand for radios was strong and so the company grew and by the thirties had five hundred employees producing 33,000 radios a year. By 1939 it was one of the six biggest manufacturers of radios in the world. It was bought by the Rank Organisation in 1962 and in 1969 moved production to Ware and the premises was taken by Rank Xerox with a workforce of 1,400.

Nivea runs a close third. Beiersdorf took premises in Bessemer Road in 1931 and manufactured Nivea products. They then became Herts Pharmaceutical Company before becoming part of Smith + Nephew.

A big win for Welwyn was when they persuaded the American Norton Grinding Wheels to build what was then the largest factory in the town in 1931. Norton prospered in Welwyn until 1982 when manufacturing was moved abroad. Norton was another company bought by the French St Gobain, a former client of mine, and I recall a ceramics plant in Stoke on Trent.

Another American company, Lincoln Electric, began production in Welwyn in 1935. It later became part of GKN.

Under the New Towns Act of 1946, Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield were to be two distinct towns. In practice they are so close as to be a single conurbation. Sir Geoffrey de Havilland moved his aircraft company to Hatfield from Edgware in 1934. It became by a long way that town's largest employer. I tell its story in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. The company was famous for the Mosquito aircraft in the Second World War and the first commercial jet, The Comet, in the fifties.

Plastics came to Welwyn in 1938 when ICI created its Plastics Division and took a 10 acre site in Welwyn. In the next ten years it became the largest producer of plastics in the Commonwealth. In the fifites ICI relocated plastics to the north of England and the Welwyn site refocused on research.

Staying with chemicals, Hoffman La Roche manufactured Redoxin and then Librium and Valium. Smith Kline and French moved from Camberwell in 1939 and built the then tallest building in the town.

Other manufacturers include the Danish Bacon company, Allied Bakeries, Knorr soup and Suchard confectioners.

Further reading:

• Roger Filler, A History of Welwyn Garden City (Chichester: Phillimore, 1986)
• Hatfield and its people Pt 12 The Twentieth Century (The Hatfield WEA, 1964)

Letchworth manufacturing history

 Letchworth Garden City was conceived by Sir Ebenezer Howard who set out his thinking in a book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow. His aim was to combine town and city advantages. Thinking reached reality in 1902 when a company was formed to buy land and lay down designs for the new city. This was at the time of the Arts and Crafts Movement and echoes of the movement were to be found in the new city. There had to be industry providing jobs for the new population. The site chosen was on the railway line from London to Cambridge, but the route to the northern industrial areas was at nearby Hitchin. Many thought that the new town was too far from London and indeed later new towns were nearer. Writing in 2025, it may well be that a position between Cambridge and Oxford may turn out rather well.

Back to Edwardian England. The planning of a brand new conurbation required a return to first principles and the sourcing of water and also the routing of sewerage disposal. In was though 1900 and so a gas works was built. Electricity wasn't ignored but neither was it embraced. A generating station was built which provided for industrial users only DC current at 500 volts. It wasn't until the coming of the national grid in the twenties that the country as a whole adopted AC and standardise the voltage of supply.

The first company attracted to the new town was Idris, the soft drink company which was based in Camden in London. The first industries attracted to the new town were printers. A co-operative group of printers from Leicester set up Garden City Press and Joseph Dent whose company produced Everyman editions which had outgrown their factory based in Bishopsgate in the City of London. WH Smith brought to the town the Arden Press which picked up on the Arts and Crafts connection through the work of Bernard Newdigate and the type style of Eric Gill but also Morris's Kelmscott Press.

It was the time of the early motor car enthusiast and the town attracted the Lacre Motor Company from Long Acre in Covent Garden which built chassis. A successor company went on to produce mechanical road sweepers under the name Shelvoke and Drewry. Phoenix Motor Company came from its base in Finchley. Phoenix hand built beautiful cars each carrying the Phoenix Crest. Sadly with so many other motor companies chasing customers they ceased production in 1928.

The Westinghouse Morose Chain Company set up a factory in 1920 to produce chain drive for vehicles and were bought by Borg Warner after the Second World War. Borg Warner became one of the town's biggest employers and only ceased production after the recession of the 1980s.

Herz and Falk made embroidered textiles and St Edmundsbury Weavers again picked up Arts and Crafts in their handloom produced fabrics for churches, cathedrals, country houses and theatre sets. Another textile related company was created by Californian Leslie Irvin who manufactured parachutes. It was estimated that these had saved 36,000 lives in the Second World War.

One company that was to have big impact on Letchworth was Meredew cabinet makers which also collaborated with Murphy making radios in Welwyn. During the Second World War they made glider panels.

The Spirella Company from the USA had developed a wire spring alternative to bone for corsets and these proved extremely popular to twentieth century's more active woman. They set up in temporary premises in 1910 - huts that had been used to house the workers who carried out of the groundworks for the town. Over the next three years they built a factory complex known as Castle Corset which once again drew on Arts and Crafts design. In time the company recruited an army of sales women who would achieve daily sales of 200,000 in 1950. Later the making of brasiers moved to Harlow and the Letchworth factory focused on surgical corsets.

The K&L company originated with Belgian refugees during the First World War. Led by Jacques Kryn they built a foundry and during the First World War made munitions with a workforce of 3,000. They became part of the Cohen 600 Group and by 1930 claimed they were the best equipped foundry in Britain making carbon steel castings for everything from hydraulic cylinders to bridges and cranes. During the Second World War they made secret miniature submarines. They closed operations in the 80's.

The British Tabulating Company manufactured Hollerinth machines capable of processing numerical data such as census returns. They moved to Letchworth from Lambeth and would employ some 4,000 people in their new factory. In the Second World War they were vital in helping to produce the BOMBE code breaking machines for nearby Bletchley Park. Spirella also worked on assembly. British Tabulating joined with Powers Samas and eventually became International Computers Limited ICL after they were joined by the Ferranti and the English Electric computer businesses. They left Letchworth in 1989.

Letchworth has repurposed unused buildings and is well placed to continue to support the technology sector.

Further reading:

Melvyn Miller, Letchworth Garden City (Stroud: Chalford, 1995)