Luton manufacturing history

 Luton is well known for hat making, cars and lorries and Eric Morecambe's love of the town's football club.

Hat making did of course come first and there are suggestions that the plaiting of straw and the associated making of straw hats dates back many centuries. It was said that the best hats came from Leghorn in Italy and we can once again see the hand of Napoleon in the development of British manufacturing, for Italy fell into the hands of the French and supplies were cut off. It was left to the people of Luton to improve their skills and the quality of the plait, which they did. Luton was protected by prohibitive tariffs during the Napoleonic Wars and to a reducing degree until the mid nineteenth century; in both quality and efficiency Luton could compete with the best.

The industry boomed. It was largely home based with the involvement of the whole family; there were plaiting schools where children would learn the necessary skills and, if they were lucky, also reading and writing. In time the Factory Acts put pay to to this. Luton market was a vital hub providing a place to buy straw and plait and to sell hats. In time the manufacturer/merchant appeared providing straw and collecting hats, in a way similar to Manchester's cotton merchants. Unlike the cotton industry, plaiting and hat making did not benefit from steam power, and mechanisation was limited really to the sewing machine.

Straw hat making was seasonal and in time businesses explored adding felt hat making in the quiet months of the year. Men's felt hats were made particularly in Stockport and Atherstone, but Luton attracted the making of women's felt hats. As with cotton and wool, hat making needed dyers and a number came to the town including Laporte which had originated in Shipley in Yorkshire.

Luton was not well served by communication. The Grand Junction Canal passed it by and a road journey to Leighton Buzzard was required to link to it. It looked as if railways too would pass by, with Luton having to wait until 1858 for a branch line whilst Leighton Buzzard had received their connection in 1838. When they came, the railways did of course attract industries. As well as those connected with hat making, other businesses arrived. Hayward-Tyler made soda-water machinery (soda-syphons) but also hydraulic pumps, and Balmford made boilers. The Davis Gas Stove Company moved from Scotland and became a major employer providing all that was needed for domestic heating systems.

The Luton local authority took the initiative to provide electricity rather than leaving that task to a third party, the hope being that cheaper electricity would result. It was successful and Vauxhall motors moved to Luton from the south bank of the Thames in London in 1905 attracted by the space to expand but also by cheap electricity from the Luton Electric Works which had begun generation in 1901. Vauxhall was followed by Commercial Cars (known later as Commer and part of the Rootes Group) and by George Kent which made meters for measuring the supply of water, gas, steam or oil. The Skefko Ball Bearing Company of Sweden (later known as SKF) set up to provide these essential components for motor vehicles. Electricity was perfect for hat making because it could be supplied to the houses where the makers worked in quantities appropriate to small scale production.

The impact of hat making on Luton was considerable. Len Holden, in his Vauxhall Motors and the Luton Economy 1900-2002, argues that the town's growth was comparable to that of Middlesbrough, Crewe and Barrow -in-Furness which I have written about as being towns created by the nineteenth century railways. Luton did it in hats and then added other industries to give it a more balanced economy and one able to ride out the economic cycle.

Luton played its part on both world wars. In the First World War there was a shell filling factory at Chaul End and the town's engineers turned their hands to the requirements of the war effort with Skefko employing 7,000 workers and Kents 8,000. Interestingly in the Second World War, the Board of Trade had wanted to relocate hat making to Gateshead leaving the town with capacity for the production of armaments. The town rebelled and the Board retreated. None-the-less hat making became a shadow of its former self. Of particular interest to me in the context of my first book, War on Wheels, it was Vauxhall which designed and made the Churchill Tank.

The interwar years saw Electrolux of Sweden set up manufacturing as did the Percival Aircraft Company. After the Second World War English Electric carried out research, development and production of aircraft ice protection industrial heating systems. Clothing manufacturers arrived. It was though Vauxhall which dominated the town. The New Industries Committee, which the town had set up to plan its growth away from hat making, could do little in the face of the decisions of General Motors, the owners of Vauxhall, who wanted to take advantage of the boom in UK motor manufacturing particularly in the sixties. This resulted in Vauxhall being a very large employer with plants also in neighbouring Dunstable and Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.

Like the rest of the British motor industry, indigenous volume car production declined under concerns about industrial relations, pressure from imports and foreign companies invited to set up in the UK. Commercial vehicles bucked the trend but eventually succumbed to consolidation. I write of both in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Further reading:

• James Dyer, Frank Stygall and John Dony, The Story of Luton (Luton: White Crescent Press, 1964)
• Len Holden, Vauxhall Motors and the Luton Economy 1900-2002 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press and the Bedfordshire Historical Records Society, 2003)

Uxbridge manufacturing history

 The market in Uxbridge became a vital conduit for London’s food. The town had a great many water mills grinding the grain brought to the market by farmers from as far a field as Aylesbury. Through this, the town was London's main provider of flour. The building of the Grand Junction Canal aided this. It would be many years before the GWR would stop in Uxbridge and so open up the town to industry. In the meantime the town’s clay made bricks for London’s new homes. Later the town would be linked to the London underground system enabling the transport of commuters.

Two companies stand out as the first manufacturers to come to the town:

The Steel Barrel Company was a major producer from steel plate and had a business relationship with Scammell in nearby Watford. It provided parts for Davey Paxman.

The Bell Punch Company made instruments that many of us will remember from childhood. Long before that, they made ticket punching machines. These evolved into the bus ticket machines which conductors would sport on their chests. The technology was developed into ticket machines for the TOTE on first Britain’s and then America’s race courses. From here came the calculating machine sold under the name Sumlock. When I was a young articled clerk, I remember the comptometer operator adding columns of figures at lightning speed on her Sumlock. During the Second World War the company turned its hand to precision instruments for the RAF.

More recent arrivals in Uxbridge are the American General Foods and Coca Cola. Cadbury Schweppes and Bristol-Myers have their head office in Uxbridge.

Further reading:

• Carolynne Hearmon, Uxbridge - A Concise History (Hillingdon Borough Libraries, 1982)
• http://anita-calculators.info/html/origins_of_bell_punch_co_.html

Hayes manufacturing history

 Hayes was, in the early nineteen century, an agricultural town untouched by industrialisation except for the Grand Union Canal along the banks of which bricks were made to meet the demands of London's builders. The Great Western Railway passed through Hayes in the 1830's, but it would be another thirty years before the town got its own station and a further thirty years before the factories arrived.

The industrial development was to the south of the town with the Grand Union Canal to the north and the GWR running across it. Unlike the New Towns or even Letchworth, which was broadly comtemporary, Hayes industry grew with little regard to infrastructure. By 1915 the working population was 7,000, 4,000 of whom came daily by train from as far afield as Paddington and Windsor.

J.A. King and their fireproof partitions were the first manufacturers on site, followed by the British Transformer Company which moved from Paddington; Arthur Lee with slate, marble and granite working moved from Bristol. The Gos Printing Company of Chicago made newspaper printing machines.

The most significant arrival was the Gramophone and Typewriter Company which took an eleven acre site for a factory because their German factory couldn't keep pace with demand for gramophone records; the company adopted the 'His Master's Voice' HMV label. Hayes was to be a place of music, for HMV was joined by manufacturer of pianolas, the Orchestrelle Company. A pianola was a piano operated by a music roll; these were also made in Hayes by the Universal Music Company. A further link to HMV came through the printers Harrison & Sons who not only printed postage stamps but also the sleeves for records.

Food manufacturing came to Hayes in the shape of Scott's Preserves which grew strawberries in the Clyde valley. R&W Scott prospered as a family company for five generations before selling to Hero. A management buyout returned them to independence in 2022 with a plant back in Scotland.

The First World War saw factories turned over to the war effort and with three significant additions. Army Motor Lorries and Wagons employed largely Belgian refugees and made the bodies with chassis provided by motor manufacturers. Part of their premises was taken by Fairey Aviation which during the war assembled Short Model 827 planes. The other wartime addition was shell filling factory No 7. In my book Ordnance I write in detail about the shell filling factory at Chilwell just outside Nottingham. In Hayes the factory comprised 397 buildings giving a floor area of 14 acres in a site amounting to 200 acres allowing enough space between huts to avoid explosions spreading.

After the war, Fairey continued to expand and built an aerodrome near Harmondsworth; this site would become part of Heathrow Airport. In terms of music, pianolas declined in popularity as records and record players found their way into more and more homes. HMV merged with the UK arm of Columbia Gramophone Company to become Electric and Musical Industries. EMI set up their Central Research Laboratory here and produced remarkable discoveries in television but of most enduring importance the CAT Scanner which enabled doctors to examine internal tissue.

A great deal of much needed housing was built.

The Second World War saw an ICI plant in Hayes producing for the war effort as well as a Royal Ordnance Factory. Fairie manufactured many aircraft most notably the Swordfish bi-plane which proved itself especially effective in attacking enemy shipping.

After the war, the Smith Crisps factory, which had been built in the twenties, was moved to Corby with associated job losses. Fairey merged with Westland eventually moving to Taunton. EMI merged with Thorn but then de-merged and focused on music publishing rather than the associated hardware. I write more about Thorn and EMI in Vehicles to Vaccines. As was the case elsewhere, distribution and service industries gradually took the place of manufacturers.

Further reading:

Catherine Kelter, Hayes Past (London: Historical Publications, 1996)