Wellingborough manufacturing history

 Like so many towns in agricultural areas, cottage industries emerged because of the necessity to supplement the income of agricultural labourers. In the Wellingborough area, again like so many, it was the spinning and weaving of wool and the tanning of hides and making of simple footwear. To add to this in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the hand making of lace to sell to the better off.

In terms of industry, the area was rich in iron ore and blast furnaces were erected to supply local foundries and those further afield. At one time parts of the town was constantly covered in ash from the furnaces.

Wellingborough smelters supplied the Stanton Iron works in Derbyshire which company took the opportunity of hard times to buy the Wellingborough iron company, which eventually became part of United and then British Steel. One of the the larger local foundries was bought by the Morris Motor Company for casting engine blocks.

In the part of England which the Romans set apart for grain production, a local family company is making waves in the twenty-first century. Whitworth Brothers had mills in Bedford which were destroyed by fire in 1884. Frank Whitworth used the proceeds of insurance to build a new flour mill by the river Nene in Wellingborough. Completed in 1886, the company used the latest technology for roller mills, but also had more than an eye for fire protection. (The image offers the contrast of old mill and more recent additions.)

Some thirty years earlier Nathaniel Sharman had built a shoe factory and warehouse in the town. I tell of the Northamptonshire footwear industry in my blog piece on Northampton. In Wellingborough a number of businesses started, thrived and then closed. An exception is George Cox, a former brewer, whose company still produces its famous 'brothel creepers' in the town. Barkers Shoes are still made at nearby Earls Barton.

Whitworth remained a successful business supplying local bakers until the thirties when a new generation of the Whitworth family expanded by buying a mill of similar size, Cadge and Colman, in Peterborough. The company then added its own bakery to utilise the new mill to the full.

A new generation took over the company in 1997 and began a major programme of investment. Two further mills were built in Wellinghborough and two more in Peterborough. New technology was employed to the full. The new century offered opportunities for expansion by acquisition and the company now also has mills in Selby and Trafford Park in Manchester. From 1% of he market, it has grown to one third. The company produces bakers, bespoke and heat treated flour.

There was another side to Whitworths as producers of dried fruit and nuts. This is now a separate company and operates downstream from Wellingborough at Irthlingborough. The business has recently changed hands at the time of writing and is carrying out an extensive factory building project.

Further reading

Joyce and Maurice Palmer, A History of Wellingborough (Earls Barton: Steepleprint, 1972)

Banbury manufacturing history

 A market town in an agricultural county, it is perhaps not surprising that Banbury's first venture into engineering manufacturing was into agricultural machinery. Bernhard Samuelson had been in business in Tours in France and, on visiting Banbury, saw the urgent need for labour saving equipment to support agricultural production. His company produced at their Britannia Works a prize winning turnip cutter, digging machines, mowing machines, chaff and linseed cutters and an oil cake breaker. Importantly he took a license to manufacture the American McCormick reaper of which he sold thousands. In 1871 he employed 500 people. He was a philanthropist, as well as a businessman who paid above average wages, and provided a good deal of the infrastructure of the growing town. He served as member of parliament for the town for some ten years. His business became a limited company in 1873 but closed in 1933.

Thus the approach of the Second World War saw the town without major manufacturing employment. The council managed to attract .The Northern Aluminium Company (later known as Alcan) of Canada. The company's role during the war would be vital, providing aluminium for Spitfires and Bailey Bridges. It became the town's largest employer with a workforce at one time of 2,300. During the early years of the war, the plant supplied 40% of aluminium sheet and extrusion vital for the manufacture of aircraft. Aluminium ingots were brought from as far a field as Canada and scrap from crashed aircraft would be melted down for re-use. The factory acted as the central store of aluminium for the Ministry of Aircraft Production Light Metals Committee which was based there. The factory continued its role as part of Alcan's research laboratory until closure in 2003. I write more about the UK aluminium industry in Vehicles to Vaccines.

After the war Banbury agreed to accept overspill from both London and Birmingham the latter of which relocated the Birds factory owned by General Foods of America and then Kraft of America.

Another company attracted was Automotive Products of Leamington about which I write more in my piece of Warwick and Leamington

Further reading

Ted Clark, Banbury (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992)

Telford manufacturing history

 Telford is rightly known as the place where in 1708 Abraham Darby discovered the way to use coke to smelt iron ore and I wrote about this in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. It is worth pondering that this was an environmentally friendly development since before this it is said a small iron furnace would consume 2,000 acres of woodland annually.

Iron smelting had been carried out in Telford and its surrounding for perhaps two millennia. It was perfectly placed in a gorge running down to the river Severn. High up the gorge there was limestone and coal along with iron ore. Darby leased an existing furnace from the Brook family and adapted it to his new process. The gorge had fast running water to power the bellows for blast furnace. The resulting pig iron and in due finished goods could then be taken downhill to the river for onwards transmission. In due course the banks of the Severn were lined with iron works, tile works, china works and limestone quarries.

Darby's Coalbrookdale Company continued in one form or another until 2017. It began with pig iron but then specific castings including the famous iron bridge, pillars, boilers for steam engines and rails. As a Quaker, he would not cast cannon Much later the company cast parts for Rayburn and AGA eventually being owned by Glynwed. In the meantime it extended its interests into coal mines and metal work.

The process of making coke from coal produced by-products including gas and tar, the latter being combined with the spent material from the furnaces to make asphalt. It also later provided the base material for many chemicals. Gas from coke production would, of course, light the nation's towns until North Sea gas came on stream.

There were other iron masters and other major employers. Among these, John 'Iron mad' Wilkinson was an iron master with works at nearby Broseley and at one time provided one eighth of Britain's iron output. He cast boilers for Boulton & Watt. He developed a method of casting cannon in a single solid form which would then be bored out to form the barrel. He then devised a method whereby the cannon was rotated whilst the boring tool remained fixed and this greatly improved accuracy. Later he made the first iron barge for use on the river Severn.

The Lilleshall Company founded in 1764 traded until 1964 and was the largest employer. Owned by landed gentry it sought to exploit the natural resources that lay underground. It built several iron works, a glass works, brick works, mines, canals and stretches of railway. In the mid nineteenth century Lilleshall ws producing 15,000 tons of finished iron a year as well as a million bricks and massive steam engines.

None of this would have been possible without a skilled workforce whose experience in iron working stretched back many generations. Nothing stood still. The Ketley iron works was repurposed for the production of rain water goods.

Coalport manufactured bone china. The company came about by the joining of the landowning Browne family who brought clay, coal and capital and a talented engraver Thomas Turner who had been apprenticed at the Worcester factory. Production continued from 1750 until 1926. There is now a Coalport Museum.

The Shropshire canal opened in 1797 and provided a vital link and was followed as elsewhere by railways. In and around Telford just about every large factory and mine had its own branch line; it was a wonder of modern transport. Electricity arrived in 1876 with the production of Elwell and Parker High Speed Electric Engines. Coalbrookdale installed its own power generating station in 1906.

The General Strike saw declines in both Lilleshall and Coalbrookdale and Coalport moved to the potteries. Other businesses prospered: the Horsehay Company made bridges and crains, Heybridge Steel produced miles of wire and Walkers and Corbetts made tanks and boilers. Ever Ready Batteries set up a factory and Joseph Sankey took over Briggs Bodies and made car parts especially wheels. Chad Valley had two factories making toys.

In 1939 work began on the vast Ordnance depot at Donnington and I tell its extraordinary story in War on Wheels. It remains a Ministry of Defence establishment.

Lucas automotive manufactured lighting and Rists wiring. Sankey also produced armoured vehicles at the Hadley Castle works until it became part of GKN, then Alvis and BAE Systems. It is now RBSL (owned by Rheinmetall and BAE Systems) and which now produced the Boxer fighting vehicle and Challenger 3 tanks.

Further reading

• https://www.ironbridge.org.uk/visit/coalbrookdale-museum-of-iron/
• George Evans, Telford's Living Landscape (Wellington: Vision Books, 1993)