Reigate and Redhill manufacturing history

 This area of Surrey is rich in sand, chalk, clay and rock all suitable as building materials. Some of the sand is very fine and so ideal for glass making. There is also evidence of some twelve windmills dating from early times. Geared water mills had been introduced by the Romans and some 6,000 are mentioned in the Domesday Book. It was long thought that these were only for grinding grain and a good many were. However, certainly by the early Middle Ages water mills were adapted to other uses including fulling cloth, hammering hot metal and sharpening tools.

The Reigate area had the disadvantage of a lack of constantly running water. I write elsewhere of the use of ponds to regulate water flow; the solution in Reigate was the windmill and a number of the twelve mills mentioned were powered by wind. Fullers earth was also found nearby and so the application of wind mills to fulling was entirely feasible; there was also no shortage of sheep.

The Surrey Iron Railway built in 1805 was planned to go all the way to Portsmouth to facilitate transport during the Napoleonic wars, but in fact ended at Merstham just short of Reigate. Nevertheless it did serve to assist in the transport of Merstham rock and other building materials in great demand as London expanded.

One of the watermills, Salford Mill, was extensively upgraded including the installation of steam power and this was said to have been used by Dr Kellogg for the flaking of wheat until he moved his breakfast cereal business to Manchester

In 1919, the Redland Tile Works began making concrete tiles using the local reserves of sand; local chalk and clay were also available to make the necessary cement. The business was successful, given the demand for building following the war; there was also ample labour in the shape of ex-servicemen.

Carter Wilkinson engineers invented a tile making machine that dramatically speeded up the process and it became a subsidiary of Redland which then exploited the invention through granting licences in many countries. The Redland Engineering business remained in Reigate, but tile making moved to the Moorhouse Tile Works in Kent. In time Redland opened tile works at Syston in Leicestershire and elsewhere across the country. It bought small local brick companies, and in 1984 bought the famous traditional tile manufacturer, Rosemary Roof Tiles. Redland expanded considerably in the seventies and eighties. A revolutionary flat roof system, Icopal invented by David Anderson, had followed the concrete roof tile in 1923 with a factory in Trafford Park in Manchester. Redland was acquired in 1997 by the French Lafarge. The Anglo-Irish company BMI now owns both Redland and Icopal.

A survivor from early times was the British Wax Refining Company of Redhill which purifies and bleaches beeswax. Beecham Research Laboratories were at nearby Brockham Park

The Monotype works at Salfords, near Redhill, was founded in 1899 to manufacture compositing machines for the rapidly expanding printing industry. Monotype Corporation originated in the USA and owner Tolbert Lanston invented a method of mechanical hot metal typeset whereby a typed script could be automatically converted into metal characters. As the twentieth century progressed, the style of type face became more and more important and different families of fonts were devised, for example the well known Times New Roman. Monotype Ltd was very much a partner with its US parent being as involved in developing technology and design. The UK company was floated on the London Stock Exchange with a British board of directors including Harold Macmillan of the publishing house of the same name. Monotype expanded and bought the rival system Linotype which worked with lines of text rather than individual characters.

Reigate, Redhill and the surrounding area are now predominantly residential.

Further reading:

• Derek Stidder, A Guide to the Industrial History of Reigate and Banstead (Reigate: Surrey Industrial History Group, 1996)
• Derek Stidder, A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of Reigate and Banstead District (Reigate: Surrey Industrial History Group, 1979)

I wanted to explore British manufacturing history geographically, having looked at it chronologically and by sector in my books How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. 

Follow this link to a list of the places I have explored to date.

Maidstone manufacturing history

 A market town and the county town of Kent, the 'Garden of England', Maidstone was home to manufacturers exploiting local produce. Kent is known for hops and so breweries flourished. The county is also known for its fruit and so Grants Cherry Brandy but also jam and confectionary makers most notably Sharp's Toffee. Sharps were bought by Trebor which had started out in South London, set up a factory in Chesterfield to escape enemy bombing during the Second World War and became the fourth largest confectionary manufacturer with main competitors Cadbury and Rowntree. Cadbury bought the expanded Trebor in 1989 and the Maidstone factory closed in 2000. The Maidstone factory was known as the Kreemy Works, the largest toffee factory in the world.

It is a town on the Medway and so had a plentiful supply of water for paper making both for specialist uses and newsprint. Hayle Mill made the renowned Bockingford water colour paper.

It is not far from London and so took on a role in support of the metropolis in terms of homes for commuters but also manufacturers to support the London infrastructure. WA Stevens experimented converting a motor car to electric power. In conjunction with London bus company Tilling this developed a drive system whereby a petrol engine powered an electric motor which in turn drove the front wheels of a bus. For a bus driver this held the advantage over a crash gearbox before synchromesh was invented. London bus operator Thomas Tilling bought Stevens in 1910 and the invention was exploited to good effect. However, experience in the First World War taught an increasing number of drivers how to manage a crash gearbox and so the Tilling-Stevens option lost some of its attraction.

In the interwar period the motor car was gaining popularity and the Maidstone based Rootes company had built an astonishing position as the top motor retailer in Britain. They already provided service and repair back up for their sales but expanded this by building charabancs on Tilling-Stevens chassis. As I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, Rootes explored manufacturing options elsewhere including the Humber company as shown in the image, but also bought Tilling-Stevens in 1950.

In nearby Harrietsham, Marley Concrete roofing tiles were introduced after the First World War when building materials were in short supply. Owen Aisher was building bungalows in Kent, but found he was being held up by supply shortages. He took the initiative and began using an adapted second-hand machine to produce concrete roof tiles. The availability of cement further up the Medway clearly made this cost effective. Manufacturing techniques developed, and a number of factories were built around the country to improve access to customers. By the time of the Second World War, Marley was producing two hundred million tiles a year. In the fifties, demand continued to grow, manufacturing techniques were further developed, and more factories built. Marley added floor tiles, including those made from vinyl to their range. Later, they produced whole roofing systems and more recently integrated solar panels. In 2022, the business was sold with roofing being bought by Marshalls plc.

Further reading:

Peter Clark and Lyn Murfin, The History of Maidstone (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995)

Medway towns manufacturing history

 Rochester was a cathedral city until local government changes caused the status to lapse on its joining the Medway unitary authority. Nevertheless, its cathedral is the seat of the Bishop of the Rochester Diocese dating back to the sixth century. Rochester boasts a castle whose keep is one of the best preserved in England or France. Rochester has been occupied by Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans.

Chatham in contrast was a small village on the mud flats of the Medway not far from Rochester and close to Gillingham, Strood and Rainham. It was the mud that attracted naval use. Henry VIII had built the first substantial Royal Navy including the Mary Rose, the first purpose built warship. The Medway then came into its own since the ships could safely be beached and there have their hulls cleaned, caulked and tarred.

Elizabeth I added to the navy, galleys - ships with both sail and oars. These were stationed at Chatham where they could easily be maintained. The dockyard was already bigger than Portsmouth, Deptford and Woolwich and it maintained and improved on this position through the years of war with the Dutch. The yard attracted shipwrights, carpenters, sailmakers, smiths, sawyers, riggers and mast makers.

In the early seventeenth century a new dry dock was built along with mast docks, sail loft and rope house - the latter being 1,000 feet long, the length of the longest rope. The tactic for naval ships was simple, to be massively armed to wreak destruction at short range. The massive PRINCE was an exemplar of this ship type known as the First Rate with three gun decks. These early ships would be armed by cannon cast in iron works in the nearby Weald.

With the eighteenth century came another opponent - the French - and so the centre of gravity for the navy moved westward to Portsmouth and Plymouth. More than this, the theatre of naval warfare moved from the sea between Britain and the Continent to the oceans: the Mediterranean, Caribbean and Atlantic. The ships required for this more open warfare needed to be more agile and so tended to be Third Rate with seventy-four guns or frigates with thirty-two guns. In the course of the century the Royal Navy moved to a position of increasing strength where victory was always expected. This was great credit to the men who sailed the ships and lived in the most appalling conditions, but also to the dockyards.

For Chatham, the eighteenth century meant first completion of the improvement programme, but then decline as resources were directed to Portsmouth and Plymouth. The century ended with restoration ready for the next great conflict: the Napoleonic Wars. At the end of the eighteenth century the Chatham dockyard was the largest employer in the South East with some 2,000 men.

The navy's most famous ship, the VICTORY, was built at Chatham in 1765 and had a chequered career culminating in her being fitted out as a hospital ship in 1797. Two years later she was to be converted into a prison hulk. Instead, orders were given for her to be rebuilt and she left Chatham in 1800 as a superb fighting First Rate ship. These vast ships were built from four thousand oak trees with a compliment of 850 men. The lower of three gun decks was equipped with 42-pounders, the middle deck with 24-pounders and the top deck with 12-pounders giving a broadside of 1,176 pounds. Iron guns were most likely now cast at the Carron works in Falkirk with brass cannon made by Samuel Walker in Rotherham.

The nineteenth century saw reduced employee numbers with the ending of hostilities, but also the introduction of industrial process with a steam-powered sawmill designed and built by Marc Brunel. This incorporated a canal and and overhead rail system, with seasoned uncut timber entering at one end with sawn planks emerging at the other. I wrote in my blog on Portsmouth of Brunel's other inistiative of mechanising the process of pulley production.

The new century also saw the beginning of a dramatic change with steam power taking over from wind and sail. I write in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World of the transition from wooden hulls through iron clads to iron and then steel hulled ships. Mid-century saw a major investment in Chatham as it became the only eastern yard with the closure of Woolwich (although its continuance as the army's arsenal) and of Deptford. The work was substantial with new dry and wet docks, repair and fitting out basins all demanding some 110 million bricks made on site from a 21 acre brickfield. As the century drew to a close, ships became ever bigger culminating in the Dreadnaught Class which was too big either to be built or repaired at Chatham.

Her days seemed to be numbered until the Navy decided that they needed to build the newly invented submarines alongside private contractors not least to test their costings. The yard went on to build many submarines alongside Vickers at Barrow. In the Second World War it built smaller surface vessels and refitted a great many vessels of all kinds. At its peak the yard employed 13,000 people from Chatham, Rochester, Gillingham and Strood, and further afield.

The dockyard closed in 1981.

Rochester itself became home to Short Brothers which from 1913 manufactured flying boats or float planes was they were called at their factory at the Borstal end of the city. Their planes served with distinction during the First World War. Shorts survived the slump of the twenties by diversifying into buses, barges and motor boats. They came back into the limelight with the Shorts Singapore which in 1927 made a spectacular flight around the coast of Africa. The thirties saw the Shorts Empire operated by Imperial Airways and offering their 24 passengers a choice of cabins, births and a smoking room. From the design of the Empire came the Sunderland with innovations including a powered gun turret. Many saw service during the Second World War as did the Stirling four engine bomber of which I wrote in my book MacRoberts Reply. In 1943 the company was compulsorily purchased by the government and production dispersed to Belfast away from enemy bombing. With the return of peace, the company moved its operations to Belfast.

BAE Systems Faraday test centre and Advanced Aerospace Technologies are now based in Rochester.

In the nineteenth century Strood became home to Stewart Brothers and Spencer which extracted oil from seeds and sold the residue as cattle feed. Seeds would come by ships from as far afield as India, America and Russia.

Aveling and Porter manufactured agricultural machinery and went on to manufacture steam engines. In the thirties they became part of Agricultural Engineering and joined Barford & Perkins of Peterborough to form Aveling Barford which also took the Hornsby steam and road roller business based in Grantham.

Wingets took the Aveling site to manufacture cement mixers. Strood had attracted cement manufacturers like many sites on the Thames and Medway. Portland cement had become an essential part of building in the mid-nineteenth century. I write more about this in my piece on Dartford.

Gillingham had a history of textile manufacture with the Gillingham Silk Company in business from 1769 to 1875. There was also linen manufacture and glove making. The Copperas Works produced dyes and inks. In the late 19th century the Brennan Torpedo works was established.

Gillingham is also headquarters of Delphi Automotive Systems which had been spun out of General Motors and included AC Delco, Automotive Products of Leamington and Lucas Diesel Systems based in Gillingham. It was bought by BorgWarner which spun it into PHINIA.

Further reading:

• Philip MacDougall, The Book of Medway (Buckingham: Barracuda Books, 1989)
• Philip MacDougall, The Chatham Dockyard Story (Rochester: Rochester Press, 1981)
• https://www.worldcementassociation.org/about-cement/our-history