Crawley manufacturing history

 Crawley was a village on the Weald and had played its part in the early Wealden iron industry until the seventeenth century. The Weald supplied iron ore to local and then London based foundries for the production of weapons before both trades gravitated to the coal of the West Midlands. I write more about the Wealden iron industry in a separate blog piece.

In the eighteenth century Crawley's position on the main London to Brighton road brought carriage trade which increased with Brighton's popularity. The arrival of the London to Brighton railway put pay to this, but brought Crawley closer to the ever growing London.

After the Second World War, Crawley was eventually designated a new town and prospered as a result. Manufacturers were attracted but only few larger concerns, the majority being SMEs.

Vent Axia was formed with the invention of the first electrically operated window ventilator in 1936. The company provided ventilation equipment for 10 Downing Street during the Second World War and moved to a factory in Putney in 1946. In 1957 it took a 99 year lease of a factory in Manor Royal, Crawley where it still manufactures after a short period of offshore manufacture in China. Vent Axia was bought by Halls of Dartford and the combined business became part of APV.

APV, founded in Wandsworth in 1910, set up in Crawley in the fifties. Its full name was the Aluminium Plant and Vessel Company and was working with a new way of welding aluminium. It began making heat exchangers and developed into supplying equipment for the dairy, food and chemical industries. In 1987 it merged with Baker-Perkins, but the APV business was bought be Siebe in 1997. At one time it had 1,600 employees.

The subsequent massive growth of Gatwick airport encouraged a good many supporting businesses and housing for a large number of airport employees. The Manor Royal business district has also attracted a good number of businesses, many with international connections.

In recent years Crawley had become the headquarters for Gatwick Diamond a designated economic development area comprising Crawley, Epsom & Ewell, Horsham, Mid Sussex, Reigate & Banstead and Tandridge. It is home to 45,000 businesses and claims better economic performance than similar areas: Thames Valley including Reading, South East Midlands including Milton Keynes and Enterprise M3 including Woking and Greater Medway including Chatham. It highlights Life Sciences and Knowledge Based Industry as key areas.

Further reading:

Peter Gwynne, A History of Crawley (Chichester: Phillimore, 1990)

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.

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)