Cheltenham & Gloucester manufacturing history

 In the fifteenth century Gloucester was another centre for the wool and cloth industry. Work with iron was if anything more important with smelting from the Forest of Dean and foundries in the city. There is evidence then of further metal trades: cutlers, bladesmiths, coopers, farriers and pinners. In the thirteenth century, more towns had come to be known for their product: Lincoln for cloth (dyed green or scarlet), Grimsby for fish, Corfe for marble and Gloucester for iron.

In the sixteenth century the wool trade declined, but the city was appointed a port which went some way to increase trade, although Bristol continued to dominate. Cheltenham made its name as a Spa Town. The eighteenth century also saw Gloucester run more by the gentry, but the coming of the canals and railways, as elsewhere, brought manufacturing industry to the city.

This was in the shape of one remarkable company, the Gloucester Carriage and Wagon Company formed in 1860. Its traditional business had been fine carriages for the gentry, but the need to transport coal brought in the coal wagon for use on railways of which the company manufactured a great many. The design of wagons was developed and a greater use was made of iron and steel. Passenger carriages were produced mainly for overseas customers. The London Underground became a major customers with carriages produced for a number of lines. The company worked with English Electric on rolling stock for electrified railways. The company ceased manufacture in 1986.

In Cheltenham in 1888, Herbert Henry Martyn founded a company of wood, stone and plaster carvers, metal and glass workers. The company gained a national reputation for the excellence of their work. During the First World War, Hugh Burroughs of the Aircraft Manufacturing Company of Hendon (Airco) was looking for subcontractors to make wooden DH2 Scout aircraft. He was advised to visit Alfred Martyn who had taken over from his father. Burroughs was impressed and gave the order. Clearly a good relationship developed because Burroughs and Martyn set up a new company, the Gloucestershire Aircraft Company, owned by their respective companies.

The Gloucestershire Aircraft Company or Gloster Aircraft as it became, began by building large numbers of Bristol Fighters and Nieuport Nighthawks and, after the war ended, set about using large quantities of surplus Nighthawk parts to produce a series of planes derived from the Nighthawk which they named the Sparrowhawk and many of which were bought by the Japanese Navy. The Schneider Trophy beckoned and the company made a number of racing seaplanes. The interwar years were spent in experimentation as designs were tried out moving from wood to metal construction. This cost dear and Gloster became part of the much larger Hawker Siddeley which drew the company into the Hawker fold. A large number of aircraft were built including the Gladiator, the last bi-plane fighter.

Gloster had the distinction of being the first aircraft manufacturer in the UK or US to design, build and fly an aircraft fitted with a jet engine. I write about the development of the jet in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. The company went on to produce the highly successful Meteor.

Gloucester was home to Rotol, formed by Bristol aircraft and Rolls-Royce to manufacture propellers. Dowty Aviation with which Rotol later merged was based in Cheltenham specialising in undercarriages. The Dowty Heritage site has much more excellent detail. George Dowty, the founder of the company in 1930, had been a draughtsman at Gloster Aircraft designing internally sprung aircraft wheels in his spare time. Joe Bowstead and John Dexter joined him on their first contract for struts for the de Havilland autogyro. Soon they went full time and began building a company that would provide vital parts for the growing aircraft industry. George Dowty was a great believer in subcontracting, both to hold steady the company's employee numbers and to drawn on more specialist skills. I write more of the post war British aircraft industry in Vehicles to Vaccines.

With thanks to the Dowty Heritage Trust - Original photo in the Dowty archive at the Gloucestershire Heritage Hub

Unilever set up their Walls ice cream factory in Gloucester. In nearby Coleford, Lucazade and Ribena are produced. Ribena was produce by H.C Carter and was bought by Beecham and joined by Lucazade. They were sold by GSK to Suntori in 2013.

Further reading:

• Carolyn Heighway, Gloucester - A History and Guide (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1985)
• Peter Dancy, British Aircraft Manufacturers since 1909, (Fonthill Media, 2014).
• The Engineer 7 October 1971

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.

Bristol manufacturing history

 In 1843 Isambard Kingdom Brunel built a revolutionary ship in Bristol’s western dock. It was iron hulled and had both steam engine and sails. The principal innovation was the screw propeller replacing the paddles used up to that point. The image is of a replica of the original propeller on the conserved SS Great Britain at its home in the dry dock in Bristol.

The ship made the trip to Australia some thirty times and ended its service coaling the British fleet in the First World War. It offered luxury

Alongside hardship

Steerage class

Bristol’s history is maritime and inevitably bound up with slavery as were so many British ports. The maritime link led to the city’s principal businesses WD and HO Wills with cigarettes and JS Fry with chocolate. The city also refined sugar. The presence of these businesses and extensive foreign trade encouraged the development of banking in the city which, until comparatively recently, prided itself on its ability to finance its own business.

Shipbuilding was important, but, like textiles and iron, Bristol didn’t have the advantages of competing northern cities. Nonetheless the city had a major cotton mill for over a century. Before this, like many parts of the country, it was a centre of the woollen cloth trade. It gained a reputation for skilled iron work. The size of the dock limited the size of ships that could be built. The same was less true of non-ferrous metals.

The Mendips had reserves of both lead and zinc. Lead was mined and smelted during the nineteenth century. The arsenic content hardened the metal making it suitable for use as shot. It was a Bristol engineer who invented the process of making shot by dropping it from a tower through a sieve into cold water thus producing perfectly spherical shot.

Zinc had many uses. Added to copper, mined in Cornwall, it made brass largely for Birmingham manufacturers. The smelting of the ore released sulphuric acid used in the production of tin in Swansea just over the Bristol channel. Zinc was also used in galvanising first iron and then steel. John Lysaght set up in Bristol to exploit this process; he added mills in Newport and Wolverhampton and eventually became part of GKN. A fourth use of zinc as an oxide is used in medical products.

Bristol's relationship with zinc came in two major phases. William Champion began exploitation in 1743 and the industry thrived and then declined as Birmingham took more of the processing. The First World War offered a resurgence. Then zinc ore was coming from Australia and was being smelted in Germany before subsequent import into Britain. Clearly the war put a stop to this and Winston Churchill commissioned a major zinc production plant on Avonside, the National Smelting Corporation, which was completed in 1923. In 1928 it became part of the Imperial Smelting Corporation and then faced a long period of decline as the demand fell back to peacetime levels. Imperial Smelting, also in Swansea, became part of RTZ.

WD and HO Wills distinguished themselves from the many other cigarette makers by their technical innovation and marketing. In 1902 they became the largest part of the new Imperial Tobacco. Both Wills and Fry had attracted packaging businesses. ES & A Robinson emerged as a leader and later merged with Dickinson of Hemel Hempstead. Printed packaging materials were needed in ever increasing quantities. The most significant manufacturer became part of Imperial which later dramatically increased production only for it to fall back as cigarette smoking declined in popularity.

The GWR connected Bristol to London in 1841, with the workshops at Swindon. Nevertheless there was room for more, and engineering came to Bristol in the form of locomotive and railway wagon builders. These were followed by trams, out of which the Bristol Aeroplane Company emerged. In the Second World War it employed over 50,000 people and built such iconic aircraft as the Blenheim. Bristol Aero Engines was later bought by Rolls-Royce; their Olympus powered Concorde. The British Aircraft Corporation, into which Bristol Aircraft merged, built their Concorde at nearby Filton. I write of this in Vehicles to Vaccines. BAE Systems still manufacture aircraft at Filton where Airbus UK also carry out design work. At nearby Abbey Wood, BAE Systems manufacture combat vehicles. The Bristol Motor Company was a child of the city. The Douglas Motor Cycle company manufactured many thousands of motor bikes in the First World War. This was bought by Westinghouse Brake and Signal and made brakes and signals but also Vespa scooters.

More recently Bristol attracted service businesses and also inward investment; Hewlett Packard built a factory to the north of the city in the 1980s. The semiconductor manufacturer Inmos (later owned by Thorn EMI) had a design centre in Bristol. Bristol now thrives as a predominantly service economy.

Further reading

• Industrial Change in Bristol since 1800 (http://historycd.uwe.ac.uk/)
• E.J. COCKS and B. WALTERS. A History of the Zinc Smelting Industry in Britain (London: George Harrap. 1968)

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.

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.