St Austell manufacturing history

 St Austell on the south coast of Cornwall nestled among the mountains of the moon, or so it looked from the back of my mum's cottage. This belay a far more muscular past; St Austell with other parts of Cornwall provided the raw material for much of Britain's industrial revolution. The mountains were of course spoil heaps from china clay extraction; much earlier the mounds would be the waste from tin and copper mining. There is evidence of tin and copper working in Cornwall from the Bronze Age; not unreasonable given that bronze is an alloy of the two metals.

Early tin mining in Cornwall was near the surface and never below a level at which a build up of water in the mine could not drain into the sea. In time attempts were made to pump water using water wheels and so enabling deeper digging. The mines would sometimes run out under the sea and miners told stories of hearing the sound of waves above them.

Queen Elizabeth I introduced German miners to work new copper mines and George I encouraged more Germans given their experience of working in deep mines with hard rock.

Thomas Newcomen made the vital breakthrough of the invention of the atmospheric steam powered pump which meant that mines could go even deeper. The first was introduced into the Polgooth mine near St Austell which at one time employed 2,000 people. Mine owner, Charles Rashleigh, built the harbour at Charlestown enabling the shipping of copper ore to be smelted in South Wales. Tin was smelted locally.

The steam engines of Boulton and Watt were introduced to reduce costs as the price of tin and copper fell. I write more about these in my blog on Camborne. There were boom times - 1856-1864 for tin, but by the end of the century other countries were undercutting Cornish produce and miners emigrated in large numbers to mineral rich places including India.

For St Austell, the existing trade of mining kaolin was to restore prosperity and prolong it for a good number of decades. The Chinese had for a thousand years or more manufactured porcelain of a whiteness and hardness far superior to any English pottery. The secret to their process was closely guarded until Marco Polo brought details back to Europe. In Cornwall it was a Kingsbridge chemist by the name of Cookworthy who in 1746 found clay and and stone deposits near St Austell and an industry was born. Josiah Wedgwood experimented with a Watt steam engine to extract the kaolin by means of pumping water and then sieving and drying. Wedgwood was joined by Minton and Spode in acquiring interests in china clay and stone setts. In time a large number of small concerns were busily occupied in supplying a market hungry for porcelain.

As was the way with industrialisation, small concerns joined others to become bigger, culminating in 1919 with the formation of English China Clays. By this time science had made its presence felt and more advanced technology was introduced: electricity in place of steam, centrifugal pumps and power hoses. The port of Par had been built and enabled the export of a million tonnes a year. The production of kaolin leaves a residue of fine sand which can either be dumped or used. ECC bought two companies which became Selleck Nichols and Williams which manufactured prefabricated industrial buildings from precast concrete using the waste sand. Kaolin wasn't only being used for making porcelain, it was part of paper making and an illicit use was to whiten flour.

In 1999 English China Clays was bought by the French Imerys which now has interests in other extractive industries across the UK:

• Kaolin is still produced in Cornwall with a reserach laboratory at Par
• Ball clay is extracted in Devon around Newton Abbot and Wareham in Dorset
• Calcium carbonate is extracted at Stoke on Trent, Lostock in Cheshire and Beverley in Yorkshire
• Calcium aluminate is extracted at Thurrock in Kent

Further reading:

Cyril Bunn, The Book of St Austell (Buckingham: Barracuda Books, 1978)

You can read more in Vehicles to Vaccines and in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World 

Plymouth manufacturing history

 Set on the western approaches, Plymouth was in many ways Britain's door to the wider world. It was from Plymouth that so many of our adventurers sailed: Sir Francis Drake to the Pacific, the Pilgrim Fathers to America, James Cook to Australia and Charles Darwin to the Galapagos. I have written separately about our adventurers and explore in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World their role in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

In the later seventeenth century the city became home to a Royal Dock known now as Devonport. The docks built many hundreds of ships and maintained the fleet. In the nineteenth century it was subject to a major extension to allow for larger ships, also the Royal William Victualling Yard was built. The Great Western Railway was linked to the docks. A regular domestic service to Brittany began. The Royal Dockyard in 1912 employed 12,000 civilians. The biggest vessel ever constructed in Devonport was the 30,600 ton Warspite launched in 1913.

Other industries arrived. Isaac Reckitt took over a Plymouth factory in 1905 and made Robin starch and washing powders. Bryant and May experimented making lucifer matches. Their factory burnt down and they moved to London to make Swan Vestas. Lever Brothers developed a presence in the city by buying soap companies.

War time bombing left Plymouth with gaping wounds and the great task of reconstruction began as early as 1942. Reckitts had been bombed and decided to concentrate their activity in Hull. Companies were encouraged to set up: C&J Clark, Slumberland mattresses and Browne & Sharpe machine tools arrived in the fifties. Tecalemit were in production by 1948 as were Berketex dress makers.

Plymouth attracted electronics companies. It is home to Plessey Semiconductors. Bush Television built a factory in Plymouth to expand on its west London premises. BAE Systems have a Systems and Equipment establishment in the city.

A good number of American owned companies have bases in Plymouth and work in life sciences, composites and other technologies. Mars Wrigley make gum in the original Wrigley factory. You can read more detail in this link to research carried out by students in Plymouth.

Burts Crisps was founded in 1999 by Richard and Linda Burt with premises in Kingsbridge. They moved to a bigger factory in Plymouth in 2006.

Kawasaki Precision Machinery has been making hydraulic equipment in Plymouth for 25 years.

The work of the former Royal Dockyard has now been passed to Babcock International at Devonport and Rosyth. Princess Yachts were founded in 1965 and manufacture high class yachts sailed the world over

Further reading:

Crispin Gill, Plymouth - A New History (Devon Books, 1993)

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.

Taunton manufacturing history

In a sense this is a story about the most simple manufacturing process, the turning of apples into cider. Yet it draws in strands of the commercial world which are common to a great many manufacturing businesses.

Apples grow well in a number of areas of the country and from early times local people have found the benefit of extracting their juice and allowing it to ferment. Being a simple industry, anyone can do it - to a degree. It is also a local industry with lovers of cider fiercely loyal to the taste of the apples they know. The same is true of breweries, except that cider can be made on a very small scale.

R.W. Holder traces the story of Taunton cider back to the Rectors of Heathfield in the early nineteenth century. Rural areas were suffering in what became known as the hungry forties, but land owners generally escaped and it was the poor who suffered. A Rector was in sense a land owner since he lived off the rents of the Glebe and the proceeds of the Tithe. The Rector of Heathfield lived in cider country and was in the financial position to exploit his product and he did so by supplying the rich and famous.

As was the case in many places it was the railway that unleashed the business of Taunton which was not served by decent roads nor by easily navigable rivers. Railways, the GWR, proved ideal to transport hogsheads of cider to London and all parts of the country. The railways also expanded the market for local food producers and Holder tells the story of Mrs Langdon who built a business supplying eggs, chicken and rabbit to the London market.

The Taunton cider business grew by building relationships with brewers and their tied houses. Slowly the number of brewers increased each having a shareholding in Taunton Cider. Mrs Langdon's business, now run by her sons, recognised the role of logistics in their business and realised that they were at heart hauliers and could compete well with the stuck-in-the-mud railways. Langdons grew and Taunton grew and eventually the former was transporting the cider of the latter in large quantities.

The cider market was tough. H.P. Bulmer of Hereford was in the lead, with also Whiteways of Whimple in Devon and Gaymers of Attleborough in Norfolk close behind. The drinks market was also changing. Britvic of Chelmsford and Showerings of Shepton Mallet were transforming the image of the drink. With this background Taunton Cider was sold first to management, then floated on the London Stock Exchange until it became part of Matthew Clark plc and in turn C&C (Cantrell and Cochrane) founded in Belfast but then based in Dublin. C&C already owned Gaymers and Matthew Clark the Irish firm of Magners. The original Taunton Cider moved production elsewhere, but Heritage Cider has taken its place in the town.

Further readings:

R.W. Holder, Taunton Cider and Langdons - a West Country Story of Industrial Development (Midsummer Norton: Bookcraft, 2000)

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.