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Washington, Peterlee and Newton Aycliffe manufacturing history

In the late forties the New Towns initiative got under way with the objective of providing housing to those made homeless by enemy bombing or whose housing was seriously substandard. They were also aimed at addressing the unemployment arising from the closure of coal mines. The residential areas were to be combined with industrial estates to provide local employment but also with the necessary social infrastructure.

Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee came in the first phase in 1947 and 1948. Washington would follow in 1964. Washington comprised Chester le Street and fifteen villages, some existing and some new. Aycliffe (the word Newton was added later) was located within ten miles of each of Bishops Auckland, Darlington and Shildon. Peterlee was originally to be called Easington but was renamed after the miners leader Peter Lee.

Washington coming later than the early new towns had an updated employment agenda. The coal mines were closing, ship building was in decline as was related heavy engineering. Washington would seek lighter new industries to complement what was already present plus a good proportion of service industry.

The larger companies already in Washington were Newalls which provided insulation for shipping and Cooks Iron Foundry. With the first of the new town's industrial estates, Tube Products and Calders followed. Turner and Newall as it became had purchased the Washington Chemical Company which had exhibited at the Great Exhibition and had deep roots in the town.

The Dutch Philips were one of the first overseas manufacturers to come to Washington and were a mainstay until closure in 2003. The image is of the exterior of the Philips Factory (With thanks to Tyne & Wear Museums Reference: 5417/240). The Japanese JATCO which manufactures transmission established a plant in Washington to support the main Nissan plant nearby. It is now part of the North East Automotive Alliance with a focus on the transition to EV. BAE Systems manufacture sub components in a former Dunlop factory which had originally been built for Avon Rubber. Timex followed with a state of the art factory; as with a number of other industries, what was in demand in the sixties became the victim of technological development. The same was true of the RCA record pressing factory. Both closed.

Hitachi looked to build a plant to manufacture televisions. I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines about the role of the Japanese in this sector. For Washington and the North East there would have been clear benefit in a large manufacturer supplying a growing market. The British television manufacturers disagreed and lobbied the government to block the investment. They succeeded and after much work and expenditure Hitachi went away. As I note below the company did eventually gain a foothold in the North East.

Newton Aycliffe had at its heart a major Royal Ordnance Factory which had filled shells in the Second World War. In 1946 the government persuaded the British Bakelite company to move to the former Royal Ordnance factory in this area of high unemployment. The company began producing PVC by batch processing using old machinery but, as demand grew, it invested in new equipment, initially from the British company Francis Shaw Ltd. In the early sixties, Bakelite merged with British Xylonite jointly owned by Union Carbide and Distillers. The factory, known as Hydro Polymers, became part of Ineos in 2008.

EBAC is the only British manufacturer of washing machines and it also makes Heat Pumps, Dryers, Dehumidifiers and ventilation equipment at the factory they set up in Newton Aycliffe.

Newton Aycliffe is home now to Hitachi Europe, one of the few remaining UK railway locomotive works, and the government owned semiconductor plant, Octric. The Second World War Royal Ordnance engineering factory at Birtley was nearby and the town is now home to Komatsu (UK) manufacturing medium sized diggers.

Peterlee is home to a large Caterpillar factory employing robot technology. It also hosts the North East Enterprise Park and other companies in the Nissan supply chain.

Further reading

Stephen Holley, Washington: Quicker by Quango - The History of Washington New Town 1964-1983 (Stevenage: Publications for Companies, 1983)

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

Stockton manufacturing history

 The town prospered with the opening of the Stockton to Darlington railway opening up the South Durham coal field to sea going vessels especially when the line was extended to Middlesbrough.

Stockton’s early industry was timber, both imported and exported. However, it was iron that would fire the prosperity of the town. We can trace the Bowesfield Steel Company to Dorman Long and the building of the great steel bridges not least that over Sydney harbour. Two engineering companies of significant technological importance were Head Wrightson and Whessoe. The latter was based in Darlington but the former had its origin in the Teasdale Ironworks at nearby Thornaby-on-Tees. The connectivity of manufacturing is perhaps evidenced by the fact that Arthur Head had been apprenticed to Ransome and Sims in Ipswich and Thomas Wrightson has been trained at Armstrong’s in Newcastle. Their company grew to supply the world with blast furnace and steel works plant, constructional iron and steel, pit head gears, picking belts, tipplers elevators, coal crushers, disintegrators and general colliery and mining plant. It went on to be part of the early nuclear industry as I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines, as indeed did Whessoe.

Another strand of iron working came through William Ashmore who, at his Hope Iron Works, manufactured Gas Holders (the remains of some can still be seen by the Oval cricket ground and near the railway line from St Pancras), Boilers and Bridges. In time, Ashmore was joined by R.S. Benson and Edward Pease who invented the telescopic gas holder. The company became the Power Gas Corporation of which Ludwig Mond took control in 1901. Power Gas and Head Wrightson later became part of Davy International and then Trafalgar House.

The South Durham Iron and Steel company produced a large proportion of the plates used in Newcastle shipbuilding as well as in Stockton’s own industries. One of these was to produce enormous pipes, 30ft in length and 96 inches in diameter welded by a water-gas process.

There were many other iron works which did not decline until the old staples were hit in the mid interwar years. Iron works in Stockton cast rails for the Indian rail system. Examples of such rail stamped 'Stockton 1891' were re-used in the single track railway in what was Persia.

One possibly unsung hero was John Walker who invented the friction match. It was said that Michael Faraday visited Stockton to meet the inventor and to encourage production which Walker declined.

Further reading:

• Robert Woodhouse, Stockton Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)
• Tom Sowler, A History of the Town and Borough of Stockton-on-Tees (Teeside Museums and Art Galleries, 1972)

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