Antrim coast and glens manufacturing history

 This part of Northern Ireland, with the Giants Causeway, is rich in minerals and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries supported coal, iron ore and bauxite mining as well as quarrying for building materials. In the 1750s Hugh Boyd was shipping 8,000 tons of coal a year from his mines in Ballycastle. Iron ore production peaked in 1870 part being smelted locally and part shipped to England for smelting. As iron ore mining decreased, bauxite increased especially in the Second World War when aluminium was needed for aircraft production.

The main industry of Antrim was linen. Flax was widely grown and two initial processes took place close to where it was harvested; since only 10% of the flax plant ends up in linen, the remainder being waste. The first process is to soften the plant by wetting in small ponds. The plant begins to rot giving a foul smell. This process is called Retting. The retted flax is then taken to a water mill where it undergoes Scrutching essentially separating the usable flax from waste. This usable flax is then spun, woven and bleached, these processes taking place mainly in Belfast.

In the sixties, Antrim attracted British Enkalon to build a factory to produce nylon 6, which was a strong nylon thread for use in textiles. The promise of British Enkalon is said to have encouraged the designation as a new town. At its height the factory employed more than 3,000 and the towns population exceeded 20,000. Nylon for textiles was of its time and the factory closed in the mid seventies. The owners did not simply walk away but set up the Enkalon Foundation and business park which supports employment in the town.

Further reading:

Fred Hammond, Antrim Coast and Glens Industrial Heritage (HMSO, 1991)

Dublin manufacturing history

Dublin had been the main route for the export of the island’s textiles. At nearby Prosperous in 1780 Sir Robert Brooke attempted to set up a cotton manufacturing industry. At one time he employed 4,000 people but the business collapsed after four years. Cotton and linen manufacture continued elsewhere but never on the same scale.

At the time of partition in the 1920s, the Free State had many fewer manufacturing jobs that the much smaller Five Counties; it was reckoned that the north had one and a half times the jobs in the south. As to the south, something like half were in Dublin and two thirds were in food, drink, tobacco, textiles, clothing and footwear. Guinness was the largest employer and indeed at one time the largest brewery in the world. Chemicals featured to some degree, but this was mainly the fertiliser producer Gouldings in Cork given the overwhelmingly agricultural nature of the economy.

In the period following partition, the Free State imposed tariffs on imports and this persuaded a number of British companies to establish factories in the south. Lever Brothers were already there, as was the Ford Motor Company. New arrivals included Rowntree and Macintosh confectionary and Players and Wills cigarettes.

Metal related industries made up 15% of Ireland's manufacturing employment. Looking back to the eighteenth century, Richard Turner had been one of the true iron masters. He created the iron structure for the glass houses at the Botanical Gardens in Belfast and the Palm House at Kew in London. In 1902 Scotsman, David Frame, revived the Hammond Lane Foundry and this went on to become part of the Irish Steel Company.

The Scottish link was repeated in shipbuilding. William McMillan worked his way up from being an apprentice at Lobnitz in Renfrew and then a plater at Feling & Ferguson in Paisley before moving to Dublin in 1901 as manager at the Dublin Docks Company which had been set up by two Scots, John Smellie and Walter Scott. During his time, he worked on many ships including the Muirchu launched as Helga II in 1908 as a fisheries protection vessel. The ships built were generally coasters, tugs land barges. William left the Dublin Docks Company in 1913; its yard would later being taken on by Vickers Ireland whose principal business was the manufacture of iron barges for inland waterways to transport barrels of Guinness amongst other goods.

William set up the Ringsend Dockyard Company in 1913 in three graving docks and there repaired ships. In 1916 they built their first ship, the 62ft steam tug Zoe for the British India Steam Navigation Company for service in the East African port of Mombasa. Other tugs followed. In 1918 William expanded to become Dublin Shipbuilders. This company built coasters, but struggled financially. One of its ships served in Duneden in New Zealand, another was completed by Henry Robb of Edinburgh. The comany survived during difficult times until 1928 when it became part of Ringsend Dockyard (Dublin) Ltd. Interestingly one of the shareholders was the Leith shipbuilder Henry Robb. Another was George N Jacob whose company would achieve fame for its Cream Crackers. The company's main business was the manufacture of iron motorised barges which became known as McMillans, considered better than the Vickers competitors. By 1938, Ringsend Dockyard (Dublin) was the last remaining steel shipbuilder in Dublin, Vickers having closed. One of its first roles during the Emergency (as the Second World War was known in the Free State) was to refit the Muirchu to become the flag ship of the Irish Navy. William died in 1938 having become one of Dublin's signifcant businessmen.

Scottish born John Boyd Dunlop, whilst living in Belfast, developed the pneumatic tyre which both greatly improved the comfort of riding a bicycle but also its speed. With Harvey du Cross, he set up, in 1888, what would become the Pneumatic Tyre Company. It began producing tyres in Dublin but then moved to Coventry.

Jacobs set up in Dublin in 1852 and became the city's biggest employer after Guinness. They built a factory in Liverpool in 1914 which eventually became part of Associated Busicuits. The Dublin business became part of Irish Biscuits.

Dublin's story after partition is not strictly part of this study although it is appropriate to note the prosperity of the capital as a member of the European Union.

Further reading:

• Pat Sweeney, Liffey Ships and Shipbuilding (Cork: Mercer Press, 2010)
• I am grateful to William McMillan's grandson, Russell Arthurton, for his research

 

Merthyr Tydfil manufacturing history

 In 1759, in Dowlais near Merthyr Tydfil, an iron works was founded by a group of iron masters. Eight years later, John Guest joined the company as works manager. Guest would later join with Keen and Nettlefold in what became one of Britain’s largest industrial companies, GKN.

The Dowlais Iron Works, under Sir John Guest, was said to be the greatest ironworks in the world in the mid nineteenth century, employing some 7,000 people. I wrote of its story in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. It wasn't alone in the Merthyr area, the Cyfarthfa Iron Works was a close rival until Dowlais powered ahead in the 1860s and 1870s. There were in all eight major iron works on the northern boundary of the South Wales coal field including Tredegar, Hirwaun, Penydarren and Ebbw Vale.

Transport was an issue for Merthyr, as iron had to be taken by horse to the port at Cardiff. In 1804, Richard Trevithic made the first steam locomotive for use on a tramway at Penydarren iron works. In time a canal was built and this was followed by a railway, vastly improving journey times. Dowlais supplied rails for the Great Western Railway, iron for Brunel's SS Great Britain built at Bristol and cannon balls for the Board of Ordnance.

Steel came to Dowlais earlier than many other iron works with the adoption of the Bessemer process making Merthyr at one time the leading steel making district in the world. The district also produced many of the great steel engineers who would take their skills elsewhere.

Merthyr suffered as other areas had access to better quality ore demanded by new processes.The Dowlais works closed in 1936 with production moving to Llanwern, combined with that of Baldwins and I write of these combinations in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Hoover manufactured cleaners in Merthyr.

Further reading:

• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962)